“Hey,” Ari said, throat dry. “It’s good to finally meet you.”
The Lady of the Lake came so close that Ari felt self-conscious about each plate of unpolished, dented armor. The strong-lined and lean figure breathed on Ari’s breastplate, fogging up the dragon Ouroboros.
“Ah, wow, you don’t do small talk, heh?”
Nin peered at Ari, flint-eyed. “I don’t like tears in my cave. Saltwater is useless.” She motioned to Ari’s tear tracks.
Ari smudged away the remaining offenders. “That’s why you showed me that memory from before Troy. To stop me from crying.”
“Not a memory. A piece of time. Humans require time to march in a single direction, past to present to future. But time is a river that can flow many interesting ways, including circles. If you want to step into a different age, you need only know where to stick in your toe.”
“So you really are timeless,” Ari said, although her mind spun with a sudden, burning question. That’s not all you are, is it? Ari’s understanding of this being had been filtered through Merlin. And Merlin’s unorthodox existence. Perhaps he had reasons to trust Nin, but Ari was drawing a blank as to what those reasons might be. Her gaze went back to the center of the lake where the funeral pyre she’d witnessed minutes ago had already vanished.
“Where’s Val?” she said, fear showing in her voice.
“Unharmed, as promised. I’ll be returning him shortly. Merlin is almost ready to have him back.” The Lady continued her inspection of Ari. “I’ve never met one in the flesh.”
Ari took a small step back. “Met one of what?”
“One of Arthur’s human vessels,” she said. “I do believe he is right. You are the last. He is finished with his grand schemes to unite humanity. Finally beaten. Poor fool.” The Lady’s finger traced the circular dragon on Ari’s breastplate. “Do you like your armor? I had to search a few thousand years of Earth history to find it for you.”
Ari’s mind went black and then bright, as if someone had turned on a burning spotlight. “This armor… you picked it out for me?” She couldn’t help but remember her bizarre earthly landing in the midst of battle, the dead blue knight beside her, and then farther back, inside the portal, that indelible feeling of being pushed. “You separated us.”
The Lady sighed. “Are you trying to blame me? Is that a thing you need? I haven’t been human in so long. It’s easy to forget.”
“You tore me from Gwen!” Ari shouted.
She smiled wickedly. “Like magnets, you two. No matter how tightly they fix together, it never becomes less amusing to pull them apart.”
Merlin had been so wrong when he called her a bystander, a watcher.
At best, she was chaotic neutral in a velvet suit.
“I need to get back to my friends,” Ari said. The Lady smoothed back her perfectly red hair and sighed. “If you won’t let me leave, you show your true colors.”
“Oh, you need me to be the villain. Villains are terribly commonplace, Ara Azar.”
Ari knew this argument; she knew this type. “That body I saw, out in the center of the lake, that was King Arthur, wasn’t it? The famed secret of his last resting place is finally known.”
“Hardly at rest.” Nin chuckled. “But then that’s why you’re here. To make a new deal.”
“There’s no way I’m dealing with you.”
“Oh.” She actually looked sorry for Ari. “Did you think we could skip this part? There isn’t anyone powerful enough to refuse my wishes. Well, perhaps there is one person, but he is his own best enemy. Which is endlessly amusing, I can tell you.”
“You’re talking about Merlin.” Ari felt around for something to hold on to. She had to get some kind of upper hand. “Then he has the power to stop you. Stop the cycle.”
“The cycle is his prison.” The humor vanished from her pristine face. “And if you wish to free him of it, you will take my deal. I will reunite King Arthur’s spirit with his body. And I will send you and your friends back to your future. The only cost I require is that when you die, your body will become mine, and your soul’s ventures will become my new amusement.”
The fuck.
“But I’ll be cursed, like Arthur.” Ari stared into the dark air of the cave. “You forget we nearly have the chalice, and we’ll get the magic we need to make our own portal.”
“Something like this?” Nin held out a dagger bearing the Avalon crest, and Ari snatched it. “That will make your portal, and what’s more, how about a show of very good faith?”
Nin touched one of the small pools, and an image swirled. Ari recognized the tower at Camelot where they’d battled that dragon, rebuilt by Old Merlin’s magic. The light outside the arrow slits showed night, while inside the tower was a somber scene. Gwen, in a gold dress, weeping into the bowl of her empty hands. Merlin pressing his face hard into Lam’s shoulder, who was looking down at a narrow bed bearing a very still, very dead Jordan.
Her skin was the white color of something forgotten in the sun, her neck bloodily bandaged, her sword fallen to the floor. One hand paused over the side as if her last breath had come while she was reaching for it.
Ari gasped so loudly it echoed.
“An assassin’s arrow to the throat. She dies uncelebrated, without honor, and your friends lose hope, collapsing into the misery of one of the darkest versions of the Arthurian legend.”
“This is happening right now?”
“There is no now. No past. No future. Oh, you’re much thicker than young Percival.”
“How in the world is this a show of good faith?” Ari asked, shaking with anger.
The Lady swirled her finger in the dark image, peeling back time until Jordan’s last breath reversed, and her chest began to rise and fall. Simultaneously through the tower window, the night reversed into a purple twilight. Nin flicked her wet fingers at
