Which shut Old Merlin right up.
Arthur accepted the cup. The moment seemed to stretch, nearly to the point of tearing. Merlin wondered if the old animosity between Camelot and these magical women was about to heat back up.
Then Gwen stepped forward, bowed to Morgause as a man would, and said, “Camelot and Avalon are more alike than they are different. Our lands are one land. So may our people become one people.”
Morgause gave her a hard-won smile, and the enchantresses dissolved into the crowd. The music started up again. The party returned to full volume.
Lamarack entered the melee of bodies as dance patterns formed. Soon everyone was coupled off—and Lam had somehow maneuvered into a spot right across from Morgause.
“It seems I’m not the only one on a mission tonight.” Merlin remembered how they’d nursed a crush on Morgana in the future. Enchantresses seemed to be their cup of tea. With just the right amount of milk and sugar.
Merlin found Arthur again, standing off to one side of the dancers, handing off the chalice with the timeless awkwardness of someone who’s been given a gift they have no idea what to do with. The cup went straight into Old Merlin’s hands. He turned away from the bonfire and the festivities, heading toward the castle. The chalice was in motion.
It was time.
Merlin stepped forward, so intent on the chalice that he ran directly into a little girl. She was no older than ten. She didn’t back away, just smiled with a shyness that made him distinctly nervous. “Would you dance?” she asked.
“No! For several reasons!” Merlin shouted. The girl drew back as if a spark from the bonfire had landed on her skin. “I’m sorry. I’m…” But she was already running away. Merlin had gotten upset and taken it out on a child. He truly was as bad as his old self.
He ran away from the moment, trying to leave it behind. But it stuck to his skin. Sweat slid off him, and the dancers were everywhere, jostling him as he tried to catch a glimpse of Old Merlin with the chalice. All he saw was Lam moving in on Morgause. They broke the pattern of the polite dancing. Their bodies slid together. Enchantress and future knight had no use for the rules of this place, and together they started to—Merlin could conjure up only one word for it—grind. Merlin sparked with jealousy. He would never dance like that with Val again.
Would he even see Val again? How could they possibly get him back from Nin?
“The plan,” he muttered. “Stick to the plan.”
There was Old Merlin—already halfway to the castle gate. Merlin pelted across the party. He’d come back to this ruinous place, risked everything worthwhile he’d found in the future for that dead dragon cup. He chased it through the fug of bonfire smoke and the rude press of bodies. His vision blistered with heat spots as Old Merlin entered the castle. The chalice went with him.
And in that moment, the skies ripped open.
Rain hit Merlin hard.
Every shard of water that broke over him was a memory. No—Morgana had showed him memories. These were moments of time, full and warm and real. He lived through meeting Val again, on Lionel. Val asking if Merlin’s sudden appearance was a set-up. Val smiling at him in Error’s tiny kitchen, that I ♥ NEW NEW NEW YORK T-shirt. Val staying up with him all night during the siege, not touching, the space between them deeper than dark water. Val kissing him so deeply that Merlin dissolved. Val dissolving in the time portal, right out of his hands.
He needs you, Merlin, Nin said. Now Merlin lived a different moment. Not an old piece of time. Something terrifyingly new. Val drowning in dark water. He grew up on a planet without water, poor thing. He doesn’t know how to swim. I thought I was setting him free, but he’s running out of time.
Merlin stopped. He spun away from the castle, the chalice. His heart pounded in his increasingly smaller chest, and he let out a small scream. Nin was either messing with him or Val was dying. Or most likely both. And he couldn’t let that happen.
Nobody noticed him sprinting for the city gates. They were too busy dancing and carousing and eating Old Merlin’s flying pies. The rain didn’t seem to bother anyone else, and Lam and Ari and Gwen remained fully focused on the party, as if Nin’s voice were only in his head.
Merlin ran deep into the ancient woods of Camelot, a place as twisted as every thought of Val’s death. The colors of oak and ash and birch blended into a lifeless gray as Merlin reached out with his magic—to do what? He closed his eyes, branches reaching out and roots tripping him. He went back to the year on Lionel he’d spent staring at Val’s dimples instead of dating him recklessly.
“Never enough time,” he muttered. They’d barely gotten together when the story cracked them apart. Now there wasn’t enough time for Merlin to save him. He’d never run all the way to the lake before Val stopped fighting and filled his lungs with water. Merlin clutched at his chest. His heartbeat seemed to blur at the edges. The feeling radiated outward, cold and blank. Was this what death felt like? He opened his eyes, but he wasn’t in the forest anymore. He was falling through darkness. Through absence.
With a solid splash, he found himself in the shallows of a darkly glittering lake.
The lake.
Merlin didn’t have time to contemplate how he’d gotten here so fast. Val was barely visible at the center of the black water, one hand grasping for the sky. Merlin cast himself away from the shore with a messy dive.
He swallowed lake water, swam harder. “I’m here,” he shouted, grabbing on to Val’s hand. Merlin wrapped one arm around the shoulders he knew so well and tried not to think
