Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(73)

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I was gone. Dead, apparently. We weren’t… Maybe we aren’t even…” Ari surprised herself by getting flustered, tied up in her own need to erase the weirdness between them. There’s no time for a love triangle. No time.

Ari’s gaze traveled over her shoulder to Jordan and her voice iced. “Put your blade away, knight.” Everyone turned toward Jordan. She’d drawn her sword a few inches out of its sheath. “You don’t want to see how much I have trained over the last year.”

Jordan looked to Gwen and with one nod, Jordan relented, tucking the sword away.

Ari cleared her throat. The look on her friends’ faces was just another confirmation she didn’t need. And where was her brother in all of this? She didn’t realize how much she needed the balance of his idiocy in this band until it was missing. “Besides, Gwen, if I’m not Ari, who took care of all those Lionelians on Ketch?”

Gwen gripped Ari’s wrist, more desperate than tender. “They’re okay?”

“Frightened and hungry, but I made sure they were safe and hidden.”

“Thank you. I…” Gwen’s hand dropped along with her voice.

“You do look mightily different,” Val interrupted. “You’ve been through a lot. We put the pieces together from that footage you sent over. Although we don’t know how you got from Urite to Ketch. And all the Ketchans are… dead?”

“I’m the last.”

That, at least, Ari’d had plenty of time to come to grips with, even if it was a wound she’d carry for the rest of her life. “Morgana abducted me on Urite. Arthur wanted me to see Ketch.” Ari shook her head. “I needed to see what had become of my planet. But once I was there, leaving wasn’t possible. I’m sorry about Morgana’s treachery. I didn’t know. And I didn’t know Lionel was under attack. I called you thousands of times.” Her gaze returned to Gwen’s for the last of that speech. “Thousands.”

Gwen looked torn in half, and Ari couldn’t tell if she hated that look or if she wanted to bandage Gwen together with an embrace. Val spoke up again as if determined to iron out the tension between them with facts. “Merlin created a barrier to keep us all safe from Mercer. It worked, until it didn’t,” Val said, mildly guiltily. “That’s why your calls wouldn’t go through.”

“That’s in the past.” Ari cracked her knuckles. “My broadcast has done what I wanted it to, stirred up doubt in Mercer. It’s given those with a drive to fight something to fight about. I heard that several planets have even kicked Mercer out for the time being. Now we have to swing that momentum into the next step. We have to go to Old Earth, show the universe what Mercer has done to the cradle of civilization. And I will call the Administrator out to face me.”

Merlin cleared his throat, a parched sound. Ari realized just how much younger he looked since the last time she’d seen him. Somehow rounder in the cheeks and skinnier in the shoulders. “What’s the end goal of this plan, Ari?”

“Unseat the Administrator. Defeat Mercer. Unite humankind. You up for it, old man?”

“Well, but I hadn’t thought that now…” he blustered. “Yes, certainly!”

“Good. We do this.” Ari couldn’t stand the stiff face-off in the cargo bay—or the absence of her brother—a second more. She pushed into the main cabin, shouldering past Jordan, and looked around. The ship was as weathered and junked as ever, and yet still beautiful in its lived-in, homey appearance. “Kay!” she called out. “Kay!”

Her brother appeared in the doorway of the cockpit. “Hello, impostor.”

Ari bit back relief and severe pain as she looked at his silvery-gray hair and broad shoulders. He was thinner than she’d ever seen him, gaunt almost. “Answer me this, Kay. Can dead people punch?”

She charged, and he was more than ready. They went down in a heap, wrestling, tearing at each other. Ari slammed him in the ribs a few times, terrified by the new imbalance between them, how weak he was in comparison to how strong she’d become.

“You’re dead!” he yelled. “You’re not real! You’re here to torment me!”

“Does this feel real?” Ari bit his arm and kneed him in the side. He kept struggling, rejecting her with weedy protests that ate at her confidence. “You’re hurting me,” she yelled in his ear, even though she had his arm pinned behind his back.

How could he act like this? Why hadn’t he been the one to meet her at Dark Matter with Gwen? She hit him again, again, making him feel the pain that was rolling over her, proving with every breath that they weren’t fighting like they used to. Like siblings. This was different.

They were all different—driven apart.

Ari pushed him onto his back and was about to pop him in the nose when her fist froze.

Kay’s face was a miserable purple-red. He was crying. “We thought you were dead!” he hollered. “We had your body! I couldn’t… You don’t know what that was like!”

“I can imagine. I was on a planet full of bodies.” Ari lowered her fist, although she was still pinning his chest with her knees. “But I’m here. I’m right here! Why is that such bad news?”

Kay’s head turned away from her, searching the crowd of their friends in the doorway. “How do we explain, Gwen? She’ll never forgive either of us.”