Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(13)

“Dude!” Kay said. “Lam is fluid. They.”

“Oh, apologies.” Merlin’s face blotched with red. “I, um, come from a society with a history of gender assumptions based on physical markers, aesthetics… et cetera.”

“Ew,” Ari said.

“That’s wicked sad,” Kay added.

Merlin, at least, looked deeply ashamed. “You’ve no idea.”

“But Kay…” Ari faced her brother, only for him to duck into the cockpit and lock the door. Ari dug through the supply closet and found Captain Mom’s old magboots. She brought them to Merlin, still strapped in the chair.

He lifted his head like a puppy while she shoved his feet into them. “Oh, space shoes!”

“They’re magboots. They were my mom’s,” Ari said. “Our parents were arrested three years ago. For harboring me, a highly unwelcome Ketchan, in Mercer territory. Kay and I barely escaped.” Merlin was staring at where her shirt buckled from her skin, revealing circular scars across her entire body like a constellation of old pain. She sat up, fixed her collar. “First you mess up Lam’s pronouns, now you stare at someone’s scars? We’ve got to work on you, Merlin the magician.”

“Those are quite a lot of scars.” His voice was so sad that Ari hated it.

“I know. I was there when I got them.”

“Were you tortured?”

Ari allowed this question because she’d just seen this scrawny guy crumbled to his knees by that wisp of a nightmare. “It was a kind of torture. Tell me, will that woman come back for you?”

“Oh, not for some time. Most likely.”

Ari unstrapped his chest, and Merlin stood up, eye-to-eye. “Until then you’re going to help me find our parents and get them away from Mercer. That’s why I brought you on this ship.”

“Sounds like a quest,” Merlin said hopefully. “I did see this Mercer on the moon. Very imperial in my rough estimation. With a heaping of corporate slime.”

“There’s more going on here, but according to my brother, I’m not strong enough to handle it.” She stopped pacing. “I need to know what Lamarack and Kay are hiding.”

“I can help with that!” Merlin said. The magician had an almost embarrassing need to prove that he was useful—something Ari still doubted, no matter what she’d told Kay. His stomach growled loudly enough for them both to glance at it. “I’m much more magical when I’m not so hungry. Can I have something to eat?”

“We’re on strict rations,” Ari said. “The pantry only opens to Kay’s iris scan. He’s pretty protective of his food.”

“Fine. I’ll work on an empty stomach, but don’t blame me if your first bit of training is subpar.” He stared into the air, as if speaking to the molecules. “Arthurs usually delight in being turned into birds, fish, some variety of small furry mammal. Although none of that is conducive to spying on a spaceship. You need to blend in…” Merlin hummed a bit of an old song and spun his hands around in whirligigs. “Lamarack will tell Kay what they know.”

“Of course Lam will tell Kay, but how am I supposed to find out when I’ve got all these butt-nosed protectors up in my busi…” Ari’s voice disappeared as she looked at her hands.

Or rather, Kay’s hands. She stared down at herself in the shiny tabletop, Kay’s blue eyes bulging. She clutched herself across Kay’s stomach. “This does not feel right.”

When she looked up, she gasped. Merlin had turned himself into Kay as well. “Hey!”

Merlin nodded solemnly, a weird look on Kay’s face. “Before I let you go, you must promise you will use this visage for no other purpose than speaking to Lamarack.”

“What else would I want to do as Kay?” Ari asked, her own voice bubbling out of his thick throat. “Scare people with my breath?”

Merlin glared. Ari got the feeling that this little exchange wasn’t really about her.

“Okay. I promise.”

Merlin nodded and resumed his perkiness, heading to the pantry and scanning his borrowed eyeball. “Off you go,” he said. “This body will wear out in about thirty-three minutes, so do hurry.”





Ari was Kay. Well, no. She was wearing his clothes… and his body. His whole body? It took her a few moments to gather the courage, but she poked the front of her pants and yelped. “Gross!”

She shot into the bunk room and went straight for the hammock pod that carried the wide shoulders and long frame of Lamarack. “Lam,” she said, before remembering to drop her voice.

Lamarack unzipped the hammock and swung their legs out. “Did you find a place to drop me off?”

“We need to talk.” God, she sounded foolish when she growled like Kay, but Lam didn’t seem to notice. “Without Ari around, you know?”

Lam rubbed their face with their remaining hand. “She’s damn curious, and oh, my heavens, that girl has grown up in three years. Not a kid anymore, huh? She’s dynamite.”

Ari let herself take that one in for a moment. Her childhood crush had just called her dynamite. She tried to lean back casually, but Kay’s body was all bulkiness, and she knocked into three hammocks in the process.