Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(60)

Home was so close… and yet still impossible to reach. Unless she could send out a signal.

Ari grasped at her bare wrist, swearing. She’d given Gwen her watch, her only way to communicate with Error, or anyone else. I’ll be right back, Ari’d said when she stepped off Error on Urite. Gwen had known something would go wrong; Ari hadn’t listened.

“I’m going to die up here. Alone. Or with you, but that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

Morgana’s face showed the first sign of humanity. “Perhaps. You can’t break this barrier with your hands, can you? Wouldn’t it be a kindness then, to let me inside to see my brother with your last breaths. You do seem kind, albeit brash, silly, and boastfully truthful. All of Arthur’s best—and worst—traits.”

Morgana reached toward Ari’s chest, and Ari drew Excalibur, pointing the blade at this wisp of a human. “I am not your long-dead king.”

Morgana laughed, choking the air with a sudden sadness. “I knew no such being. Arthur is a pawn in a magical, self-fulfilling torture, devised by Merlin in either his powerful ineptness or his purposeful corruptness. I cannot tell which.”

“Merlin isn’t evil. He’s overenthusiastic and shortsighted, I’ll give you that,” Ari said. “But he loves his Arthurs. They give him purpose.”

“Merlin’s purpose is calamity. His love is hollow. Fake. A plastic plant. A garbage mountain. A lazy lover.” Morgana’s anger lifted her voice. “All these countless years, my Arthur is undead, unrested. His soul flits in and out of reality like a bird with a broken wing, landing on small creatures that might have the fortitude to help. Those beings get distracted by quests. By Merlin. By a love story that confuses tragedy with triteness. I loathe the very—”

“What is it about this doomed love story?” Ari interrupted, her hand straying to the ring on her index finger. “Merlin seemed terrified of it.”

“I could show you things that Merlin keeps secret. I could change your understanding of what it means to be Arthur. Merlin has fed you the morality and grandeur. I could show you the tragedies that fall in the wake of such foolhardiness.” Morgana’s whisper dwindled. “These endless years Merlin has played hero games while my little brother’s soul lingers, suffers, fractures.”

“I get it,” Ari tried. “I have a brother, too. I’d do anything for him.”

Morgana paused. “You do not seem surprised to hear that King Arthur is my brother. Merlin told you, did he? Perhaps he is maturing as he… immatures.” She tittered at her own joke. “Still, I’m surprised. My brother’s creation is Merlin’s greatest shame. The living proof that his heart is corrupt, that in the end, Earth’s great magician is no more than a demon.”

Ari wanted to thumb off Morgana’s anger, but her curiosity edged forward. “What?”

“He created the rape of my mother.”

Ari narrowed her eyes, confused.

Morgana sneered. “You are trying to imagine young, prancing, what is the phrase?—gay as a maypole—Merlin committing such an act. I would have you picture him as he was in the beginning. Ancient, gnarled, miserable.” Ari knew Morgana spoke truly. She had seen Old Merlin firsthand in that memory, his dark hunger, his insatiable need for power. “On the night my father was murdered by Uther Pendragon, Merlin used his magic to make Uther identical to my father. And in that guise, Uther entered my castle, my home, and violated my mother.”

Ari’s mind smacked into the memory of wearing Kay’s body—and Merlin making her promise that she would do no harm with it. Ari glanced at the tower hundreds of feet below her magboots. “Maybe Merlin didn’t know what that psychopath was going to do, Morgana.”

“Maybe he did not care.” Morgana curled her hands into fists as if she were imagining squeezing the life from Merlin. “That would be enough to loathe him, but there’s more. When that violation turned into my beautiful brother, Merlin stole him. He corrupted Arthur with his trainings and self-aggrandizing importance. The once and future king. The unifying force of mankind. Merlin convinced Arthur to give himself to the machinations of warring men. And he has been lost to them ever since.”

Ari looked down at her hands, clutching Excalibur. She could feel a limp, bird-boned Merlin in her arms, newly pulled from the frozen ground of Urite. His words had been as brittle as flecks of ice.

There are worse things to steal. Like children from their families.

“You believe me,” Morgana said, “because you know no woman would create such lies. Perhaps the cycle has finally solved one problem.”

“We are close to figuring out how to end the cycle. And you’re going to help, whether you like it or not.”

Ari’s drive came from somewhere deeper than a long-dead king. She turned her sword point down and cast the blade into the crystal casing, through the damn Mercer logo like a bull’s-eye. Ari imagined ice breaking, fracturing, and snapping apart around her.

That wasn’t what happened.

The barrier popped like a glass bubble, and she fell mercilessly toward the surface of the red planet.





Ari didn’t let go of Excalibur, even if it made her fall faster, harsher, spinning. And the sword had its own ideas, guiding her toward that skyscraper of a tower, snagging on the top edge. The blade slammed into the sandstone in a way that yanked Ari’s arm in its socket. She swung from a height that was impossible. Improbable. Insane.