Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(58)

Gwen shook her head in frowning wonderment. “You’re… here. I assumed you left with your parents.”

“I thought you might need help,” Kay said, crossing the twin logs of his arms.

Jordan stood, getting squarely between Kay and her queen. “All you’ve ever cared about is your own life and your kin.”

Kay shrugged. “Yeah, well, Ari married Gwen. So that makes us…”

“What?” Gwen asked, sidestepping Jordan. “That makes us what?”

“People who don’t leave each other headed toward a fucking mess,” Kay said, pointing out the window. The low orbit of Lionel was filled with ships, every one of them Mercer Black—a shade that demanded all the light and gave nothing back.

Mercer wasn’t just here to make Gwen’s life difficult. They were going to punish an entire planet.

“Message came through,” Lamarack yelled from the cockpit. “A diplomatic detachment from Troy landed about ten hours ago and said Mercer is repossessing Lionel because the queen is in debt for a criminal charge against her wife.”

“So they did approve your marriage,” Val said. “How suddenly convenient.”

Gwen rubbed a ring on her hand, one that Merlin hadn’t noticed before. “We should have come straight back to Lionel. We never should have gone to that damn planet.”

The words were out, and Gwen didn’t try to take them back, though she did recoil. Merlin expected Kay to have a serious allergic reaction to the suggestion that his parents should have been left to die. Instead he swept an arm around Gwen that she surprisingly took him up on. He lifted her into a hug, and she dangled like a small child from his arms.

Val cleared his throat. “Gwen? What do we do?”

Kay put her down, and she pressed her face on his shirt. “You smell like her,” she said. Kay gave Gwen a strange, twisting look, as if she’d said both the best and worst possible thing at the same time. “Thank you for staying,” Gwen added, her composure back in place—like armor.

“I’m staying, too,” Merlin said.

Gwen slayed Merlin’s excitement with a glance. “I thought you’d made it clear that you don’t care for me.”

“Ancient grudges die hard,” he admitted. “But I never should have treated you as Ari’s enemy. The enemy is obvious enough.”

Merlin looked out over the field of ships. He wasn’t Arthur—he wouldn’t defeat the greatest evil in the universe, or unite humankind. He couldn’t stop the cycle by himself. But he thought of Val’s home, about to be invaded. Val’s words. I wanted to make a difference in this ridiculous universe. Merlin looked from knight to knight, each of their faces echoing the doom that he’d felt when he thought about going back to the crystal cave.

Magic prickled back to life in his fingertips.

The most imposing bit of Beethoven he could remember slipped through his lips. His hands rose and conducted a frantic composition. A web of crackling, golden energy bolts sprang into existence between the black Mercer ships and the surface of Lionel. A single ship advanced, and was zapped so hard that it looked like a finger stuck in a heavenly socket.

“Let’s get you home,” Merlin said, poking a tiny hole in the web so Error could fly through, energy snapping wildly around them. They sailed toward Lionel, and Merlin mended the tear in the web, the Mercer ships stuck behind them—for now. Merlin imagined Ari at his side, slinging one arm over his shoulder and saying “Not bad, old man.”

For a single second, he let himself believe she was still with them.





Ari was still on Urite… except she wasn’t.

She spun inside while Morgana rummaged through her memories, feelings, and fears as if the enchantress were a burglar pillaging the jewelry store of her mind. Ari couldn’t stomach a second more of the smash and grab sensation.

She grasped at an image Morgana had tossed aside.

In the memory, Captain Mom was teaching Ari how to park Error on a crowded space dock, two hands on the controls, squared shoulders, clear eyes. The keen memory of success and pride overwhelmed Morgana’s theft for a moment, and Ari didn’t hesitate. She latched on to another memory, winding up with that time on Tanaka when Kay and Ari had gotten into fisticuffs over a girl with forever legs who’d given both of them her ship’s call code.

From there Ari searched until she found it, knowing it would drive Morgana mad: the recent snapshot of Merlin’s cracked-egg smile after they’d come out of their worst memories together, closer, united. Hands joined.

Morgana’s voracious spirit paused, her voice issuing from inside Ari’s mind. You’re fighting me. Stop.

Not a chance, Ari responded, digging deeper, tumbling into the bedsheets of her new favorite memory, the one that spun through her when she was doing everything else, making her flush, dizzy, and spread with a warmth that fought the cold of infinite stars. Gwen was naked, chest heaving, curling fingers into Ari’s hair while her legs trembled, whispering, You’re going to leave me again. I don’t trust you. I can’t… Ari kissed up her thighs, hips, to the smooth plane between her breasts. Ari tasted Gwen’s fingers, promised that she would stay… that this time belonged to them and could be no one else’s. Not Lionel’s or Mercer’s. Not King Arthur’s or Merlin’s.