Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(42)

“How about some more power, Merlin? To make up for your impending loss.” Nin sighed. “You’re not going to take this well. I haven’t been looking forward to it. But I’m not so cruel as to send you spinning through eternity without a few perks.”

The ancient magician’s hands drooped. “What kind of power?”

“The ability to sense the future? To see forward a bit, the rough edges of events, anyway. It might help, given your… condition.”

“Condition?” Ari found herself murmuring.

“My backward aging,” Merlin elaborated from beside her. His presence had fractured as if the memory was breaking him into pieces. “I return to this moment often. So often. I want to crawl back through time and change everything. Stop it. Prevent it. Save Arthur… instead of treating myself.”

“I accept your gift,” Old Merlin grumbled, sounding bored.

Ari watched Nin press a kiss that beamed with light onto Old Merlin’s head. Almost instantly, Old Merlin fell to his knees, sobbing, holding his brittle chest.

“What happened?” Ari asked.

“That was the first time I saw the future,” Merlin said. “The end of that battle I’d just been stolen from.”

“What did you see?” Ari asked, fear shimmering. Merlin didn’t answer, and she wished she could hold his hand, frustrated that they were both simply wisps of consciousness tied to each other inside this trauma. “I’m here, Merlin. Tell me what you saw.”

“I don’t have to,” Merlin finally said.

Old Merlin disappeared as the entire cave faded into a blackness that became night. The moon took forever to glow, and the stars were hidden. All around, Ari smelled death. Now she was relieved that she didn’t have a body as her mind glided over countless corpses, following Old Merlin across the remains of a field washed with blood and death.

Thousands of soldiers, knights, and flags littered the field.

Broken and fallen. Without hope.

Old Merlin moved toward the heart of the misery, where one lone figure sat, clutching a body to their chest. Ari’s shock almost overpowered Old Merlin’s sadness in that moment. Almost. The person holding the fallen body was Morgana. Not the ethereal, bluish Morgana, but a woman of flesh and sorrow. The dead man in her arms was wearing a perfect suit of armor, his golden crown dimly glinting in the grass beside him.

“Merlin, is that…”

“My Arthur. The first.”

Old Merlin’s voice shook as sadness turned to anger. “So Mordred has murdered his own father. Stolen the kingdom of peace for his unrighteous purpose. I will find him and train him to do what is right.” But even as he said the words, his eyes trailed to the body beside Arthur’s—the one speared through by Excalibur.

“That’s Arthur’s son, Mordred,” Merlin whispered to Ari. “They killed each other.”

“Why?” Ari asked, shocked.

“Greed. Power,” Merlin said. “What other answers are there?”

Morgana’s voice pitched high and broken. “Camelot is as dead as the Pendragon line, you damned fool. There is no king. There is no kingdom. Already the remains of these armies torture every village and kill anyone loyal to your cursed crown. Your entire life is wasted. And I will punish you for eternity.”

The night faded all around them. Ari felt nothing but Merlin’s presence beside her as the darkness ached with depth.

“Well. She made good on that promise,” Merlin finally said, a forced joke that fell like a stone through the nothingness.

“Why was Morgana so attached to Arthur?”

“They were sister and brother,” he said, his voice faint, weak. The blackness around them became dizzying. “The anger that flows through her magic keeps the cycles in motion and tethers me to life, so she can give me yet more pain. At least that has been my best guess for a few thousand years.”

“So we have to convince her to stop this,” Ari said. “I can do it. I’ll get through to her. I’m not afraid. We just have to get out of this memory, and then I’ll convince her to help us.”

Merlin laughed as though he loved Ari for her foolhardiness. “Ari, she’s not to be trusted. And I fear I should warn you about Gweneviere before I lose my nerve.”

“Gwen? What does Gwen have to do with any of this?”

“She is part of Arthur’s story. A very important part. A rather… sad part. She will hurt you in the end, I’m afraid. So very badly.”

“Bullshit,” Ari said, sure of herself. “Maybe that’s how it was with Arthur and his Gweneviere, but that’s not how it is with Gwen and me.”

“Ari…” Merlin said, as the endless darkness around them clarified with bursts of starlight. Constellations.

“Where are we now?” Ari asked.

“I believe you’re meant to tell me that.”

The view before Ari crystallized as a silver spaceship tore through the dark, coming straight at them, fleeing a red soiled planet that Ari’s heart recognized even if her mind could not paint it. Ketch. The spaceship sped closer, and Ari could not stop a scream in the moment it overtook them and trapped them inside a control room full of warning lights and screeching alarms.

Ari stared at her mother: dark, straight hair hanging over one arm as her hands flew over the controls. “What is this, Merlin?”