Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(45)

“Think about it!” Merlin said. “You want Ari to stand up to Mercer? An act of resistance for the universe to rally behind? Imagine if we spirit the parents of the new King Arthur away from a Mercer prison! I’ve never had parents, but they’re generally considered important. And Ari’s parents…”

Ari looked to Merlin. She could see in his eyes that he now knew why her parents’ freedom meant so much. They hadn’t just adopted her. They’d saved her from a torturous death in the void. It was time to return the favor. It was a freakin’ quest.

“How?” Jordan repeated. “Urite is inaccessible.”

“Easy,” Merlin said, standing up on wobbly legs. “Drop me off at the next Mercer-controlled colony. I’ll get arrested, and you’ll have an inside man for the job. With magic.”

“What about the plague?” Val asked. “No way.”

“I can’t die.”

Everyone in the room looked at Merlin. “At least, I haven’t figured out how to die yet.”

“Those are two very different things,” Val said.

“Why can’t you die?” Gwen asked, startling Merlin so that he looked at her. Ari had to echo her wife’s curiosity. Why couldn’t Merlin die? Was it his magic? His backward aging? And why did Nin have such a sharp interest in keeping him alive during King Arthur’s final battle? The Lady of the Lake might have been silent since Merlin’s time at Camelot, but she was a part of this. Ari could almost feel her watching. She sent a mental middle finger in the general direction of the being called Nin—and shuddered when an icy laugh clouded her mind.





Merlin found it quite easy to get arrested.

Error dropped him on a tiny blip of a planet. Larger planets loomed bright in the sky as he stood in a city square and raved about the evils of Mercer.

“These corporate greedlords have made themselves indispensable, spreading the lie that you could not possibly live without them!” Merlin’s voice peaked and twirled, fear sending it to new heights as the ubiquitous Mercer associates closed in on the square.

Merlin’s fingers flared up, ready to spark them into a fried state.

“No magic,” he muttered. “Not even a flicker.”

Footage of him slinging fireballs had been shared with the universe, and Ari had made him promise to keep his identity and abilities under wraps. He’d invented a face and a set of fingerprints. Nothing showy. He was now a different teenager, as scrawny as ever, but with nondescript features, short brown hair, and overlarge feet he kept nearly tripping on.

Not looking like himself was strange enough, but not using magic was like putting a muzzle on his heart. He raged against the powerless feeling as large figures pushed their way through the crowd, casting people to the ground, cracking them with heavy sticks, stepping hard on their hands, crunching finger bones for the crime of listening to the truth.

Merlin’s fingers sizzled so hard with magic that he had to suck on them to cool their unspent fury. “There is someone coming to save you all from a Mercer-shaped fate,” he cried. “Her name is Ari, and she is…” Did he dare cry the forty-second reincarnation of King Arthur? Would he lose the crowd?

“Ari,” someone whispered. “The girl with the sword.”

“No such person,” someone else shouted. “She’s a Mercer invention. They want to sell us a hero and merch to go with her.”

Merlin’s heart knocked around in dismay. It seemed that Mercer was even in the business of manufacturing false hope for those who hated them, and then snatching that hope back. “The monsters are getting smarter,” he mumbled.

“I’ve seen Ari myself,” he added for the crowd. “On Troy.” Oh, how he wanted to say that he’d fought alongside her, that he was Merlin. Her Merlin. But he kept his nondescript mouth shut. “She pulled Excalibur, and there is only one explanation. She’s the hero we’ve been waiting for.” Little did these people know just how long he’d been waiting—but the need on their faces was as sharp as the one in his gut.

The guards got their gloves around his arms, locked him in, and dragged him away from the square.

“Rise up with hope!” he cried, holding a pretend Excalibur aloft. It probably made him look like a mad puppeteer, but the crowd loved it. They cheered, and then dispersed as more associates poured toward the square. Just as Merlin’s triumph lost its giddy, adrenaline-inspired edge, a guard did him the favor of knocking him out cold.

When he woke up, Merlin’s head was pulsing, pushing dread through his body. From the cold perspective of a packed prison transport, all of this felt stupidly dangerous. He looked out the tiny porthole window and discovered an unwelcome truth. The prison wasn’t on Urite. The prison was Urite.

The land was a broken scene of toothy rock and haggard ice. Prison buildings hewn from that ice stretched all the way to the curve where land met sky. They were mostly white, blinding and harsh, with vivid blues, salty greens, and mysterious purples trapped inside the frozen walls.

The landing of the ship jarred Merlin. A guard came by and kicked at the prisoners with a dutiful swing of boot to stomach. “Get up. Get up.” It was Merlin’s turn. He hummed a single note before the boot made contact with his gut. The guard howled with pain and drew back his foot. Merlin smiled up at him, all innocence.