Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(85)
“Did you think someone made you out of sticks and robes?” Nin asked with a laugh. “Of course you have parents.”
“Who are they?” Merlin’s voice was hoarse, twisting, strange in his own ears.
“That I can’t say. They’re quite powerful, and I doubt they would like me being the one to give you the news of who you really are, where you come from, et cetera and so forth.”
“Or you just don’t want to lose out on the dramatic potential of watching me confront my secret, magical parents,” Merlin spat.
“Oh, well, yes. That’s part of it,” she said with a mild, infuriating grin. “Tell me you’re ready, and I’ll return you to them. They are so nearly ready to see you again.” Nin folded her hands, waiting for Merlin to accept her offer.
He let himself sink into that sweet, tempting possibility. He didn’t have to keep inching toward childhood. The loneliness that had kept his life separate from everyone else’s could be over. The special oblivion that waited for him at the end of this would be banished, with one word.
Yes.
“What will happen to Ari?” he asked, unable to stop himself. “Will she defeat Mercer? Unite humankind?”
“Oh, Merlin, uniting humankind under one banner?” She tutted like a grandmother, even though she looked eternally twenty-five. “That sounds like imperialism, doesn’t it? The suns never set on the Arthurian empire? Do you remember how many problems that impulse caused in the past? What about the future? Doesn’t this Mercer Company want to unite everyone, too? How can any single entity know what’s best for all people? These humans keep making the same boring mistake of demonizing difference, but believe me, if unity for all worked, I would have gotten into the deity game a long time ago.”
“But… you’re the one who gave me the steps,” Merlin said. “That’s the last step. And Ari will be the one to finally do it. She knows that bringing people together doesn’t mean making them the same.” Merlin felt everything inessential begin to slip away. “She’s more like the first Arthur than any I’ve trained. I can’t leave them.”
The Lady of the Lake’s smile curled like a burning page. “What makes you think Ari will live through the day? You could be giving up everything for a dead girl and a wisp of ancient spirit.”
The idea that Ari might be dying only made Merlin more desperate. But what Nin had offered still glimmered like diamonds on water in the dying sun. Merlin wanted to stop aging backward so much he could taste it. It was a meal with his family. A kiss finally shared without fear. Only that kiss wouldn’t be with Val, and that family would be far away from Ari—if she even survived.
Merlin had made this mistake before. He’d taken Nin’s bargain, and let Arthur die.
He might not have started the cycle, but if he wanted to end it, he was going to have to stop making the same mistakes. It wasn’t just a question of plodding through the steps, again and again and again.
Merlin had to change the story.
“Let me go, Nin,” he said, the depths of his commanding old-man voice returning for a single moment. He had one card left to play, and he would throw it down. Nin had brought him here twice, and both times she’d bargained with him to stay as if he did have the power to get himself out if he wanted to. Merlin pointed his magic straight at her. A song came to him: he hummed the sprightly tune to that old Camelot musical.
“What are you doing?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Using the power you’ve already given me,” Merlin said, her doubt encouraging him. After all, Nin had only started bargaining when Merlin looked for a way out of the cave. If he was truly trapped here, she would not have offered a deal.
“Do you believe you can touch me with magic?” Nin asked, her voice fading into the air as her form vanished.
“It’s like you said before, this isn’t a battle.” The first sparks flew out of Merlin’s hands and hit the cave wall, crumbling a section, letting in the blinding light of pure time. “This is a prison break. Fortunately, I have some practice with those.”
More magic flew out, and another great chunk of the wall fell, rocks hitting water with a great crash. He didn’t need to give Nin a body, like he had with Morgana, if he wanted to use his magic on her. The cave was her body—it was her physical creation.
All he needed was a way out.
“Stop that,” Nin said, her voice shaking the ground.
“Let me go!” Merlin cried.
The cave blasted white as all of his magic came out of him at once.
Merlin returned to a room filled with medical equipment and Mercer associates, all of them scattered in a rough, broken circle. The ground was covered with jagged white scorch marks.
So the explosion had done more than release him from Nin’s cave.
When Merlin stood, his body weighed several thousand pounds, and his brain might as well have been a briny pickle in a delicate glass jar. “I’ve been heavily sedated,” he said, but it came out more like, “I’be en hemily sebated.”
He hated the thought that Mercer had been taking his blood and running tests, but he didn’t have time to destroy whatever evidence of his magic they’d collected. He needed to get to Ari before Mercer killed one of his friends.