Gwen and Ari looked away from each other. Merlin ached for them, in exactly the way he’d feared he would. They were bound together in all of this, and yet, they were also forced apart by the details.
The knights continued to watch as Heritage broke into large pieces of space trash, spreading out like a supernova of consumerism. This time Mercer was not chasing them down. No one was chasing.
The Mercer faction on Heritage had exploded as efficiently as the ship. The moment the Administrator died, the associates abandoned their posts, their weapons, their uniforms. Merlin had seen many of them bartering for passage on civilian ships. It reminded him of some of the more infamous beasts of his past. Cyborgs, kraken, white supremacists. None of them were much of a threat without their head. And Ari had decapitated the Mercer Company.
Now the universe needed leadership. A breath of life to answer this much death. Merlin would help Ari get everything in place, of course.
Ari moved to the cockpit. “We’re going to Ketch.” She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. “I want to set up a new kind of government from there. One where every planet has a voice.”
Well, perhaps Ari didn’t need quite that much guidance. After all, she had always been stronger than Arthur. And when she stopped letting her loneliness guide her, she was a much better listener.
If she was prepared to lead the universe to a new age of peace, did that mean Merlin could live his life? What was left of it anyway?
“If anyone wants to go somewhere else, I’ll drop you off. But know that my home is your home. You’re all welcome.” Merlin watched Ari’s eyes lock on Gwen’s. They were the figureheads, after all. Half of this band belonged to Ari. Half to Gwen.
“I’ve always wanted to see Ketch,” Gwen said, slipping to Ari’s side. “If you want to stay with me, that is where I’m going. Let’s just hope that the Lionelians are still there and safe.”
“If they aren’t, I’ll find them,” Ari said solemnly. “Every single one.”
“I know,” Gwen’s fingers slipped between Ari’s.
Val slumped into Merlin’s shoulder. As much as Merlin wanted to get back to their fiery mid-battle kissing, there was a more pressing matter.
“You’re hurt,” he said, touching Val’s back lightly. Val winced. Merlin wavered between pride at having saved Val’s life with a sword to an associate’s gut, and distress that Val had still gotten stabbed in the process.
“May I wrap that for you?” Merlin asked.
“Shirtless fun is shirtless,” Val said, his eyes half open. He sank a little, dragging Merlin with him, seeming to feel his injury all at once.
“Use Kay’s room,” Ari said. “It’s yours now.”
“But… don’t you want…?” Merlin sputtered.
“I can’t go in there,” Ari said.
Merlin looked to Gwen. And her stomach.
“I’m in much better shape than Val at the moment,” Gwen said. “And my baby has already survived a battle, so if you start treating us like we’re two delicate flowers, I’ll happily stab you in the other thigh.” Gwen ducked into the cockpit, leaving Merlin to wonder where the original thigh-stabber had gotten off to.
He hadn’t seen Morgana since the height of the action. She’d vanished, like she always did. At least she’d turned up when she was needed. She had helped Ari, even if it wasn’t a direct route to putting King Arthur to rest. Maybe that body he’d given her—and accidentally taken back—had done Morgana some good. He made a mental note to drop her back into corporeal form the next time she resurfaced.
Merlin stood with great care, pulling Val along with him into Kay’s room. It felt a little strange to claim it, knowing that Kay would have hollered at him for putting so much as a foot over the boundary. “I promise not to go in the pantry without permission,” he whispered to Kay’s ghost.
As Merlin reached to close the door, Ari appeared, catching the latch. “Don’t make us turn off the gravity on you two.”
“Wh-what?” he sputtered.
“My childhood best friend and my magician… it’s official?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Merlin pointed out, his cheeks flushed as hard as a sunrise. Ari smiled, a stiff, small curve of her lips that promised she would come back from her losses. That they had not defeated her, and that there was much left to do, and see, and feel. Merlin smiled back, trying to infuse his heart with the same sort of hope.
Merlin bandaged Val’s wound while he was still semi-conscious, and then sat at his side for at least a day, until Val awoke, eyelids fluttering. He pulled the blankets down, as if he needed to get up at once. As if he’d already missed too much of the action.
The great sweeping-away of blankets revealed Val’s chest. Merlin had seen it while he was wrapping Val up, but out of politeness and a sense of self-preservation, he had tried not to linger. Here it was again. Lovely and smooth. Merlin gave a cough as dry and crumbling as an old book.
“Is that how you look at everyone who gets stabbed?” Val asked, a sleepy smile sliding over his face. “Or just me?”
“Is there something I can… do for you?” Merlin asked. “Do you need anything?”
Val nodded. “I’m thirsty.”
Merlin picked up a glass of water from the table near the bed, hands shuddering. If he’d had a whisper of magic left in his body, he would have used it to stop them. Steady them. But he’d used it on leaving Nin’s cave of anguish, and now all he had to offer Val was himself. And the water.
He raised the rim of the glass to Val’s mouth and tipped it. When he pulled it away, Val’s lips glistened. “This is the sort of terrifying I usually run from at top speed,” Merlin whispered.
Damn Ari with her damned inspiring honesty.
Merlin waited for Val’s lips to bloom with disappointment. “But you’re not running,” he said. “You’re right here.” He pushed back to make a space for Merlin on the bed. Merlin sat, forming an instant catalogue of every place that he almost touched Val.
Damn body with its damned feelings.
“Yes, well, I’ve had some forced epiphanies,” Merlin said.
Val propped himself on an elbow to look at Merlin better, letting the blanket slide farther down his chest, revealing the line that cut toward his hips. “What happened when you passed out?”
Merlin found he couldn’t wait another moment to tell someone. And the someone he’d been waiting for—so very long—was Val. “I was trapped by an ancient enchantress who—”
“Another one?” Val asked. “How many magical women have you pissed off, Merlin?” There was a softness under his mocking, like the silky sheets that shifted beneath their bodies.
“Nin isn’t a woman, really. More like… a force. Not even a force of nature. She’s somehow outside of nature. Or beyond it. I can’t quite tell. Turns out, she’s the reason I’m no good at dying. She’s been protecting me.”
Val grabbed the water from Merlin, too thirsty to wait for his carefully administered sips. Merlin told Val everything that had happened between the moment he left Val’s side and the moment he came back. “And then Nin gave me a choice. She offered to stop this aging backward mess.”
The cup paused against Val’s lips.
“But it meant leaving Ari. And you.” That last one was not easy to say aloud—it nearly tugged Merlin’s stomach up his throat. “I couldn’t do that.”
Val put the glass down so slowly that Merlin thought something was wrong. Then he placed a hand on Merlin’s face. The touch had a confidence that pinned Merlin in place after so much wandering through places and times that didn’t belong to him. The bright stripes in Val’s dark eyes brought him back to Earth.
Val’s face moved closer, and Merlin closed his eyes. On Lionel, Merlin hadn’t wanted to kiss Val because he feared they would slide past each other, aging in different directions. Now he wanted to kiss Val because he knew that was bound to happen, and he would lose his chance.
They had so li
ttle time.
Their lips touched and pushed that feeling away. There was no time inside of a kiss, nothing but soft, dark sensation. Hardness came next, in the tousle of their lips, in the insistence of Merlin’s hands on Val’s neck. And in other, very obvious, places.
Val’s hand drifted under the blanket, and found an unnamed spot between Merlin’s hip and the zipper of his jeans. Merlin startled at how intense that small touch could be. Val’s fingers pushed against the thick cloth, making his nerves flare. No wonder jeans had survived the apocalypse.
“What are you doing?” Merlin asked, his voice low and trembling.
“Thanking you,” Val said. “For choosing this over…”
“A future?” Merlin asked. Panic ignited in him, turning him to a falling star, blazing to a crash. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t know how. Or he’d forgotten. There was no hope for him, nothing but a handful of ash where his bravery should be. “You’re injured,” Merlin said, sounding like his old self, the one who fussed and bothered.
“Rest is another kind of magic,” Val said, with a flourish of a smile.
“You need more rest,” Merlin said. He knew the tumble of this argument. The quick downhill of talking himself out of things. “I should…”
“Be gentle?” Val asked. “Yes. You should.”
He pulled Merlin closer, and this time when they kissed, there were bright crackles of feeling. Need welled up, pouring into each kiss. And the sound. The music of them trading breath for breath, the slide of fingers on skin, groans deep in their throats.
When their bodies met under the pile of blankets, Merlin was on the verge of something as vast as time. He watched the twist of Val’s muscles the same way he would watch the play of stars in the deepest night sky. And then Merlin couldn’t just watch. When he reached for Val, he was rewarded with a gasp and a sweet, melting sigh. Val’s hands also vanished beneath the blankets.
And after lifetimes of saying no, Merlin found himself saying yes, and yes, and yes.
Joy had a way of surprising Ari. She never expected it, never sought it out, and some days it felt nonexistent—and yet it found its way in like sunlight through the cracks of a closed door.
Showing off Ketch to her friends and parents was full of joy. She flew them over the red, rolling deserts in Error. She took them to the mountainous city where she’d hid the Lionelians, only to find that they were safe and unharmed. Apparently a fleet of Mercer vessels had stood sentinel in the sky for days, but they’d disappeared after the Administrator’s demise.
Next, Ari and her friends took Big Mama back to her sandy nest. Big Mama dug up three large eggs, mooning loudly over their uncracked, cold forms. For a twisting moment, it seemed impossible that the unhatched taneens had survived so long without their mother’s heat, but Morgana appeared, reaching ephemerally through the shells to confirm that two of the three still bore beating hearts and growing bodies.
Gwen surprised all of them, pushing toward Morgana to ask her to check her baby. The knights, Merlin, and Ari held their breaths while Morgana laid a bluish-clear hand on Gwen’s stomach and pulled it away sharply.
“Alive,” she said. “Loud, and healthy.”
Ari was alight with joy. She could not stop herself from embracing Gwen while Jordan muttered a thankful chant and Lamarack lifted Val into the air, shaking him with happiness. Gwen shivered in Ari’s arms, her fear releasing in trembles and significant exhalations. Ari felt the constant heat between them fade to warmth. Less like a flash burn, and more of a hearth.
“This baby will be Lionelian, but born on Ketch. An important piece of both of us.” Ari found herself whispering in Gwen’s ear before she remembered Kay’s last parting wisdom while they were on that imaginary green field of Old Earth. “Even if you’re from Troy, originally,” Ari said. “We create our families. We choose our homes, don’t we?” There was no challenge in her voice—only curiosity and a need to understand why Gwen had held back from her.
Gwen sighed, melting into Ari a little more with each breath. “My parents lived on Troy, and I was born there, but I don’t remember it. My first memories are of Lionel. We moved there when I was small, but my parents…” She moved back and stretched, holding out her arms in the bluish-gold sunlight of this vivid planet. “It was too hard to play Middle Ages. They went back to Troy.”
“They left you… alone on Lionel?” Ari asked, slight anger leaking through her words.
“Never came back. Never even sent a message.” Gwen’s words slid into place—her worries about being left behind by Ari taking on the weight of her past. “The only good thing they ever did was gift me to the training school. I fell in love with Lionel. I found my first loyal friend.” Gwen smiled at Jordan. “She’s also a left-behind, and we made a vow to each other that someday one of us would be queen.”
“I could have so easily been given to Mercer,” Gwen added. “They would have owned me.”
Ari felt angry for not understanding sooner. She felt like pacing, like raging out. “Our baby won’t have those terrible realities poised over their head. I will not rest until—”
Gwen took her arm. “It’s okay, Ari. Everything we’ve done this past year… losing each other and then Kay… well, she will not grow up under Mercer’s control.”
“She?” Ari asked.
Gwen nodded. “Mother’s intuition.”
Ari didn’t say anything, but she hoped Gwen was right. According to Morgana and Merlin, King Arthur’s progeny, especially the boys, tended to cause far more trouble than they were worth. Of course, this child wasn’t Ari’s on a strictly genetic level. Was that enough to avoid the retelling of Arthur’s death at the hand of his son?
Mordred.
What a frigid name.
“You said ours,” Gwen murmured, pulling Ari close by the arm, interrupting her doomed thoughts. “You said our baby.”
“That’s presumptuous, I know—”
Gwen stopped her lips with a kiss that was so soft and sweet, Ari couldn’t help but glow with joy—as if that door had been thrown open and now the sunlight was just pouring in.
Her moms made their way over, asking with all the subtle patience of a hungry taneen if they were going to be grandparents. When Gwen said yes, Mom roared with Big Mama levels of excitement, while Captain Mom wept.
Lastly, Ari took her friends to Ras Almal in the capital city of Omaira. She brought them to the huge amphitheater where the seven founding families of Ketch once met to discuss Mercer, their planet, their galaxy.
“I made this,” Ari said, slightly bashful as she pointed to the center of the large room. “Well, I had a lot of time on my hands the last time I was here.”
Merlin’s eyes nearly popped. “It’s a…”
“Round table,” Ari said, brushing sand off the stones she’d cut and hauled into place with her own hands, one brick at a time. “When I first heard about King Arthur, I thought this bit was the shining jewel of hypocrisy. How could there be one true king who then gave everyone an equal voice? Then, when I was here with so much time on my hands to think things through, I realized that humanity will never give people an equal voice. It’s not in our nature. That’s why King Arthur had to decree it.”
Merlin’s eyes stung with unbottled tears.
“Are you all right, old man?” Ari asked, smiling and slapping his back.
Merlin started up a low chant of sorts. “Find Ari. Train Ari. Nudge her onto the nearest throne. Defeat the greatest evil in the universe. Unite all of humankind. I’ve never been this close to completing it.”
“Will you stop aging backward if we sort this out?”
He opened his mouth, but then shut it. “I have absolutely no idea,” Merlin said. Ari wondered if he was waiting for some kind of great clicking, a way of knowing that this was over. “I’ve always believed that when this was through, I would stop aging backward. Recently I’ve learned that there might be… other factors at play.”
Ari clapped his shoulder
. “Whatever stands in the way, we will meet it and surmount it. I promise.” She was still feeling slightly unbeatable after taking down Mercer.
Her friends had made their way around the entire table, and they came back to her. Ari cleared her throat to tell them the good news. “I was dreaming we’d get to use this one day. And now, we will.” She looked around at her friends, taking them in one at a time. “I put out a call that anyone who wants to help create a new future should send delegates to Ketch. One hundred and forty-seven planets have responded favorably, including Troy. They are headed here to sit at this table right now. To discuss what kind of universe we want to live in. To figure out what we do with the remains of Mercer.”
“Even Pluto?” Lam asked. “Are our parents coming?”
“They sent word that you would be the ideal representative,” Ari said. “Do you accept?”
Lamarack winked, silvery-mauve eyeshadow glittering. “Of course.”
Ari turned to Gwen next. “I’m assuming you’ll speak for Lionel, I will speak for Ketch, and Merlin?”
Merlin had been staring across the table disbelievingly. “What?”
“Forget it. He’s lost in an epic shag flashback,” Lam joked.
Val looped his arm around Merlin’s waist. “Don’t tease my boyfriend.”
Merlin’s hand rested on Val’s arm as he smiled at Ari. “What is it you need me to do? I could be court mage. I rather enjoyed that position on Lionel… and Camelot, once upon a time.”
Ari gripped his shoulder. “I’d like you to be the representative from Old Earth.”
Merlin burst into tears, and that, too, was its own strange joy.
“Eighteen days,” a harsh voice barked across the round table. “That’s how long my planet can survive without Mercer supplies. You keep saying that you don’t intend to cost people their lives, but a Mercer boycott is not possible. Not without great losses.”
Ari leaned forward, elbows on the stone table, exhausted. They had been at this for hours with such little progress. Her eyes twitched first to Gwen, who shook her head lightly, and then to Merlin who was bouncing in his seat as if he was about to send fireworks at the next person who declared that a universe without the Mercer Company was not possible.
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