Once & Future

by Cori McCarthy

  Or maybe that was just Ari.

  Gwen bruised things in Ari’s heart. She always had. Her closeness was a continuous tender ache because what would Ari feel, do, be afterward?

  New.

  Every kiss with Gwen left Ari new.

  They pulled each other to their feet—no more kneeling in front of the Administrator—and kept kissing. Their history served them, but so did their pain, knotting their bodies together in a way that could not be faked. Or pulled apart. Ari was only barely aware of the moment when the arena noticed their passion, the applause turning riotous and raw. Screams of joy from so many people who wanted to be this entangled—which only encouraged Ari to deepen the kiss.

  After all, love was one of the few things Mercer could not sell.

  The Administrator’s elevated voice filtered through Ari’s ears. His aww shucks turned into impatient chatter. “Break it up now. We have business to discuss!” he tried playfully.

  Finally, breath slipping fast between both of their lips, Ari asked, “Are you ready?”

  Gwen nodded and ripped the crown off of Ari’s head, throwing it into the stands with an impressive arc for its weight. After the brief flash of delight from the crowd, the Administrator’s cold stare chilled the entire arena.

  “Nobody puts a crown on my girl but me,” Gwen said with a pleased smile, her voice echoing for miles. The Administrator’s jaw popped like it had right before he’d smashed that crown into Kay’s chest, and Ari felt the mere seconds they had to live, right as the arena exploded with an arcing rainbow of fireworks.

  Gwen glanced up. Everyone did—except Ari. She searched the stands, feeling him. And he was there, several sections up, and yet she would have recognized his skinny power stance from a few hundred light-years away.

  “Merlin,” Ari whispered, tears threatening.

  His expression and rapid gesturing seemed to say, Well? Get on with your revolution.

  Ari grabbed Gwen and pulled her down the steps that had been pressed into the side of the stone dais for the Administrator. They fled toward their knights while the crowd continued to marvel over Merlin’s special brand of distraction.

  Jordan—wonderful, noble fucking Jordan—was already taking out an entire line of Mercer associates with one swing of her broadsword. Ari and her knights huddled together, using the horses to create a shield between them and the small army of Mercer associates.

  “What are we doing?” Val yelled. “Running for it?”

  “We’re fighting!” Lam said.

  “I’m already fighting!” Jordan yelled over her shoulder, taking out a rogue associate with a hard elbow to the face.

  “We’re…” Ari couldn’t look into their soon-to-be-dead faces. “We’re…”

  Gwen’s fingers slipped between Ari’s, strengthening her hold. “We’re making our stand.”

  “We are the truth the universe has to see. We will show them the lengths to which Mercer will go. Everyone wanted a king. A coronation. A spectacle. We’re going to show them the tragedy behind such wishes.” Ari’s voice broke as she thought about her brother. “There’s only one door on the arena level, the one we came through, and we only have a chance if we don’t let reinforcements in. Even if that means we are locked in here.” She turned to the black knight. “Jordan, keep the door shut. Lam—”

  “Figure out how to blow it to splinters when we’re ready to escape. Got it.” Everyone stared at them as they untied the bracer from their left wrist, revealing a secret lining that held a series of vials. “Told you, I have explosives.”

  Jordan squinted at the small glass tubes of bright-blue liquid. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes, it is,” Lam said proudly.

  Ari blew out a breath. “All right then, but hold off until I’ve gotten to the Administrator. Lam, will that stuff be enough to take the whole starship apart?”

  Lam shook their head. “No, but it’ll make it uninhabitable, to say the least. Should give the spectators plenty of time to get back to their vessels and blast away. Us, too.”

  “We should make them go down with the ship,” Jordan said. “Mercer-owned cowards.”

  “Some of them are, yes.” Ari looked up into the stands. The crowd was still rioting over the fireworks. “But some of them are like us, waiting for a time and place to make a stand. We might be surprised,” she said. “But hold back the associates as long as you can. Give me time.”

  The associates were forming ranks around the knights, while the Administrator had started to holler orders down from the dais. “Where are you going?” Val asked.

  “To get my magician!” Ari’s hand sealed around Excalibur while she used the other to bring Gwen’s knuckles to her lips. “We end this together,” she promised Gwen. “For Kay.”

  Lam pushed one of the horses toward Ari, but she shook her head. “I don’t need it. I’m going to ride my dragon.”

  She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled as hard as she could.

  And Big Mama roared back to life.

  Ari flew around the arena on Big Mama’s back, scattering the Mercer ranks into screaming, trampled piles. She fought to get her bearings, to find Merlin again, and then she sent the taneen up into the stands.

  Big Mama scaled the tiers of the stadium as easily as she’d once climbed Ras Almal. Ari found her magician trying to make his way down to the arena by climbing over row after row of seats, the cushions flapping.

  “Good to see you, old man!” she hollered, hauling him onto the back of her dragon.

  He held her around the waist, and yelled in her ear, “Thank you for being alive! Again!”

  Ari couldn’t help but laugh as she turned the dragon around and returned to the arena. The raised stone dais was now the Administrator’s stronghold, and he’d barricaded himself in the middle of an array of associates. Ari could just barely make out his terrible thatched hair.

  That was fine; he could stay up there, hiding. As long as he couldn’t leave or call for reinforcements, she had a chance to make an example out of him before—well, before it was all over. She was relieved to see that Jordan was on her task and the massive sliding door was tightly closed, no new Mercer reinforcements coming through.

  Ari charged Big Mama back toward her knights, scattering associates in every direction. The taneen took a few tentative nips of flesh here and there, and Ari let her, jumping off her back with Merlin and into the spot where Lam and Val were fighting the good fight. Lam looked amazing in their leather armor, leveling associates with furious one-handed swings, but Val was bleeding from the shoulder. Merlin and Ari took down the half a dozen associates closest to them, and Ari held on to Lam, catching her breath to ask about their progress.

  “The explosives?”

  “In place.” They pointed to the seam on the sliding door. “We have about five minutes before it becomes caustic.”

  Ari was exhausted, her body shaking. “Get this off of me,” she yelled, turning so that Lam could unstrap the miserable Pendragon breastplate. As she turned her back, her eyes fell on two boys, madly making out. “Hey!” Ari yelled. “We’re in the middle of a battle!”

  Merlin waved a dismissive hand and kept on kissing Val.

  The breastplate fell away, and Ari stood taller. She was ready to finish this. She had to be.

  “Where’s Jordan?” Ari asked, whipping around. “Where’s Gwen?”

  Lam pointed up at the stone dais. “They grabbed Gwen. Jordan went full knight rage. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Ari’s heart stormed as she squinted up to where the Administrator stood, holding Gwen, just waiting for Ari to notice. “Bastard,” she breathed. “He’s using her as bait. That’s still not bad-guy original,” she cursed, remembering their first meeting.

  Ari turned back to Merlin, shaking him out of the deepest kiss she’d ever witnessed. “Merlin, where’s Morgana?”

  “I accidentally killed that body I gave her. She’s… around.”

  “
She’d better be.”

  Ari’s brain hummed as she tried to imagine a way to get close to the Administrator. She could get close to him, but not armed. He’d make sure of that. “How much magic do you have left, old man?”

  Merlin chewed his lip, and Val tugged it free as if he couldn’t resist. “My fireworks were not easy, because I had this run-in with an old friend who zapped all my—”

  “He’s got nothing,” Val said. “He’s staying with me. What do you want us to do?”

  Ari picked up two ornate Mercer swords and shoved one in Val’s hand and one in Merlin’s. They both looked at them like they were odd hairbrushes. “You two stay with Lam. Help them get those doors open, if it’s possible. Find a way out of here, if you can.”

  “Error should be in the docking garage,” Lam said. “When you were unconscious, they were retrofitting her with a bunch of Mercer gadgets. Turning her into a sort of chariot to parade their fake king in. It’s what made Kay lose his cool before.…”

  Ari swallowed hard, trying not to picture that scene. “Find her, and get my parents, too—”

  Morgana appeared, wispy and miserable. “They are sealing us in from every angle. Escape is improbable.”

  Ari apologized to Merlin and slid Excalibur along his arm. Val shouted and Merlin cried out, turning pale. A line of blood shone along the blade, and Ari looked at Morgana, hard. “Optimism, Morgana.”

  “Ara Azar,” the Administrator said, voice booming from the surround sound speakers in the stadium. The entire place went dead silent. All of the associates stopped fighting at once, and even Big Mama quietly feasted in the corner.

  “King Ara, please return to the dais to collect your queen,” he tittered.

  Some people in the crowd actually laughed.

  The still-armed associates cleared back as Ari began the long, slow walk toward the dais. When she neared the stairs, she found Jordan, down on her side, bleeding into the red sand. Her helmet was thrown off and her face was full of righteous aggression. “No quarter, no mercy,” she whispered, wincing.

  Ari nodded and approached the steps.

  “Unarmed, thank you,” the Administrator called out.

  Ari dropped Excalibur in the sand and climbed the steps to face the Administrator. She tore away pieces of the clunky, punishing armor as she went until she was just Ari, standing in a shirt she’d stolen from her mother’s room on Ketch. He sent his associates away like a fool, but then, he really didn’t fear Ari. He never had. That was the first thing she needed to change.

  The Administrator held Gwen’s dagger to the inside of Gwen’s hip in a way that proved to Ari exactly how much he knew—and that he was threatening two lives at once.

  “You’re going to knife a pregnant woman?” Ari asked, voice carrying to the cameras, the projection above their heads still trailing the best of the action. “That’s evil, Administrator. I thought Mercer wasn’t evil, or good. They just are.”

  The crowd stilled, all eyes on them.

  He released Gwen slowly, a strangely savage look on his face that left Ari spinning with fear. The dagger moved away from Gwen, and he held it up as if he were relenting.

  And then he pushed Gwen off the dais.

  She fell with a small scream, landing hard on the sandy ground in a crumpled heap.

  Ari surged forward and caught the Administrator by those terrible ceremonial robes, pinning him to the altar that only minutes ago he’d tried to use as evidence of his ordained right.

  The Administrator’s slick expression didn’t waver. “You forget that they don’t care if I’m evil. No one stands against us, because they need us.” He turned his look to the stands. “Without Mercer you’d die, hungry, thirsty, squawking at each other. You all need us too much, don’t you?”

  The silence was answer enough.

  Mercer owned the universe, but it was more than that. Mercer made truth irrelevant. As long as they were in control, atrocity would always be excused in the name of convenience and greed.

  Ari’s fingers latched on to his throat. She wanted to recoil from his bleached skin. His hollow eyes. The Administrator had nothing inside of him. No hate. No caring. There was only the cold balance of cost and trade. A bank account of sterilized numbers. A mass grave of figures.

  Ari pulled away.

  And he laughed. “We did not think you would choke us to death for the entertainment of the masses. Didn’t your brother already tell you? You’re no killer.”

  Kay’s truth coming out of the Administrator’s mouth was the worst kind of salt on this new wound, and Ari stung all over. She looked over the side of the dais to where Gwen was still crumpled, unconscious or worse. The crowd followed her gaze, murmuring with longing at the sight of the fallen queen. This was proof. They did want more than Mercer crap. They wanted love. Hope. Truth. They were starved for it.

  The Administrator flashed a cold smile into the arena, unaffected. “Moving. Truly. How much for the movie rights?”

  “I’m not for sale, Administrator. And that’s why you should have been afraid of me a long time ago.”

  Behind her, Lam’s explosives cracked the arena wide open, and the place turned into a screaming rush of fleeing people. Morgana shimmered into existence beside Ari, bearing Excalibur. Ari took the sword and drove it through the center of the Administrator’s chest. He slumped, pinned to the stone altar by an antique token of hope.

  “It’s true. I’m no murderer,” she said, pulling the blade free. “But I do have an impulse-control problem. And a sword.”

  After Ari ran the Administrator clean through, everything was a blur of crowds and running and shouting until Merlin was back on Error, watching the mall explode. A brilliant cloud of red swallowed itself as quickly as it had appeared, the oxygen burned out in a flash, the fire quenched.

  And just like that, the flagship of the Mercer Company had been destroyed.

  Error was one of thousands of ships that had fled the mall only to pause and take in the beautiful destruction. Merlin was grateful for this moment. Not only was Heritage being torched, he finally had a chance to look over his band of ragtag survivors: Val had taken a stab to the back, Jordan and Lam were bleeding from a few dozen places, although none looked life-threatening, and Gwen had a severe concussion from her fall, and a purple knot on her head that looked troublesome.

  Merlin was tired. More tired than should have been possible unless one was mildly immortal. Mildly.

  Nin had confirmed it, then. He would die of young age.

  And Kay? He was dead. The kind of dead that you didn’t come back from. Val and Merlin had tripped on his body during their mad escape. Merlin had lost precious minutes checking his pulse, hoping for a miracle. But Kay’s heart stayed silent.

  Val had had to get Merlin back on his feet as he leaked surprised tears—over Kay, one of his least favorite characters in this over-spun tale. Wonders never cease.

  “Good-bye, Kay,” Merlin said. “You were an odd hero, but a good one.”

  His friends stood taller as the devastation of Heritage turned into the best Viking funeral he’d ever seen. And he had seen quite a few in his near-endless days. Unlike Merlin’s backward eternity, Kay had been given twenty short solar years, a cruelly brief calendar based on a planet where humans no longer lived.

  Merlin turned to Ari. She stood to the side, looking more Arthurian than ever. Grief had been a sizeable part of this story since the very beginning. It made Ari seem like she’d aged all at once, calm and resigned as if she could fight everything except this moment. Excalibur’s point bit the floor of Error while her hands rested on the hilt, majestic—particularly with the soundtrack of the roaring dragon stuffed into the cargo bay.

  “Are we safe with that thing in there?” Jordan asked.

  Ari chuckled sadly. “She’s stuffed on associates. We’re safe.”

  “I thought you said you were only going to blow up the mall a little bit,” Val said to Lam as pieces of Heritage began to separate, flo
ating free of one another.

  “Minor miscalculation,” Lam said, with a look that convinced Merlin it was no such thing. “At least Kay is going down with the ship.”

  “Gods damn it, he loved that fucking mall,” Val insisted. “Even in all of its Mercer-inspired awfulness.”

  “A fitting tribute for a warrior’s death,” Jordan said, folding her arms with a kind of deep understanding.

  Ari crossed the cabin and shut the door to the hallway, no doubt hoping she could keep her grieving, injured parents from having to relive their son’s death. “Kay wasn’t fighting when he died,” she said, sadness etching her words. “He was telling the truth. About me.”

  “And you were the thing Mercer feared most,” Gwen said, her voice reaching across the rather notable distance between them. “A girl they couldn’t control, who wouldn’t stop talking. That’s the scariest damn thing in the universe.”

  Another huge explosion silently lit up the space outside Error’s largest window. Debris went free-floating everywhere. “What is all that?” Lam asked.

  “Looks like food,” Val said. “Billions of snacks. That must have been the grocery section.”

  “A twenty-one-snack salute,” Merlin murmured with surprising joy.

  Ari gave a sad laugh. “Well, now it really is his funeral. And at least we saved Kay’s baby,” she added, running a hand down Error’s riveted wall.

  The baby in question was Kay’s ship, of course, but the words conjured up another meaning. Everyone’s eyes went to Gwen’s stomach, including the queen’s.

  “Truly?” Jordan asked, wiping her brow in tired disbelief.

  “I knew it,” Val muttered. “You can’t get something like that past a good adviser.”

  Merlin felt slightly ashamed that he hadn’t noticed Gwen’s pregnancy, though of course he’d been trying to ignore the reality that Gwen and Kay were together in the first place.