The door opened, and Kay appeared in the aftermath of Gwen’s L-bomb like an octopus at a picnic. Gwen stood up to yell. “Can’t you knock, you buffoon?”
“This is my room!” He glanced from Gwen to Ari, sensing the frayed ends of their argument. “I need clothes.” He picked up a balled shirt out of a drawer and left, tossing back a few words over his shoulder. “Landing in five. Suit up!”
They stared at each other silently for a long moment. “I have to go with them, Gwen.”
“I know!”
It was a quiet shout, and Gwen pressed her hand over her mouth in such a wounded way that Ari stood and pulled Gwen tight.
“Don’t you dare say a word about love,” Gwen mumbled, her mouth against Ari’s neck. “I brought it up, and you didn’t respond, and now anything you say is ruined because you’ve had time to feel bad.”
“My brother rammed into the room.”
“There was a decent pause before that.” Gwen’s tone wasn’t iciness but plain old pain. “Look, I put myself out there, and you don’t want the risk, so it’s fine.”
“I want to be with you, but…” Ari admitted. There’s so much I have to do.
“I don’t think I want to hear that but,” Gwen said.
Error shuddered as though they were entering heavy wind. They held on to each other while Ari’s magboots kept them rooted to the spot. When the shuddering grew worse, Ari loosened her grip on Gwen, raising her voice over the roar outside. “We’re in the atmosphere. In the storm. This is going to happen fast.”
Gwen balanced through the ship’s shudders, strapping on Ari’s pauldron and the sheath she kept across her back. She tightened the buckles. Looped the extra leather in tightly.
Ari watched Gwen’s bowed head and soft, curved neck. Her hair was down in beautiful waves. “People think there are only two ways to react when someone brings up love,” she started so quietly that Gwen pulled herself against Ari to hear. “The first is to say it back. The second is not to. But if you don’t say it back, you have to compensate. Soften hurt feelings with, ‘Oh, thank you’ or ‘That’s so sweet.’ I didn’t do either.”
Gwen tightened Ari’s belt, which was unnecessary, unless Gwen was aiming for the tiny groan she managed to tug out of Ari. “You’re telling me there’s a third option?”
“To not say anything. To look like a confounded idiot. To wonder why your heart has turned into a hurricane and how love could be possible when you’re supposedly a cursed, dead king in the presence of a very powerful, very alive queen.”
Error slammed into the icy ground of Urite, and Ari and Gwen held on to each other again, this time desperately. When the ship finally slid to a stop, Ari picked up Excalibur and thrust the sword into the sheath. She dug in her memories, all the way back to knight camp. She took Gwen’s hand and pressed her lips to her knuckles. “Upon my honor,” Ari said.
Gwen nearly laughed. “Upon your honor… what?”
“See? I suck at this stuff,” Ari tried not to burn with embarrassment. This was why she’d stopped playing knight at camp with the rest of them. The game wouldn’t ring true, no matter how hard she tried. “I’m supposed to promise you something, aren’t I?”
Gwen nodded. She turned her face up to Ari’s, waiting to be kissed. Ari touched her cheek, looked over her eyelashes, nose, cheekbones. Her chin and mouth and slight, slight smile. Gwen had forgiven her. It was tucked right there in the turn of her lips. Why was that as endlessly attractive as their arguments?
“I’ll come right back,” Ari promised. She slipped off her watch and put it on Gwen’s wrist. “There are some pictures on there. Something to look at until I get back.”
Kay, Lamarack, and Ari made slow tracks through the frigid tundra. They wore thick, wool Lionelian horse blankets around their shoulders and heads, but it wasn’t nearly enough. The endless rows of graves could barely be seen through the icy black night and whipping cold, but they were everywhere, threatening each step.
And falling down on this planet meant shattered bones.
“This isn’t a prison break!” Lam yelled over the roar of the wind. “It’s grave robbery!”
Kay led the charge through the freezing gusts. He walked too fast, erratically searching. They worked their way to the section that boasted the fresh mound of a mass grave. A slit in the earth beside it revealed a new chasm for those who were currently dying inside the prison walls.
“Fucking Mercer!” Lam stumbled. Their face didn’t look right, and they were from Pluto, used to this sort of deep freeze. “Kay! We can’t stay out here much longer. We’re going to die. Your moms wouldn’t want that!”
“I’m not giving up!” her brother shouted. “Something sparkled over there like one of Merlin’s stupid fireworks. We have to keep going!”
Ari clawed her way closer, took his face in her hands and tried to warm his cheeks with her breath. “Kay, calm down. We have to think about what we can do next.”
“There!” Lam’s voice was weak, but they both heard their urgency. They were pointing at a small, bony hand sticking up out of the mound like a damn nightmare. Ari rushed to it, peeled her gloves off, and clasped the hand.
It clasped back.
They dug at the ground without luck. It was frozen solid, and Ari could see in the distance the laser devices that they must use to dig out the soil—but the machines were far away, and there were definitely prison guards over there.
Ari flung the horse blanket off her shoulders and unsheathed Excalibur. She screamed in frustration as she stuck the sword into the earth around Merlin’s pale, limp hand, using the blade to pry up the ground in great crumbling sections.
When they’d uncovered half of him, Lamarack and Kay took the young magician by the shoulders and hauled him out of the earth with screams of their own. It had become so painful to move—to breathe—that Ari felt like all was already lost. Particularly when Merlin didn’t open his eyes. They rested him on one of the horse blankets, and he looked as far from his bombastic, ridiculous self as possible, his blue flapping robes replaced by a torn, gray uniform.
He bled from a jagged cut on his shoulder that had undoubtedly been caused by Ari’s enthusiastic use of Excalibur as a shovel. She knelt beside him. “Merlin! Merlin, you damn fool, wake yourself up.” She held his cheeks, kissed him on each side. “Come on!”
Ari held his hand up for him, remembering that moment on the moon when he was so terribly beaten by Morgana—and yet still had a little lightning in him.
Merlin’s mouth formed a word Ari couldn’t hear. He pointed one finger toward the howling, black night and managed a small flourish.
In a blast of orange-red, dazzling heat, the entire setting transformed. Kay, Lam, and Ari hid their heads beneath their arms as a sudden, searing light burst forth. Warmth fell over her like a soft rainstorm. They were in a tropical bubble. The frozen ground had turned to warm, yielding sand, and above, a hot, beautiful sun shone. There was no wind here, but—did Ari imagine it?—there seemed to be music. A classical guitar strumming somewhere nearby. There was even a damn palm tree next to Lam.
“What the hell is this?” Kay blustered.
“Bermuda,” Merlin said with a small shrug that made him stumble. “My happy place.”
“We should hurry,” Lamarack said. “I have a feeling that everyone on this sad frozen rock is extremely interested in what’s happening right now.”
“Where are my parents?” Kay yelled.
Merlin motioned to the spot in the mound beside him. “I had to turn them to stone for a little while. Easiest way to fake a frozen death.”
Kay and Lamarack began to dig at the now melting earth, uncovering a mass grave that made them turn their heads away and curse at the staggering loss of life.
Merlin tried to sit up, but his shoulder was a bleeding mess. Ari pressed the wound firmly between her hands. “Bermuda?” she asked, trying to distract him from his pain.
Merlin closed his shadowed eyes. “Just a little piece of it I stole a long time ago.”