Once & Future (Once & Future #1)(93)

“Is there something I can… do for you?” Merlin asked. “Do you need anything?”

Val nodded. “I’m thirsty.”

Merlin picked up a glass of water from the table near the bed, hands shuddering. If he’d had a whisper of magic left in his body, he would have used it to stop them. Steady them. But he’d used it on leaving Nin’s cave of anguish, and now all he had to offer Val was himself. And the water.

He raised the rim of the glass to Val’s mouth and tipped it. When he pulled it away, Val’s lips glistened. “This is the sort of terrifying I usually run from at top speed,” Merlin whispered.

Damn Ari with her damned inspiring honesty.

Merlin waited for Val’s lips to bloom with disappointment. “But you’re not running,” he said. “You’re right here.” He pushed back to make a space for Merlin on the bed. Merlin sat, forming an instant catalogue of every place that he almost touched Val.

Damn body with its damned feelings.

“Yes, well, I’ve had some forced epiphanies,” Merlin said.

Val propped himself on an elbow to look at Merlin better, letting the blanket slide farther down his chest, revealing the line that cut toward his hips. “What happened when you passed out?”

Merlin found he couldn’t wait another moment to tell someone. And the someone he’d been waiting for—so very long—was Val. “I was trapped by an ancient enchantress who—”

“Another one?” Val asked. “How many magical women have you pissed off, Merlin?” There was a softness under his mocking, like the silky sheets that shifted beneath their bodies.

“Nin isn’t a woman, really. More like… a force. Not even a force of nature. She’s somehow outside of nature. Or beyond it. I can’t quite tell. Turns out, she’s the reason I’m no good at dying. She’s been protecting me.”

Val grabbed the water from Merlin, too thirsty to wait for his carefully administered sips. Merlin told Val everything that had happened between the moment he left Val’s side and the moment he came back. “And then Nin gave me a choice. She offered to stop this aging backward mess.”

The cup paused against Val’s lips.

“But it meant leaving Ari. And you.” That last one was not easy to say aloud—it nearly tugged Merlin’s stomach up his throat. “I couldn’t do that.”

Val put the glass down so slowly that Merlin thought something was wrong. Then he placed a hand on Merlin’s face. The touch had a confidence that pinned Merlin in place after so much wandering through places and times that didn’t belong to him. The bright stripes in Val’s dark eyes brought him back to Earth.

Val’s face moved closer, and Merlin closed his eyes. On Lionel, Merlin hadn’t wanted to kiss Val because he feared they would slide past each other, aging in different directions. Now he wanted to kiss Val because he knew that was bound to happen, and he would lose his chance.

They had so little time.

Their lips touched and pushed that feeling away. There was no time inside of a kiss, nothing but soft, dark sensation. Hardness came next, in the tousle of their lips, in the insistence of Merlin’s hands on Val’s neck. And in other, very obvious, places.

Val’s hand drifted under the blanket, and found an unnamed spot between Merlin’s hip and the zipper of his jeans. Merlin startled at how intense that small touch could be. Val’s fingers pushed against the thick cloth, making his nerves flare. No wonder jeans had survived the apocalypse.

“What are you doing?” Merlin asked, his voice low and trembling.

“Thanking you,” Val said. “For choosing this over…”

“A future?” Merlin asked. Panic ignited in him, turning him to a falling star, blazing to a crash. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t know how. Or he’d forgotten. There was no hope for him, nothing but a handful of ash where his bravery should be. “You’re injured,” Merlin said, sounding like his old self, the one who fussed and bothered.

“Rest is another kind of magic,” Val said, with a flourish of a smile.

“You need more rest,” Merlin said. He knew the tumble of this argument. The quick downhill of talking himself out of things. “I should…”

“Be gentle?” Val asked. “Yes. You should.”

He pulled Merlin closer, and this time when they kissed, there were bright crackles of feeling. Need welled up, pouring into each kiss. And the sound. The music of them trading breath for breath, the slide of fingers on skin, groans deep in their throats.

When their bodies met under the pile of blankets, Merlin was on the verge of something as vast as time. He watched the twist of Val’s muscles the same way he would watch the play of stars in the deepest night sky. And then Merlin couldn’t just watch. When he reached for Val, he was rewarded with a gasp and a sweet, melting sigh. Val’s hands also vanished beneath the blankets.

And after lifetimes of saying no, Merlin found himself saying yes, and yes, and yes.





Joy had a way of surprising Ari. She never expected it, never sought it out, and some days it felt nonexistent—and yet it found its way in like sunlight through the cracks of a closed door.

Showing off Ketch to her friends and parents was full of joy. She flew them over the red, rolling deserts in Error. She took them to the mountainous city where she’d hid the Lionelians, only to find that they were safe and unharmed. Apparently a fleet of Mercer vessels had stood sentinel in the sky for days, but they’d disappeared after the Administrator’s demise.