“Another one?” Val asked. “How many magical women have you pissed off, Merlin?” There was a softness under his mocking, like the silky sheets that shifted beneath their bodies.
“Nin isn’t a woman, really. More like… a force. Not even a force of nature. She’s somehow outside of nature. Or beyond it. I can’t quite tell. Turns out, she’s the reason I’m no good at dying. She’s been protecting me.”
Val grabbed the water from Merlin, too thirsty to wait for his carefully administered sips. Merlin told Val everything that had happened between the moment he left Val’s side and the moment he came back. “And then Nin gave me a choice. She offered to stop this aging backward mess.”
The cup paused against Val’s lips.
“But it meant leaving Ari. And you.” That last one was not easy to say aloud—it nearly tugged Merlin’s stomach up his throat. “I couldn’t do that.”
Val put the glass down so slowly that Merlin thought something was wrong. Then he placed a hand on Merlin’s face. The touch had a confidence that pinned Merlin in place after so much wandering through places and times that didn’t belong to him. The bright stripes in Val’s dark eyes brought him back to Earth.
Val’s face moved closer, and Merlin closed his eyes. On Lionel, Merlin hadn’t wanted to kiss Val because he feared they would slide past each other, aging in different directions. Now he wanted to kiss Val because he knew that was bound to happen, and he would lose his chance.
They had so little time.
Their lips touched and pushed that feeling away. There was no time inside of a kiss, nothing but soft, dark sensation. Hardness came next, in the tousle of their lips, in the insistence of Merlin’s hands on Val’s neck. And in other, very obvious, places.
Val’s hand drifted under the blanket, and found an unnamed spot between Merlin’s hip and the zipper of his jeans. Merlin startled at how intense that small touch could be. Val’s fingers pushed against the thick cloth, making his nerves flare. No wonder jeans had survived the apocalypse.
“What are you doing?” Merlin asked, his voice low and trembling.
“Thanking you,” Val said. “For choosing this over…”
“A future?” Merlin asked. Panic ignited in him, turning him to a falling star, blazing to a crash. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t know how. Or he’d forgotten. There was no hope for him, nothing but a handful of ash where his bravery should be. “You’re injured,” Merlin said, sounding like his old self, the one who fussed and bothered.
“Rest is another kind of magic,” Val said, with a flourish of a smile.
“You need more rest,” Merlin said. He knew the tumble of this argument. The quick downhill of talking himself out of things. “I should…”
“Be gentle?” Val asked. “Yes. You should.”
He pulled Merlin closer, and this time when they kissed, there were bright crackles of feeling. Need welled up, pouring into each kiss. And the sound. The music of them trading breath for breath, the slide of fingers on skin, groans deep in their throats.
When their bodies met under the pile of blankets, Merlin was on the verge of something as vast as time. He watched the twist of Val’s muscles the same way he would watch the play of stars in the deepest night sky. And then Merlin couldn’t just watch. When he reached for Val, he was rewarded with a gasp and a sweet, melting sigh. Val’s hands also vanished beneath the blankets.
And after lifetimes of saying no, Merlin found himself saying yes, and yes, and yes.
Joy had a way of surprising Ari. She never expected it, never sought it out, and some days it felt nonexistent—and yet it found its way in like sunlight through the cracks of a closed door.
Showing off Ketch to her friends and parents was full of joy. She flew them over the red, rolling deserts in Error. She took them to the mountainous city where she’d hid the Lionelians, only to find that they were safe and unharmed. Apparently a fleet of Mercer vessels had stood sentinel in the sky for days, but they’d disappeared after the Administrator’s demise.
Next, Ari and her friends took Big Mama back to her sandy nest. Big Mama dug up three large eggs, mooning loudly over their uncracked, cold forms. For a twisting moment, it seemed impossible that the unhatched taneens had survived so long without their mother’s heat, but Morgana appeared, reaching ephemerally through the shells to confirm that two of the three still bore beating hearts and growing bodies.
Gwen surprised all of them, pushing toward Morgana to ask her to check her baby. The knights, Merlin, and Ari held their breaths while Morgana laid a bluish-clear hand on Gwen’s stomach and pulled it away sharply.
“Alive,” she said. “Loud, and healthy.”
Ari was alight with joy. She could not stop herself from embracing Gwen while Jordan muttered a thankful chant and Lamarack lifted Val into the air, shaking him with happiness. Gwen shivered in Ari’s arms, her fear releasing in trembles and significant exhalations. Ari felt the constant heat between them fade to warmth. Less like a flash burn, and more of a hearth.
“This baby will be Lionelian, but born on Ketch. An important piece of both of us.” Ari found herself whispering in Gwen’s ear before she remembered Kay’s last parting wisdom while they were on that imaginary green field of Old Earth. “Even if you’re from Troy, originally,” Ari said. “We create our families. We choose our homes, don’t we?” There was no challenge in her voice—only curiosity and a need to understand why Gwen had held back from her.
Gwen sighed, melting into Ari a little more with each breath. “My parents lived on Troy, and I was born there, but I don’t remember it. My first memories are of Lionel. We moved there when I was small, but my parents…” She moved back and stretched, holding out her arms in the bluish-gold sunlight of this vivid planet. “It was too hard to play Middle Ages. They went back to Troy.”
“They left you… alone on Lionel?” Ari asked, slight anger leaking through her words.
“Never came back. Never even sent a message.” Gwen’s words slid into place—her worries about being left behind by Ari taking on the weight of her past. “The only good thing they ever did was gift me to the training school. I fell in love with Lionel. I found my first loyal friend.” Gwen smiled at Jordan. “She’s also a left-behind, and we made a vow to each other that someday one of us would be queen.”
“I could have so easily been given to Mercer,” Gwen added. “They would have owned me.”
Ari felt angry for not understanding sooner. She felt like pacing, like raging out. “Our baby won’t have those terrible realities poised over their head. I will not rest until—”
Gwen took her arm. “It’s okay, Ari. Everything we’ve done this past year… losing each other and then Kay… well, she will not grow up under Mercer’s control.”
“She?” Ari asked.
Gwen nodded. “Mother’s intuition.”
Ari didn’t say anything, but she hoped Gwen was right. According to Morgana and Merlin, King Arthur’s progeny, especially the boys, tended to cause far more trouble than they were worth. Of course, this child wasn’t Ari’s on a strictly genetic level. Was that enough to avoid the retelling of Arthur’s death at the hand of his son?
Mordred.
What a frigid name.
“You said ours,” Gwen murmured, pulling Ari close by the arm, interrupting her doomed thoughts. “You said our baby.”
“That’s presumptuous, I know—”
Gwen stopped her lips with a kiss that was so soft and sweet, Ari couldn’t help but glow with joy—as if that door had been thrown open and now the sunlight was just pouring in.
Her moms made their way over, asking with all the subtle patience of a hungry taneen if they were going to be grandparents. When Gwen said yes, Mom roared with Big Mama levels of excitement, while Captain Mom wept.