Merlin squatted in the first cluster of crystals looking for the small, bony, gold-rimmed chalice. He hated being apart from Val for even a minute, but as the future moved on without them, it grew ever more imperative to fulfill the Arthurian legend, grab the chalice, and get out.
Would that really end the cycle, though, if Nin was the one behind it? Or would she find a way to keep it spinning on forever?
Merlin suddenly couldn’t handle being back in this place, stuffed with the detritus of so many years spent chained to Arthur’s story—the evidence that this cycle truly was his prison.
“Val?” Merlin asked, his voice pinging around in the high-ceilinged space. “Val, did you find anything?”
No answer.
Merlin ran back to Val’s last known whereabouts. He was sitting cross-legged on the cold ground, seemingly unable to move.
“What’s the matter?” Merlin asked, poking Val’s shoulder. It felt like they were both hitting personal rock bottom.
Crystal bottom?
“I thought I would be fine,” Val said, his eyes unfocused, his breath hard. “I was fine. I survived Nin’s kidnapping and you fished me out of her lake but… I was terrified the whole time I was down there.”
Merlin didn’t know what to say; this was entirely his fault.
Val stood up, grabbing Merlin’s skinny arms. “Look, there’s a reason I wanted to come here with you, even though I am ready to cancel all caves forever. There are things I need to tell you, Merlin.”
“Private things?” he asked, hopeful and terrified.
“Nin-flavored things,” Val said.
Merlin braced himself against the smooth face of a particularly large crystal.
“The good news is, I don’t think she can see in here,” Val said. “Like Avalon, it’s built on someone else’s magic, and that makes it off-limits.”
“But she can see everywhere else? Because of her water?” Merlin asked, needing to understand everything about Nin, as if this were a thirst he’d had for several hundred years.
“Wherever her water goes, she goes, too. Information trickles in that way, but that’s not enough for Nin. Are you ready for the bad news?”
“How bad?” Merlin squeaked out. “On a scale from mild rubbish to total Armageddon?”
“Nine and a half,” Val said. “She has a window into the cycle.”
“What is it?” Merlin asked, whispering even though this was the one place they wouldn’t be overheard.
“It’s who. And… it’s you.”
Merlin’s brain hit a boiling point. Nin had been watching him? This entire time?
“You’re the one person she can always see. That’s why she needs you in play in the cycle, that’s why she keeps you alive. And she’s especially excited when you’re suffering. It’s a little like one of Mercer’s extreme reality shows, except you’re the star and Nin’s the producer and the audience. Oh, and it lasts forever.”
“She’s been watching every horrible thing that’s ever happened to me because she… enjoys it?” Merlin’s nausea rolled so hard that he wavered on his feet. Val reached out to put a comforting hand to the back of Merlin’s neck like he had so many times before—and stopped himself.
“More like she feeds off it,” Val said, stuffing his hand in his pocket.
“But how did she create the cycle? By stealing Arthur’s body?” Merlin had been in her cave the day Arthur died—sidelined while she made him watch Arthur’s demise, after which she must have stolen the one true king’s body on its way to Avalon, where Morgana was waiting to put him to rest. How had Merlin not realized she was this awful much, much earlier? It was starting to seem like the one true oversight.
“Arthur is important,” Val said, “but he’s not the whole story. He’s trapped in this like everyone else. Nin pulled some kind of power move that gives her dominion over a piece of time. I couldn’t figure out how it works. She guards some things a lot more closely than others, and she did not want me sniffing around that.”
So Nin really had crafted the entire cycle. On purpose. To hurt people. “I thought she was a neutral voyeur. A magical master of schadenfreude. But she’s more than that, isn’t she?” Merlin had barely seen Nin for centuries, and now she seemed to be everywhere. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Evil time lords didn’t really do coincidence.
And Nin was evil.
He’d thought for so long that lurking and watching was harmless, but now he could see the truth. Not to give hate a pass, but it had the potential to be overcome. The emotion could be purged; the person who’d ingested its poison could heal and move on. Whereas sitting back and manipulating people to feed your own power? Without feeling a single one of the consequences? That was perhaps the best working definition of evil he knew.
“Look…” Val said, “There’s one more thing I have to say. I know this is a weird time and that things with us are in the land beyond awkward, so this is not the right moment to bring it up, but…” Merlin crossed his fingers and waited for Val to say something about their relationship. Anything. “You’re a lot like Nin, what’s that about,” Val said flatly.
“… what? I am not like Nin.”
“Some observations,” Val said, pacing the crystal with a hard sound. He was fully avoiding Merlin’s gaze now. “You both have caves. That exist outside of time. Neither of you age like the rest of us. And please think about the portals.”
“I need help to make those!” Merlin cried. “Three magics, remember?”
“Yes, but you ripped spacetime to save me from the lake. By yourself.”
“You think I can make portals all higgledy-piggledy?” Merlin nearly slapped himself for that one. “You think that my magic is like Nin’s? But… why?”
Val’s amber eyes were dark in the half-light of the cave. “I don’t know, Merlin. You tell me.”
“I can’t! I have no idea where I came from!” he cried.
“Yes, that’s part of the problem. What if you need that answer?” He took a step closer, reflected light from the crystals winking into his eyes. “What if
