She took a moment to note the absence of wind.
Of sound.
Racing around the narrow, circular structure, she found a door unguarded.
It opened at her touch.
Unlocked.
Ari started to shake. She drew her sword as the last of the sunset left the sky a bruised color. Pressing into the dark of stone, she found broken chairs and tables. Abandoned items. And wooden stairs that spiraled upward.
She took them quietly, softly.
In truth, Ari was ready to murder whoever had taken Gwen. She understood that feeling now, that push to stop cruelty. Finish it before it could cause more harm. It was not a good feeling. It was not stable or true, and she knew that this was not what she was supposed to glean from coming back here. And yet, she wasn’t going to hesitate.
No matter who had taken Gwen.
The stairs spiraled upward, upward. Ari found three abandoned floors filled with old furniture, and when she took the last turn of the stairs and spied a shut door, her fist tightened around her sword. At the top, she took a deep breath, and shouldered the door open.
Ari thought she’d come too late. Far too late.
Gwen was lying on a small straw mattress, lifeless in the nearly black room. The lack of guards could only mean that there was nothing left to guard. Ari dropped her sword with a terrific clang, and ran to Gwen’s side, only to find Gwen sitting up, reaching for her.
“Ari?”
Ari’s breath came out too fast. A blast of pain that sounded wrong in her own ears. “You’re all right. Oh, my gods, you’re all right.”
Ari kissed Gwen’s cheeks, her hair. Her hands roamed over Gwen’s belly, and as if the little one knew this was no time to play coy, they gave a nice, strong kick. Ari sobbed.
“Ari, we’re fine. What are you…? Oh. You didn’t see the ransom note, did you?”
“What?” Ari pulled back. “I couldn’t help thinking the worst. Arthur was screaming, and your rooms were utterly destroyed. I thought…”
Gwen grimaced in a way that made Ari sniff back her tears and cock her head. “You are never going to forgive me for this performance.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was so sure Arthur would show you the ransom note. There was a… let’s say secret message in it. So you would see it and know that I kidnapped myself.”
“You what?”
Gwen got up, pushing Ari’s shaking body away. She paced the tower, rubbing her lower back. “Seriously? Did any of you actually think I’d sit around and wait to be kidnapped? Of course not. This was the only reasonable path. If the legend needs me to have the damsel in distress moment, then this damsel is setting her own damn terms.”
By the end of her speech, she was out of breath and sweating, even though it was cool in the tower. Ari couldn’t help but look over Gwen’s distended stomach. Ordinarily, she wore such stiff finery. It had been an odd relief to know that she was under twenty pounds of linen and corset, turning the baby into a diamond beneath so much ruff. Now the little one was shifting and moving beneath thin underclothes, and Ari had to admit that Gwen had somehow gone from respectably round to seemingly unbalanced by her own belly in a matter of weeks.
“Gwen, please don’t take this the wrong way, but did you get a lot more pregnant recently?”
“Something shifted in my body. I’m having contractions,” she said distractedly. “The baby is just about ready, I think.”
Ari’s pulse edged up a few notches. “Just about ready like this week or… today?”
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I’m past due at this point. Tonight? Tomorrow? It’s going to be soon. That was my cue to abduct myself.”
Ari shot up and started her own pacing regimen. The top of the tower was so small that Gwen had to sit down to allow for Ari’s burst of nerves. “We have to get you back to Camelot. I know it’s not your favorite place, but there are actual midwives there. Val found you one that he thinks will keep your secret.”
“Ari, I won’t go back to Camelot,” Gwen said with such fear that Ari stopped pacing. “This baby will not be Mordred, and the only way I can ensure that is if Camelot and Arthur and Old Merlin know as little about the baby as possible. I won’t let this child get sucked into the narrative like we were.”
Ari couldn’t argue with that logic, not the way the legend had absorbed them like a sponge. “Okay, although I doubt we have more than a day before Arthur rockets out of the castle, searching for us.” She sat next to Gwen on the straw mattress and rubbed her face with both hands. “So you want the baby to be born here? In this dismal tower?”
“In Avalon,” Gwen corrected. “Where they’ll be safe.”
“Avalon,” Ari repeated. “The home of the ever-so-maternal Morgana and Lamarack’s hot, scary new enchantress? Is this because Nin can’t see into Avalon?”
“Partly, but also, it’s the seat of feminine power on this planet. My baby needs to be born there. I know that they’ll help us, and I think, maybe, they’ll be trustworthy enough to take care of the baby until we rid the future of Mercer.”
Ari fell back on the old mattress with a soft thump. “That’s a big gamble, Gwen.”
Gwen wove her fingers with Ari’s, sealing their palms together. “Yes. And that’s exactly what you and I are good at. Of course, I’m not sure how we’re going to get home. And then back again to collect the little one, but I’m not going to—”
“Nin offered me a deal,” Ari said, words bursting forth from the rickety dam she’d built to keep the secret. “A way to end the Arthurian cycle and portal home, whenever we’re ready.”
“And what does she want?” Gwen stared at their entwined hands. “You, I imagine?”
“How did you know that?” Ari asked.
Gwen lifted their hands toward her mouth, kissing Ari’s fingers. “People are always trying to take you away from me.”
“She wants me, Gwen, but not until I die. She wants my soul. To trap it like Arthur’s has been trapped for all these years. Nin seems to think that I’m the best candidate for tragic entertainment since Arthur himself.”
Ari readied herself for the argument, preparing her already obsessed-upon points: that this might be the only chance to buy enough time to stop Merlin’s backward aging before it was too late. To get home. And since Ari’s death should be a good long while from now, they’d have decades before Nin, you know, collected on Ari’s cursed body and soul.
But this was Gwen she was talking to.
“I can see why you think this is an option, Ari,” she said cautiously. “But it’s not. Do you remember when the Administrator tried to give us everything we wanted… in exchange for you? What did I say?”
“We don’t deal in people.”
Gwen nodded as if this proved her point.
“It’s the only failsafe we’ve got, lady.”
“Then we’ll figure out better options.”
Ari smiled; this was her love, her Gweneviere, who rode the diplomacy of any situation like a stallion she’d broken herself. Gwen’s unbraided hair fell between them and Ari twirled her long, crimped locks between two fingers. She realized, for the first time since they’d crashed in the Middle Ages, they were alone.
Truly alone.
Ari stared at Gwen’s velvet brown eyes, at the small dots of sweat on her nose, and the red, red promise of her lips. “I miss you,” Ari said, touching Gwen’s shoulder, running her hand down her arm and up again. Gwen’s touch moved to the only armor-free places, Ari’s neck, her cheekbones, her mouth.
“Did we forget how to do this?” Ari asked after minutes of such light stroking and paused need that her insides were melting.
“I read that sex causes labor… sometimes,” Gwen said softly.
“So, you’re saying we should go to Avalon and have sex?” Ari’s voice had dropped to a warm, nervous tone, but she wasn’t complaining.
“Yes, but we should make out before we leave.”
“Perfec
t.”
Ari’s mouth found Gwen’s like the swell of two great waves meeting in the center of a deep blue sea. Between Gwen’s belly and Ari’s armor, only their faces touched, but it was enough. Gwen’s skin was Ari’s one true love. She cradled Gwen’s cheeks, ran her fingers into her hair, and tasted each of Gwen’s lips before relearning that Gwen’s tongue pressing against hers poured liquid heat straight through her.
“Well, that’s fucking canon,” Ari said when they finally stilled, their foreheads pressed together. “Lancelot and Gweneviere, unstoppable.”
“According to our Old Earth history classes on Lionel, Lancelot and Gweneviere were the first recorded love story where a woman chose her love. She’s horrifically punished for it, of course, but all the stories before that were about men claiming wives. And then after, the stories became about men and women who fight for their love against all odds.”
Ari smiled. “So you’re telling me Old Earth’s boring romantic repertoire of ‘cis boy plus cis girl equals love forever’ is because two ladies from the future crashed into the past and broke their terrible mold?”
Gwen nodded, her face still so close that her nose skimmed Ari’s cheek. “Despite everything that’s happened, we were always supposed to come here,” Gwen said, kissing her lightly. “To learn that we are the unstoppable ones.”
Gwen didn’t go into labor in a fit of screams or panic. It was more like running into an uncharted asteroid field. Nothing, nothing… and then nothing but hard, spinning obstacles as far as the eye could see.
The next afternoon, they were deep into their travels toward Nin’s lake and the entrance to Avalon. Gwen rode on the back of the horse, a little too silent, while Ari led him along. She had taken off her armor and piled it in a blanket on the back of the horse. Walking through the Middle Ages in nothing but her pants and a shirt felt bold and dangerous. And stunningly light.
At one point, Ari stopped for a drink of water from her leather bladder and gazed back at Gwen. She was sweating, focused on something Ari couldn’t see, riding her pain.
It was already happening.
“Do you know how long you have?” Ari asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. They were still hours from the lake by Ari’s rusty geographic calculations.
Gwen shook her head.
“Okay, so we keep going,” Ari said. “Do you need anything?”
Gwen shook her head once more.
And they kept going.
When the lake appeared on the horizon, along with Camelot in the far distance and the woods between the two, Gwen whimpered loud enough to spike alarm. Ari stopped the horse and went to Gwen. Water streaked with blood had flowed from Gwen, over the horse’s side and into the dark soil of the road.
Gwen was looking down at it in utter alarm. “It’s supposed to be clear. I read that. It’s supposed to be clear…”
Ari pulled her down from the horse, her own pulse a storm of nerves. “We’re going to walk now, lady. On Ketch, the mothers always walked through the last of the pain. The transition period is supposed to be—”
“Don’t say it.” Gwen inhaled sharply. They walked with their arms around each other, and even though the terrain was mostly downhill, their pace was epically slow. Gwen had to stop so many times. She gritted her teeth and squeezed Ari’s forearms until Ari was sure that they’d bruise. Her long hair was plastered to the skin on her neck, and Ari gently peeled it away and blew a cool breath across her skin.
Gwen suddenly doubled over, leaning low, gripping Ari by the shoulders. She swore gorgeously and then came back when the contraction was over to glare at Ari, her lips brilliant red and her face glistening. “Mistake. This whole thing was… a really, not-good mistake.”
Ari tried not to laugh. “Yeah, how’d it even come up in conversation with my brother? I can only imagine how he’d react.”
Gwen gaped at her. “Are you asking me about Kay? Now?”
Ari lowered her voice, keeping Gwen’s gaze firmly locked with her own. “Yes, now.”
“This is a poorly chosen distraction, Ara.”
“You bet.” Ari looped an arm around Gwen, judging that they had mere minutes before they would need to stop again, and kept walking. At first Ari thought Gwen might not tell her how the baby scheme had occurred, but then she did.
“There was this night on Lionel, well into the siege. Val wanted to have a starlit picnic with the last of the real food before we went to hard rations. He was trying to seduce Merlin. Gods, you should have seen that circus. Those boys…”
Gwen took a few short breaths and then an exaggerated long one that seemed to rip her open slightly. When she was done, she kept talking, her voice far away, wafting after the memory. “We ate the last of the non-space-dried fruit and drank the last of the wine. The four of us. Jordan was off sharpening something somewhere and Lam was more interested in hosting underground resistance rallies. It felt like a double date. Which, of course, felt wrong.”
“Agreed,” Ari said, allowing her jealousy to have a single, tiny moment.
Gwen smiled, and the feeling evaporated. “Val made us drink and talk about what we wanted. Not what we wanted now that Mercer was steps away from claiming the entire planet, but what we wanted period. All I could think about was you, how it felt like you were mine for the smallest slice of time. Like you were my family. And then I’d lost you. I told them I’d always wanted a baby. I wanted to make a family, and Val and Merlin laughed, but Kay didn’t.” She paused. “He didn’t. He missed his moms so much. He missed you.”
“An odd request,” Ari whispered, remembering the words that had first introduced the idea of this baby, this new person, into her life.
“Gods, he was so dumb and smelly and cute and never serious, but he was serious then and it was sort of… beautiful.”
Gwen didn’t have to explain what that looked like. Kay had been famous for being the levity in Ari’s life. The person whose life goals were locked on attaining the next bag of chips or an energy drink—until they weren’t. Until he was pulling Ari back from the brink of her most arduous nightmares, the fake ones and the real alike. His own kind of hero.
After all, would Ari have had the strength to take down the Administrator in front of the known universe if her brother hadn’t had the audacity to laugh in the man’s face? He knew what she had to do, and he knew how to make sure that she did it.
Gwen cried out all over again, breaking Ari’s vivid memory of Kay. Ari picked up Gwen and jogged the last stretch toward the gray, crystal water. “My gods, you’re a beast, Ari. How are you carrying me?”
“Constant training. Lots of pent-up energy from no sex. Diet of pretty much only red meat,” Ari said, smirking at Gwen in her arms. Gwen seemed faintish, and Ari didn’t like it. “We’re there, lady. Look.”
“I’m not going to make it to Avalon,” Gwen said, holding a low spot on her stomach when Ari put her down. “The mist doesn’t come until twilight. This baby is happening now.”
The water, Arthur said from inside her, startling Ari so much that she stepped backward, boot sinking into the gravelly shoreline. Trust me. Trust the water.
Gwen stared, sweat dripping from the sides of her face. “What is it?”
“King Arthur. He spoke to me.” Ari tossed a look at the water, a beautiful lake. A serene spot for new life to come into this world—or a treacherous place of no turning back. “Trust me.”
“Really? You know how to pull babies out of people? Ara, you’ve got many of the most badass skills in the universe, but this one might be beyond you.”
Ari couldn’t agree more. “No, Arthur wants you to go into the water. He wants us to trust him. The last time he told me something this clearly, this directly, I was on the ship with my parents… and Mercer was firing on us.”
Urgency, that’s what King Arthur’s voice had invoked. She began to gather up Gwen and step into the water with her, but Gwen bent over, her sweaty face pale.
“Promise me someth
ing that bad isn’t about to happen.”
Ari shook the darker fears away. “I think I know what he means. On Ketch, we had these birthing pools. It was supposed to be the gentlest way for the baby to enter the world.”
“Hell, no.” Gwen’s legs gave out, and Ari had to slowly lower her to the damp shore. The sun disappeared behind the forest line, and the sky began to darken.
“Just another hour, lady. Maybe less. You can do this.”
“There’s got to be another way,” Gwen said. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want—” She worked her hand up under her skirt, feeling between her legs. “Oh gods, is that a head? How can it happen this fast?”
The water.
What about Nin? Ari shot back.
The water.
Gwen started to groan so low and endlessly that Ari flooded with panic. She lifted Gwen’s loose form and trudged into the water. Ari waited for something seismic to happen, but the water stayed just water, so clear that it bloomed with Gwen’s blood.
“I don’t know what to do,” Ari said. “What do I do?”
“Say something. Help me.”
“I love you.”
Gwen scowled. “So you just pull that out now whenever you want to surprise me?”
“Surprising you is my favorite pastime.”
“I hate your timing. I’ve always hated it,” Gwen said, suddenly laughing and crying and giving birth all at once.
Ari found the baby’s head with one hand, and then the shoulders, the curved back. The other hand held Gwen close in the chest-high water.
She tried not to notice the way the water chilled and turned black and swirled as she guided the baby toward the surface and Gwen’s outstretched arms. The way everything was different the moment Gwen raised the tiny curled body from the water. Perhaps Gwen and Ari were too tired or scared to cry. The moment slipped from fear, to wonder, over and over. The whole universe felt too cold all of a sudden. Too frozen and hard for such a tiny warm life. Ari clasped Gwen to her chest, the baby pressed between them, the rest of this universe shut out.
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