He wasn’t the only one—Val was floating, as well as their cups and a few beads of water. “What’s this?” Merlin asked, as Val propelled himself out of the tiny kitchen to investigate.
In the main cabin, Lam seemed to have woken up mid-float. Jordan’s armor lifted away from her body. Excalibur had started spinning. “Oh, excellent,” Merlin said. “A naked sword in free float.”
“Dude,” Lam said, their dreads floating above their face as they giggled. “Naked sword.”
“What is happening on this cursed ship?” Jordan cried.
Kay clomped in on locking magboots, pointing toward the far door. “I turned off the gravity so my sister can’t do anything in my bedroom.”
“You mean, anything else,” Lam said.
“You’re going out the airlock,” Kay promised, with a sharply pointed finger. “I had the weirdest drunk dream that Ari cut her hair, and she would not stop making out with Gwen.” He glared at Merlin. “And you wouldn’t stop hugging me.”
“You two are being ridiculous yet again,” Val said, crossing his arms as the rest of him drifted. “Gwen would never move so fast with a consort. This is a political marriage, first and foremost. If she and Ari do end up together in a romantic sense, it will happen in its own time.”
Merlin’s hope perked. “You think they might not be…?”
A sound spread from Kay’s room.
An unmistakable, moaning, gasping sound.
“Sounds like the zero-grav just gave them a new challenge,” Lam said. “Get it, girls!”
“No! Absolutely not!” Kay stomped for the ship’s controls, and everything tumbled down. Merlin fell, chin first, on the hard metal floor, giving him a perfect view of Excalibur. The sword stopped spinning, the blade penetrating the round table with a slick sheening sound that left the entire spaceship in postcoital silence.
While the rest of Ari’s knights snickered, Merlin groaned. “I loathe that sword’s sense of humor.”
When Ari and Gwen emerged from Kay’s room, hours later, they looked a mess, and they acted like strangers. Gwen’s long hair had been freed from its braids, rippling over one of Ari’s old T-shirts, nearly reaching her tiny shorts. Somehow she looked even more regal—like a queen in the marketplace, trying to pass for a commoner. Ari edged around her, nervous.
Jordan greeted Gwen with a little feast on a tray. “You didn’t need to do this,” Gwen said sweetly as she seized a piece of toast and held it out to Ari.
Lancelot.
Jordan’s name was wrong, but that happened—the cycle couldn’t always give Merlin a 100 percent match, especially when cultural differences came into play. It wasn’t reasonable to expect an Arthur and Percival and Lancelot in feudal Japan or Renaissance Italy. It was character that truly defined someone’s role in the cycle. Lam had the undying loyalty of their predecessors; this Lamarack wasn’t the first to lose a hand in the service of King Arthur. Val was the descendant of the driven, clever knight who had found the Holy Grail, though he’d never been quite this compellingly gorgeous. Jordan possessed the shining excellence, unbridled chivalry, and love for Gweneviere that added up to Ari’s annihilation.
Gwen and Ari brought their breakfast to the tiny round table, a nearby window providing a scenic view of the Mercer ships. Soon they were all watching the fleet like it was a terrible TV show.
“What happens when we get to Troy?” Ari asked, eyes hard on the white vessels.
“They’ll march us to the galactic state department like criminals,” Gwen said. “Not my preferred way to make an entrance.”
Merlin thought of what Val had said about giving Ari something real for her training—something that mattered. “Unless they can’t get out of their ships,” Merlin said. Everyone looked at him. “What if we sealed them inside of their vessels? Then you would arrive on Troy without their shadows looming over you.”
“That’s not going to change Mercer’s game,” Lam said.
Merlin had to prepare Ari for an inevitable standoff with Mercer. He might have failed to keep her safe from Gwen, but that made it all the more important to train her for this. “When you want to become a dragon slayer, you don’t charge straight into the nest, swords swinging,” Merlin said. “You sneak in and steal a few coins from his hoard first.”
“What if the dragon worked hard for that money?” Lam asked. “You don’t know his life. And how do you even know the dragon’s a…”
“He’s a boy dragon!” Merlin roared.
“Sure thing, old man,” Kay said, slapping his arm.
“What?” Merlin asked. “Val, did you tell all of them that I age backward?”
Val shrugged. “It came up naturally.”
“How does something like that come up naturally?”
“Ari knows dragons. Don’t they have dragons on Ketch?” Lam asked.
“Taneens are really, really big lizards,” Ari said. “I wouldn’t call them dragons.”
“They’re totally dragons,” Kay faux-whispered from behind his hand.
“I’m sorry, are we discussing dragons or Merlin’s idea to fuck with Mercer?” Val asked, smiling at Merlin as if he’d found a way to be helpful. The group turned to Merlin—except Ari. She seemed to be considering his idea.
“It’ll be safer to slip through Troy without a Mercer escort.”
“Plus arriving under guard will undermine our marriage claim, which is definitely their goal,” Gwen added.
Kay crossed his arms. “So, you’re going to use your magic to seal their doors, right?”
“I believe I should save my magic for Troy, if this planet is half as horrific as everyone thinks,” Merlin said.
“Yes,” Jordan tutted. “You should save your ‘magic.’”
Merlin felt his face screw up tightly like a small, affronted child. He had to turn her into a newt. He had no choice. He raised one hand, and Ari clamped it down to his side.
“Leave Merlin be. He proves his magic best when he waits for the right moment.”
“I’ve seen his magic,” Lam put in.
“Me, too,” Kay grumbled.
“I’d love to see it,” Val purred, causing Merlin to tingle and forget completely about Jordan.
“So a spacewalk,” Lam said, bringing them back to the plan. “A dangerous one.”
“I’ve been stuck in this ship too long,” Ari said, standing with a grand flourish of a smile. “A walk outside sounds good.”
“Ari…” Gwen said. Ari looked at her like she was waiting for Gwen’s argument. An intense spark passed between them, until Gwen snuffed it out. “Seal those bastards in tight.”
Through the window, Ari studied the Mercer ships attached to Error by a network of docking cables. They were caught like a fly in the center of a shimmering, metallic spiderweb.
“We’ll use the cables,” she said, making it sound easy.
“No one’s going out there while we’re moving,” Kay said. “That’d be an ugly death.”
Ari turned to her brother, and Merlin could almost see her brain scheming. “Can you break Error?”
“What?”
“Just a little,” Ari said. “She has to be actually broken, though, so the Mercer ships will stop. Then you can fix her. After the doors are sealed.”
“I would need someone on the ship’s controls while I was in the engine,” Kay said, putting a protective hand on the nearest part of Error.
“I can do it,” Jordan said, standing at the ready.
Kay blinked. “You… fly, too?”
Merlin indulged in his first true teenage eye-roll.
“You think a ship like this is a challenge?” Jordan asked.
“It took me six years to learn her, inside and out,” Kay shot back.
“Give me six minutes,” Jordan said, shattering Kay’s pride and flicking away the pieces. She strode toward the cockpit with her wide gait, armor clanking. Kay watched her go with renewed fire, as if somehow this exchange had only made her hotter.
“Ugh, boys,” Val said.
“I believe the phrase you’re looking for is straight boys,” Merlin corrected.
“What is straight?” Lam asked, furrowing their brow.