Now it was time to give his knights an equal seat in his presence.
Ari sat beside Arthur, eyeing the two free seats across the table. At the same moment, the door opened and all turned. Ari beckoned in Lam, Val… and Gwen.
Arthur looked at all of them, eyes falling on Val last. Val in his corset and kohl-lined eyes. “Who are… you?” Arthur’s voice was entranced, and Ari nearly busted out a laugh.
“I’m about to rock your kingdom, that’s who I am.” He inclined his head toward Lam. “I’m also Lamarack’s brother.”
“I’d like to introduce you to Percival,” Ari said, barely loud enough to cover Val’s predictable growl at his full name. “You will not find a sharper diplomatic mind, my king.”
Arthur’s eyebrow raised. Ari was being respectful for once, and Arthur had noticed. Lam and Val took the open seats while Gwen hung around in the background, fussing over tapestries and trying to blend in with them.
“I’ve called you all here to find out where your loyalties truly lie.”
“With you, Arthur,” Sir Kay said lazily, almost bored.
“Mayhaps.” Arthur opened the small wooden box and there it was, the damn chalice. All bone white and gold-rimmed. “The enchantresses gave me a gift at my celebration. They told me I need only ask a question of this cup. When you drink its water, I will know the truth.” Arthur held up the chalice. “I ask this magical gift, who among me is true to my Camelot?”
Arthur spoke Camelot’s name as if the great city were his lover, and Ari found herself strangely moved by his passion.
“It fills with the Lady of the Lake’s water,” Sir Galahad whispered. “The women of Avalon were proud of this creation.”
“Aye,” Arthur said, handing it to Sir Kay first. “Drink your truth.”
The knight huffed as though it were a ridiculous request, but sipped the liquid and instantly began to choke. He held his hand over his throat and stumbled for the door, colliding with the wall on his way out.
In the silence afterward, Arthur seemed taller, more confident. “From this day forward, Sir Kay is not welcome in this kingdom.” He motioned for the next knight, Gawain, to take a drink. And they all did, the entire round table, and no one but Sir Kay had a bad reaction. The knights watched closely when Val and Lam drank, but Val nearly grinned from whatever the chalice imparted, and Lam took a steadying breath.
Finally, the chalice made it to Ari with only a sliver of liquid left in the bottom. She emptied it into her mouth, finding the water identical to Nin’s lake: sharply chilling all the way down her throat.
Ari’s eyesight went dark, and she gasped. She heard concerned murmurs from around the table, and then she saw a slice of time. A pure moment. Arthur was embracing her… handing her the chalice. He was giving it to her. To take to the future. And then the moment was gone.
Arthur’s eyes were wide as if he needed to know what had happened to her. What she’d seen. “Sir Lancelot?”
“You have my sword,” Ari said, putting a hand on his shoulder. She was going to help him with his kingdom, and he was going to give her the chalice. “My king.”
Arthur took the chalice back and studied it once again. “I wonder… what is my legacy?”
Gwen’s near-distant gasp was almost a shout. Ari’s arm shot out to stop Arthur, but he tipped the entire chalice back and disappeared into whatever he saw. His blue eyes rolled white and his body began to shake. Ari shouted for Galahad, and the two of them lifted Arthur from his seat, laying him across the table. His limbs jumped and slammed into the hard wood, creating a cacophony of jarring bone sounds, and Lamarack and Val rushed to hold down his legs.
Ari didn’t know if he could hear her through his seizure. She had a terrible flashback to when she’d met Merlin in that alley on the moon. When Morgana had gifted him a few hundred years of human history with a light tap. The way he’d cried out had felt like its own punishment—and yet that empty, whimpering silence was so much worse. The only difference was that Arthur wasn’t seeing the past, he was experiencing his own future.
Did his legacy stop at the battlefield where he died upon his own son’s sword? Or did the chalice show him the other Arthurs, the endless dance of unity and despair, of might and right, equality and hate? The cycle of humanity’s brightest hope ever set against its ceaseless dark?
Arthur stopped flailing, going too still. He looked dead on the crosshatched wood. Far too similar to the corpse king Ari had seen in Nin’s cave. Ari shook Arthur while Gwen held his hand, testing his pulse. She gave Ari a sharp look that seemed to yell do something.
Ari got her hands on the sides of his face and whispered into his ear. “I’m here, Arthur.”
Arthur’s blue eyes shot open, and his head turned slowly toward Ari. “I saw you small and helpless. Floating through blackness.” His voice sounded entire years older. “I think… that’s when I met you.”
“That is the past and the future,” Ari said, surprised by the tears in her eyes.
“Help me to my feet.”
She did, steadying him with an arm around his ribs. Ari found that his hands were shaking, and she placed them on Excalibur’s handle. They stilled at once.
“Arthur?” Gwen asked softly. He shook his head in her direction, wincing, and motioned for everyone to leave. But not Ari. He held on to her. Ari expected a barrage of questions. Demands for explanations. Instead he set his gaze on her.
“We have much to do.”
Merlin couldn’t breathe. It was too beautiful.
He wanted to run his hand along the grain of the dark wood, and quite possibly kiss the smooth surface. The round table here at