“That’s fair.” Gwen nodded, glancing away. “There’s one more thing, and it’s forward, but I don’t care. I want a child. I’d already have one if my people weren’t so intense about wedlock. If this marriage lasts, there will be one. Or more. Can you handle that?”
Ari’s surprise left her slightly confused. “I love kids.”
“You do?” Gwen’s knees fell loose from her stranglehold on them.
“But in the spirit of honesty, I have to tell you Mercer is in the habit of punishing the people I love. Badly. My adoptive parents,” Ari cleared her throat, “were arrested. We don’t even know where they are.”
Gwen straightened up. “That’s easy. I’ll find out.”
“The information is restricted.”
“Not for the head of a damn planet. We’ll put it on the list of priorities when we meet with the council on Troy to argue Lionel’s mistreatment. After the wedding, of course.”
Ari looked at Gwen anew. They were both exhausted. They were both dehydrated. And even though Ari had been the one sweating her ass off in the ring, she had a feeling that Gwen had been thirsty for much longer. “So you will marry me? You’ve decided that fast?”
“Yes,” Gwen said.
“A real marriage?” Ari shouldn’t have been thinking about the curve of Gwen’s back… and how it met her legs with such glory. Or that body flood of a kiss in the jousting ring.
“A political union,” Gwen replied carefully, her slight blush the only indication that she was possibly remembering the way they’d melted together so well. “We’ll have to do it before Mercer storms the city for you. Then we’ll need to hightail it to Troy and file our marriage with the galactic state department. We can’t give Mercer an inch to get between us.”
“I have a fast, albeit ugly, ship. We could be there in under a week.”
“Okay.”
“Done.”
They were close enough to kiss again, and yet Ari knew there was an unbreakable barrier between them to rival the one orbiting Ketch. There always had been.
The night was strewn with crystal stars. The torchlight circling the tournament ring added a glow to the familiar faces around Ari. Beyond them, beyond the lights, she knew an entire planet was watching her enter the biggest lie of her life.
A political marriage. To Gwen.
Beside her, Kay and Lam stood… wasted. Val kept them upright with a hand on each of their shoulders. Merlin slid up to her in the shadows. “I can fix this!” he whispered. “I can make those ships go away. Poof. No problem. No one needs to marry anyone!”
“You can’t take out the entire Mercer Company, Merlin. Plus, you’re really drunk.”
“There’snothingtodrinkonthisplanetbutbooze,” he whisper-shouted.
Ari dug a finger in her ear. “Val?”
Val stepped forward and took Merlin by the back of the robes like he was a young pup. Ari couldn’t even look at the magician; he was part of the reason why she felt like she was stepping into a lie. Ari hadn’t told Gwen about Merlin, his King Arthur shenanigans—or this Morgana who was out of sight, but not out of mind. And she hadn’t told Gwen that she was going to use whatever information the queen could get to break her parents out of prison.
Ari knew how well that would land.
“You look sick,” Lam said. “Too much wine or too much reality?”
Ari leaned on Lamarack’s shoulder, sighing.
Gwen came forward on Jordan’s arm, wearing a dress of red silk and white, pinned roses—and a crown. Silver, simple, incandescent. It caught the torchlight like a mirror and cast it around her in a halo of sparks. Gwen smiled at Ari and then at the woman conducting the ceremony. She lifted her arm from Jordan’s only to find Jordan unwilling to let go. The black knight was still in her full suit of armor as if she could wear it for a few more days without needing a break.
Gwen kissed Jordan on the lips sweetly, and the knight relinquished the bride with stiff, unwilling movements. The ceremony took mere minutes, but it was long enough for Ari’s heart to race into a speed that left her gripping Excalibur, afraid. So bizarrely afraid. After an exchange of vows, Gwen pecked Ari on the mouth, and it was over.
Done.
Music lit up the tournament ring all around, while the planet began to dance and Gwen immediately started messaging Mercer. She took off her crown and dropped it in Ari’s hands as if she were a handy end table. Ari examined the silver wreath. “Does this make me king?”
Val smiled at her, a little sadly, and plucked Gwen’s crown out of her hands. “Your title is queen’s consort.”
Merlin peered from behind Val’s shoulder, eyes large, and chanted, “Love and Arthur. Oil and water.”
Ari put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. He was her friend now, wasn’t he? She hoped so; she’d need him to face Gwen’s machinations, the corrupt government on Troy, and the gods damn Mercer Company.
Not to mention the voice inside that whispered—You are one with King Arthur, and your destiny awaits.
Merlin hummed a bit of Handel’s wedding march, flicked his fingers, and tried to scatter the tight knot of his headache. Alas, hungover magic was groaningly impossible.
He’d already spent a full day of the flight to Troy recovering from the royal wedding, and the wedding night celebrations that spilled over onto the ship. He wasn’t the only one in rough shape. He remembered seeing Lam and Kay singing garbled versions of Old Earth songs before he passed out, but Merlin had more to get over than they did. It had been hard to tell what caused worse nausea: his eight… teenth cup of mead, or the sight of Ari and Gweneviere sealing their vows under the light of strange stars.
Not only had he failed to keep them from meeting, they had gotten engaged and married by nightfall on the same day he’d made his useless vow. And now the scene that greeted Merlin out the window was a fleet of six white Mercer vessels accompanying the newlyweds to Troy, where they would file their claim with the government and—hopefully—make it official.
The scope of this failure was staggering. Epic.
And as someone who’d lived through several volcanic eruptions and a Rolling Stones reunion tour, he didn’t throw those words around lightly. He picked himself up from where he’d been resting, which turned out to be under the round table in the main cabin. Lam was down there, too, curled like a delicate leaf despite their size. Kay slept sitting up in a chair, boots stuck to the floor and mouth permanently open.
Ari—where was Ari?
Merlin staggered on magboots that pinched his toes, thinking thoughts that stung his brain. He was letting it all happen again. Not just the inevitable parts. He was going down his own worst paths. Heavy drinking? He hadn’t imbibed this much in twenty cycles. He had lost entire Arthurs this way.
Merlin tramped through the tiny rooms of the spaceship but didn’t find Ari anywhere. What he did find was Jordan, camped outside Kay’s room in full regalia. The only thing she’d removed was her black-plumed helmet, revealing ruddy cheeks that shone in high contrast to her pale white complexion.
“Good day, mage,” she said, her voice both strident and smooth. She appeared too delighted with this title, as if she had rampaging doubts about his abilities. Merlin was still annoyed that Jordan had somehow gotten on board Error, despite his drunken pleas to leave her behind. Gweneviere had insisted on having her champion by her side, and Ari hadn’t been able to resist her new spouse’s request.
Which was exactly what made Merlin’s left eye twitch.
“Tell me they’re not both in there,” he said.
“My lady the queen and her consort have, indeed, claimed this tiny room. The queen is preparing Ari for their marriage examination on Troy.”
Excalibur lay discarded in the hall, and he thought about carving his way through the shiny silver door and stopping whatever was going on in there. Instead, he caught sight of himself in the door’s surface. He looked, if possible, even younger than he had when he’d woken in the Crystal Cave. It was hard to pinpoint what made the difference. Were his cheeks slightly rounder? He checked his stubble. Still formidably scratchy. Good.