And with that, the water fell still, and the Lady of the Lake was gone. Merlin felt slightly better, knowing where Val was. Having proof that he hadn’t been captured or accidentally dropped down on another continent centuries before air travel. But hearing Val’s voice had kindled the need to see him again. And Nin’s meddling left a bad taste in his mouth—worse than the seamy, sodden air of the oubliette.
“How do we get out of this time period without your magic, Merlin?” Jordan asked. It was, miraculously, the first time she’d ever called him anything but mage.
“Who said anything about not using my magic?”
“The witch in the puddle,” she answered, literal to the bitter end.
He couldn’t bring his friends all the way back to this time period and then leave them to fend for themselves. Magic was his only power. Without it, Merlin was nothing but fourteen going on thirteen. “I won’t abandon you all to Arthur’s story and hope for the best,” he said, “even if each spark brings me closer to infancy.” And after that? Death by young age, to quote Ari, once upon a time in the future.
“Ari and Gwen won’t agree to this,” Jordan said. “They care for you.” She didn’t add anything about herself—either caring or being cared for. He wondered how often she’d been left outside of their tight-knit group. But that was what she had chosen: the life of a stalwart champion, a distant hero.
And Merlin was a mage, to his bitter end.
“We simply won’t tell them, will we?”
Ari’s schemes to get Gwen alone failed, but then, Gwen had always been the true schemer in the relationship. While passing through a dark antechamber, leaving the rambunctiously feasting knights and nobles in the great hall, Ari felt a sharp tug on her armor and found herself behind a tapestry. Gwen was a sudden miracle in her arms, pulling Ari down by the chest plate, stealing a kiss so heated it left Ari spinning and steaming.
“Um, hey there.”
“Three months and you say hey there?”
“Words aren’t a high priority at the moment, to be honest.”
Gwen smiled, and Ari kissed her again until the mess of Camelot faded. In her mind, Ari was kissing Gwen against a backdrop of crystal stars and vibrant galaxies. During a time when two girls in love meant two girls in love. Dragons and misogyny could fuck right off.
They parted slowly, faces pressed together. Gwen shivered. “Your armor is freezing.”
“Sorry.” Ari’s hand cradled the back of Gwen’s feverishly hot neck. “Are you sick?”
“I’m always too hot, but that could be pregnancy or the hundreds of yards of cloth I’m stuffed into,” Gwen said, breath tight. “Your fingers are so cold. Feels wonderful.” Ari ran her hands over every inch of Gwen’s available skin. By the muted light of a distant lantern, Ari watched Gwen’s eyes close, her mouth slipping open. Ari’s hands paused on the warm, hard stone of Gwen’s stomach. “Weird, I know,” Gwen said. “But it actually makes me super horny.”
“How is that different?”
Gwen smiled wickedly and pushed Ari with her body. Ari’s armor crashed against the stone wall behind the tapestry. They froze. Ari’s pulse pounded as they held their breath and listened, mutually grasping how much they gambled for this stolen moment.
“Jordan told me you were cast out of the portal far away,” Gwen said, touching Ari’s face with soft, sweet fingers. “That it took you months to get here.”
“Yes,” Ari whispered. “This one was the worst.”
“Worst?”
“This latest chapter of being too far from you.” She slid her hands around Gwen’s hips, bringing her close, a few inches needing to suffice for the planet of longing in her chest. “The first time, when we were fourteen, when—”
“You kissed me so long behind the stables I actually forgot to breathe and nearly passed out? And you smiled like you hadn’t ever been so proud of your own lips?”
“I mean, it’s understandable,” Ari frowned playfully. “I legit took your breath away.”
Gwen pressed a finger to Ari’s mouth. “But then you left, so mad at me.”
Ari took Gwen’s hand and turned it over, pressing small kisses down the side of her thumb toward her wrist. “It didn’t stick. I crashed on your planet and accidentally married you.”
“No accident. I don’t have those kinds of accidents.”
“Then we were pulled apart again.”
“Don’t skip over the places when we got together.” Gwen pressed in tightly. “I don’t.”
She pulled out something that glimmered like metal in the low light. It took Ari’s kissing-addled brain a second to realize that she was looking at a Mercer watch. Gwen turned it on, the glow seeming perilously out of place in this age of torches and tallow candles. She clicked through pictures until she landed on one of Ari and Gwen’s clothes in a strewn pile on the floor of Error’s cabin. Ari’s heart lurched with homesickness.
“You brought a Mercer watch all the way here just to look at these? Merlin will be hopping mad if he finds out. Gwen, he might actually hop.”
“I needed a piece of our history. Our past,” Gwen said. “I look at these when I miss you too much. They can be… inspiring.”
Ari’s eyes closed, head tilted back to make a simpering, albeit pleased, sound.
“We only have moments.” Gwen’s tone turned serious. “You have no idea how hard it was to dispatch my handmaidens to various tasks. They’ll find me eventually. Or realize I gave them the slip and tell Arthur.”
Ari stroked Gwen’s neck with her knuckle. “You sure Arthur doesn’t know about the baby?”
“We aren’t intimate, if that’s what you’re digging for.”
“Because he’s twelve?”
Gwen scowled. “We’re courting. The process can take years. What he really needs is someone who understands politics. He’s in over his head. Camelot is a powder keg. Old Merlin is a disaster. I’m not sure when the chalice is going to appear, and I only have a month or two before I’m going to have a
