Val came around the corner, stripped of his period costume, wearing an I NEW NEW NEW YORK T-shirt. He looked alarmingly awake and full of functions that Merlin lacked.
“Are the newlyweds sleeping in?” Val asked, nodding at the door Jordan guarded. “Or skipping the sleep bit altogether?”
Merlin made a sound somewhere between a dying cat and a choking dog.
Val frowned at him. He grabbed Merlin’s arm and led him away, whispering, “You’ve been acting like we lived through an apocalypse instead of a fairly tame royal wedding. You should have seen Lionel’s last planet-wide ceremony. The debauchery after Gwen’s coronation went on for weeks. Gwen and I both lost our virginity. To the same boy, actually. Not at the same time.”
Merlin blushed, changing color like a chameleon who had forgotten he was supposed to be blending in. This was probably how chameleons wound up dead.
Val settled into one of Error’s many nooks, this one looking like the skeleton of a kitchen. It had a few small cupboards, a tiny table and chairs, and a water filtration system that hummed like an old friend. Merlin dove for it, putting his face shamelessly under the stream, but most of it ended up on his toes.
“So, Merlin, why is this marriage a cause for mourning?” Val asked sharply.
“It’s my fault,” Merlin blurted, tongue still dry. “If I’d been able to defend Ari against Mercer, or even better, taught her how to defend herself, she wouldn’t need this marriage.” That was step two. Train Ari. And all he’d managed to do was get her to tackle Kay in a courtyard.
“This might be the best possible thing for Ari,” Val said. “And before you object, I’m speaking less as a royal adviser and more as someone who’s known her since she was seven. She likes people who know their own minds. And Gwen’s mind is one of the most well-mapped on any planet. That girl does not leave things unfathomed.”
“Of course she’s smart and beautiful and wondrous,” Merlin said. None of those traits had ever stopped Gweneviere from breaking Arthur’s heart. In fact, her sheer amazingness only multiplied the pain when things came to an inevitable, crashing end. “You don’t understand,” Merlin said. “It’s not your fault that you don’t.”
“Okay,” Val said, leaning forward. “That’s your cue to explain.”
“Ari is the forty-second reincarnation of—”
“She told me that,” Val said, startling Merlin. Ari had talked about being Arthur?
“What did she say?”
Val flashed him a smile so bright Merlin’s headache flared. “All kinds of things while you were dancing with your robe pulled up to your thighs. Nice calves, by the way.”
Merlin groaned.
“But I’m asking about you,” Val said, finding two cups and filling them with water. “You’re the real mystery here.” He held one out and Merlin drank, playing for time. The truth was that he had no idea where he came from. He’d arrived in the first Arthur’s era, old and magical, with a tiny wooden falcon clutched in his hand.
That falcon had given him his name. Merlin.
Remembering before that—or perhaps beyond it—was as impossible as seeing the future of this cycle. “Here’s what you need to know about me,” Merlin said, downing the last of the water. “I keep coming back and back and back, and I can’t seem to make things better. You’ve heard of King Arthur?” Val nodded, curious and wary. “I’m the Merlin who serves Arthur.”
Val cocked his head. “If you’ve been at this since the original Arthur, how old does that make you?”
“Seventeen, apparently,” Merlin muttered.
Val refilled his cup, his slim back to Merlin. He had always dreaded talking about his age, and with every back step toward childhood, that dread doubled. “Is it possible your problem with Gwen and Ari’s marriage is about you? Living that long sounds like a recipe for baggage.”
Oh, good. A topic he liked even less than aging backward. “I sleep through entire centuries, so my burdens are lighter than you might think. And remember, I survived the era of psychology. You can’t pull any tricks on me.”
“I’m just trying to help.” Val turned, his lips beaded with water and demanding all of Merlin’s attention. “I thought I would only see you for a few hours yesterday, and here we are, sailing to Troy together. I’ve decided that’s a sign we should be kissing, at the very least. If you’re interested. But we should get to know each other first.”
The combination of Val’s matter-of-fact tone and the word kissing swirled together, making Merlin faintish. “What could you possibly want to know?”
Val sat on one of the tiny chairs, and when Merlin rushed to join him, their knees knocked. Merlin’s pulse answered in kind. “Start with the good stuff,” Val said, leaning forward with a smirk that could have killed Merlin, if Merlin was killable. “If you’ve been around that long, you must have fallen in love.”
Merlin had held back the truth for too long, and it rushed out. “Once.” It felt good to admit that—until it felt awful.
“What was this person’s name?”
Merlin winced. “Art.”
“Art?” Val said, with a deliberate blink. “You fell in love with one of your Arthurs?” He put a hand to his face, a grin shining between his fingers. “Oh, that is scandalous.”
Merlin talked fast to cover the fact that he was shaking under his robes. “He wasn’t the best of the Arthurs. He wasn’t the bravest or the most heroic. He was clever, though. And he said the most bluntly ridiculous things.”
So much about the cycles blurred, but Merlin could remember Art perfectly—a dark-haired man with melting brown eyes. They had kissed in the forest, under trees that seemed to hide them from an unfriendly sky. They had loved each other in a time when people pretended such things weren’t happening. Weren’t possible. And under the cover of that chosen ignorance, they had given each other words and promises and reasons to gasp.
“And then what?” Val asked, his much darker brown eyes wide and waiting.
“He died,” Merlin said. But that wasn’t true. Or at least, it was only half true. “I age backward, slowly. His death was all that could come to pass. So I… ended things between us.”
Val shifted back and looked at Merlin from a distance. “You forced yourself not to care about someone because you thought it wouldn’t end well? You really are old, aren’t you?”
A dry sound of disapproval rose from Merlin’s throat. “That’s like saying you’re eight years old because you used to be eight. I used to be an old man, but I’m not anymore. I’m aging, much the same as all of you are. I just happen to be the only one going in the opposite direction. And Ari is the last chance I have to stop getting younger,” Merlin said, his voice cracking, and this time not because of blaring hormones. “I tried to train her on Lionel, but she was barely interested. And now…” Now she was stuck in Kay’s bedroom, with Gweneviere of all people.
Merlin looked down again—at some point during this conversation Val’s hand had taken up residence on his arm. “What kind of training?”
Merlin described the game he’d created for Ari with half of his mind, while the other half told him, over and over, about Val’s hand touching the spot near his elbow, as if he didn’t already know. Merlin shifted his entire body closer. The metal chair screeched under him.
“You say you’ve seen a lot of Arthurs,” Val said, “but I’ve seen a lot of Ari. We’ve been friends since we were young enough to get into the mermaids’ grove on Lionel for free.”
“Mermaids?” Merlin asked, tempted to launch into a mini-lecture on historical accuracy.
Val rubbed his hand up and down Merlin’s arm, and the lecture vanished. “If you want her to train, you have to give her something real to do. Games are fake to her, and Ari doesn’t do fake. That’s why she objected at top volume to knight camp.”
“Hmmm,” Merlin grumbled.
And then he started, gently, to float.