“And I’m outright commanding it,” Gwen said.
Jordan nodded with effort and then eyed Merlin as he sang. He worried she would blurt out what she’d learned in the oubliette, telling him not to waste his remaining magic—and years—on her. But she refocused on Gwen, thank all the gods. “As you wish, my queen.” Then she looked straight at Ari. “Take care of them.”
Ari bowed her head, every inch the knight. “On my honor.”
Jordan laid back, arms crossed over her chest as the shards of Excalibur danced so fast they blurred. Gathering around the Avalon dagger, they became one weapon for a bright, shining moment. Merlin sang as it cut through the last of the day’s perfect golden light, slicing open a doorway of deepest black. Beyond it, stars shone.
“Home,” Jordan murmured, her pain momentarily shelved, as she rose to her feet with the help of Lam and Ari, and stepped into the future.
Ari spoke so quietly Merlin almost didn’t hear. “Gwen, why don’t you go with—”
“Ask me to leave your side and we’ll be in the biggest fight of the century, Ara.”
The portal resealed with a rush of wind, as if it knew well enough to obey Gwen’s command. The Avalon dagger clattered to the stones, dull metal now, its magic spent. Excalibur’s shards rained down as metallic dust, and Ari looked bereft all over again. Merlin clamped a hand over his face, crying out with pain. It felt like someone had reached into his mouth and ripped out several of his teeth.
“She’ll make it,” Gwen reassured, misreading Merlin’s pain as strong emotion. “This is Jordan we’re talking about. She’ll… find help on the other side. We sent her back to the night that we left, so Ari’s moms will be right there.”
“Mmph,” Merlin said in what he hoped sounded like agreement. Spots at the back of his mouth were liquid fire. Four spots, to be exact. When he probed them with his tongue, he found exactly what he feared. His twelve-year-old molars had sunk. And there was no time to mourn their loss.
Ari sank onto Jordan’s abandoned cot, holding her face in her hands. She was weeping.
When Gwen and Lam tried to comfort her, she pushed it all away. “I’m fine. I just… I really thought it was too late.”
“Because Nin showed you the future—Jordan’s death,” Merlin said.
“How do you know that?”
“This all reeks of one of Nin’s games.”
Lam spun on him, their eyes lit with a special urgency. “You said Val was safe in her lair.”
“She has a lair?” Gwen asked. “That doesn’t sound safe at all.”
Merlin owed them the truth. “Since we’ve gotten so close to Arthur’s birthday, and the chalice arriving, I’ve been shouting into every watery surface for Val’s immediate release and… nothing.” What had seemed like an innocuous situation only a few days ago was evolving into a standoff.
“Nin told me she would release him soon,” Ari said.
“Maybe she just told you that to toy with us,” he countered. Ari’s eyes fell on Merlin’s with warning and care, as if she now knew how frightful the Lady of the Lake could be but didn’t want to alarm the others just yet.
The trumpets sounded again, and Gwen smoothed her beautiful gold dress distractedly. “If we don’t get down to that celebration now, we’re all in trouble.”
After sending Jordan to the future, it felt dazzlingly awful to leave the castle and find that they were still mired in the past. The Middle Ages were on full display tonight, a bonfire raging as Old Merlin set off some kind of smoky, lung-infesting fireworks in the courtyard. Merlin and his friends emerged into the haze and roar of the most intense festival he had ever seen.
And he had, against all odds, gone to Coachella with Arthur 37.
“Val would love this party,” Lam said wistfully as music started up, tabers and drums and some nasal third instrument that Merlin had forgotten but sounded strangely like a synthesizer. “Forget that. He would own this party. Half the boys here would have been writing him sonnets by the end. Do they do sonnets yet?”
Lam had made a simple offhand comment because they missed their brother, but those words spun in Merlin’s brain. How many of the boys here tonight were cuter than Merlin, and more important, not slipping backward out of adolescence? Was that part of why he had been comfortable letting Val stay with Nin so long? Because in some rotted spot in his heart, he couldn’t bear the thought of Val watching him grow younger and younger until they were an equation with utterly mismatched sides?
Merlin touched the tender spots on his cheeks where his teeth had just vanished.
Ari and Gwen veered away from Lam and Merlin. “We’ll find Arthur,” Gwen said. “He’ll be relieved that Lancelot is returned.”
Gwen steered the still-ragged Ari through the crowds straight to the king, who was standing near the bonfire with Galahad and Gawain to either side. He broke away at once to embrace Ari. She returned the hug in a way that didn’t look fake. Whatever had passed between the two of them on the path to Avalon, they were closer now, which only multiplied the distance Merlin felt. He used to live at Arthur’s side, and now he was a mere bystander.
King Arthur raised his hand, and the crowds quieted. “Tonight, my feast is graced with one of the finest knights Camelot has ever known. Sir Lancelot is not only powerful in a fight, he has helped bring us new allies and rid our kingdom of those who would cause harm.”
Merlin started. It was true—Camelot’s golden age was starting to peek over the horizon, and it was largely thanks to Ari. She pushed to make things better, even when it would have been easy to make an excuse and allow the same problems to spin on endlessly.
Arthur drew Excalibur and it glowed in the firelight, orange and gold, blazing and true. Gwen motioned to Ari, and she
