Ari was still in that plastic coffin. Ari was still dead.
Val pulled his shirt back on and reached into a tiny drawer, procuring a T-shirt and pair of old, perfectly worn-in jeans. Fashion came and went, but Merlin had always believed that jeans—like cockroaches—would survive into any possible future.
“Change,” Val said, half slipping out of the bathroom, before adding, “Merlin, don’t forget to look at yourself.” He pointed to the mirror and shut the door.
Merlin pulled on the new clothes. He found his glasses, settling them back in place. The haze of color faded, and Merlin saw himself clearly for the first time in ages. He didn’t look like a great or fearsome magician, but he wasn’t horrified by what he saw, either. He had an artful snarl of reddish hair, brown eyes glinting in frames of black and silver, pale skin that clung to a skinny body.
The Merlin who abandoned friends and enemies for the safety of the crystal cave was gone.
They dropped Ari’s mothers off at the nearest medical station that would take a plague victim without too many questions. After Merlin melted Lian from her fake-death state, Ari and Kay’s moms were gone, and silence reigned over the small, cracked kingdom of Error.
It lasted until they reached Lionel’s solar system.
“I’ve been away too long,” Gwen said, worrying through a dozen different emergency scenarios. “We’ll be facing lack of water. Dehydration. Riots, possibly.” Now that she’d taken off the overlarge T-shirt and put on her queen’s garb, she didn’t say a word about Ari. She was as focused on her planet as Merlin had been on that metal rivet.
The only thing that stopped her recitation of possible horrors was the sight of Kay coming in from the cockpit. “We’re about to hit Lionel. Where do you want me to put down?”
Gwen shook her head in frowning wonderment. “You’re… here. I assumed you left with your parents.”
“I thought you might need help,” Kay said, crossing the twin logs of his arms.
Jordan stood, getting squarely between Kay and her queen. “All you’ve ever cared about is your own life and your kin.”
Kay shrugged. “Yeah, well, Ari married Gwen. So that makes us…”
“What?” Gwen asked, sidestepping Jordan. “That makes us what?”
“People who don’t leave each other headed toward a fucking mess,” Kay said, pointing out the window. The low orbit of Lionel was filled with ships, every one of them Mercer Black—a shade that demanded all the light and gave nothing back.
Mercer wasn’t just here to make Gwen’s life difficult. They were going to punish an entire planet.
“Message came through,” Lamarack yelled from the cockpit. “A diplomatic detachment from Troy landed about ten hours ago and said Mercer is repossessing Lionel because the queen is in debt for a criminal charge against her wife.”
“So they did approve your marriage,” Val said. “How suddenly convenient.”
Gwen rubbed a ring on her hand, one that Merlin hadn’t noticed before. “We should have come straight back to Lionel. We never should have gone to that damn planet.”
The words were out, and Gwen didn’t try to take them back, though she did recoil. Merlin expected Kay to have a serious allergic reaction to the suggestion that his parents should have been left to die. Instead he swept an arm around Gwen that she surprisingly took him up on. He lifted her into a hug, and she dangled like a small child from his arms.
Val cleared his throat. “Gwen? What do we do?”
Kay put her down, and she pressed her face on his shirt. “You smell like her,” she said. Kay gave Gwen a strange, twisting look, as if she’d said both the best and worst possible thing at the same time. “Thank you for staying,” Gwen added, her composure back in place—like armor.
“I’m staying, too,” Merlin said.
Gwen slayed Merlin’s excitement with a glance. “I thought you’d made it clear that you don’t care for me.”
“Ancient grudges die hard,” he admitted. “But I never should have treated you as Ari’s enemy. The enemy is obvious enough.”
Merlin looked out over the field of ships. He wasn’t Arthur—he wouldn’t defeat the greatest evil in the universe, or unite humankind. He couldn’t stop the cycle by himself. But he thought of Val’s home, about to be invaded. Val’s words. I wanted to make a difference in this ridiculous universe. Merlin looked from knight to knight, each of their faces echoing the doom that he’d felt when he thought about going back to the crystal cave.
Magic prickled back to life in his fingertips.
The most imposing bit of Beethoven he could remember slipped through his lips. His hands rose and conducted a frantic composition. A web of crackling, golden energy bolts sprang into existence between the black Mercer ships and the surface of Lionel. A single ship advanced, and was zapped so hard that it looked like a finger stuck in a heavenly socket.
“Let’s get you home,” Merlin said, poking a tiny hole in the web so Error could fly through, energy snapping wildly around them. They sailed toward Lionel, and Merlin mended the tear in the web, the Mercer ships stuck behind them—for now. Merlin imagined Ari at his side, slinging one arm over his shoulder and saying “Not bad, old man.”
For a single second, he let himself believe she was still with them.
Ari was still on Urite… except she wasn’t.
She spun inside while Morgana rummaged through her memories, feelings, and fears as if the enchantress were a burglar pillaging the jewelry store of her mind. Ari couldn’t stomach a second more of the smash and grab sensation.
She grasped at an image Morgana had tossed aside.
In the memory, Captain Mom was teaching Ari how to park Error on a crowded space dock, two hands on the controls, squared shoulders, clear eyes. The keen memory of success and pride overwhelmed Morgana’s theft for a moment, and Ari didn’t hesitate. She latched on to another memory, winding up with that time on Tanaka when Kay and Ari had gotten into fisticuffs over a girl with forever legs who’d given both of them her ship’s call code.
From there Ari searched until she found it, knowing it would drive Morgana mad: the recent snapshot of Merlin’s cracked-egg smile after they’d come out of their worst memories together, closer, united. Hands joined.
Morgana’s voracious spirit paused, her voice issuing from inside Ari’s mind. You’re fighting me. Stop.
Not a chance, Ari responded, digging deeper, tumbling into the bedsheets of her new favorite memory, the one that spun through her when she was doing everything else, making her flush, dizzy, and spread with a warmth that fought the cold of infinite stars. Gwen was naked, chest heaving, curling fingers into Ari’s hair while her legs trembled, whispering, You’re going to leave me again. I don’t trust you. I can’t… Ari kissed up her thighs, hips, to the smooth plane between her breasts. Ari tasted Gwen’s fingers, promised that she would stay… that this time belonged to them and could be no one else’s. Not Lionel’s or Mercer’s. Not King Arthur’s or Merlin’s.
And Gwen had cried like Ari didn’t know how much Gwen needed to hear those words, and Ari had found surprising tears because she hadn’t known how much she needed to say them.
Morgana withdrew as if she’d been burned by the fire of the memory. I don’t want your mortal passions! If you stop fighting, I’ll give you what your heart desires.
Ari knew a trap when she heard one, and yet her longings burst forth as if a door had been thrown open—possibly by Arthur himself. Did he want this to happen? Wouldn’t he stand with her against Morgana?
At first Ari’s desires were a neat arrangement of her knights, Merlin, Gwen, Error, but the surface rippled like a mirage on blistering sand, revealing a deeper ache. Ari wanted to go home, but then, Arthur wanted it, too. She could feel his guiding hand as if she didn’t just want to go back to Ketch; she needed to.
Home, Ari whispered.