“Dude, the old version of you is cold,” Lam yelled.
Merlin’s cheeks were ablaze, his nerves fizzing. He wanted to hide from his shame, but there was nowhere safe in all of Camelot. This place was his shame.
Merlin fought sudden tears. No, he would not cry when faced with medieval battle. He was a mage… whose magic was exhausted. When a knight ran at him, sword raised, Merlin crouched and hugged his knees, only to hear the unmistakable sound of someone pounding his attacker into oblivion. When he looked up, the knight with the blue armor was standing over him.
They were mercilessly tall. Merlin yelled as the knight used the back of his robes to lift him to his feet like a dog taken by the scruff. “Help Gwen!” the voice commanded.
A familiar voice. One he sometimes heard in his head. One that laughed at him when he was being foolish and cheered him on when he was being, well, foolish.
“Ari?” he shouted as the knight spun away and took on a challenger in red who swung a short sword in his right hand and a great axe in his left. Merlin watched as the blue knight leveled both with a hard swing and then charged, using their breastplate as a battering ram. Which felt Ari-like, indeed.
The red knight toppled like a turtle on his back, and the blue knight grabbed the axe out of his grip and used one hand to shove his helmet back and the other to bring the blade’s arc down on his neck. In a great, foul spurt of red much darker than his painted armor, he went limp. Merlin must have been wrong; Ari was never so violent.
He tripped toward Gwen, who breathed the biggest sigh of relief at the sight of him. “I’m here, I’m here!” he hollered.
Jordan had found a sword and was protecting the queen with her entire muscled, dress-covered body. “Good, now help!”
Merlin tried to create a protective bubble, but only wound up out of breath. Gwen pulled him close as if she was now determined to protect him.
The blue knight swung toward Gwen, and Jordan stepped between them.
“Stop!” Jordan barked. The knight sheathed their sword and began the process of pulling their gloves free, while Jordan frowned at the dragon on their breastplate. “Who are you?”
“Your biggest fan, Jordan.” The knight flung away their gloves to lift their visor.
It really was Ari. Looking and swaggering and smelling for all the world like a medieval knight.
Ari clapped eyes on Gwen, her voice clear and promising. “Hey lady.”
Gwen’s face flooded with happiness and tears, and Ari’s was poised to do the same. They moved toward each other, but Lamarack suddenly shouted, “Yield, Sir Kay!”
“Kay?” Ari and Merlin asked in unison, both turning just as a knight pinned Ari’s wrist behind her back, stole the rounded dagger from her belt, and slammed it through the chainmail beneath her arm.
Ari screamed as she fell to her knees. It was the worst sound Merlin had heard in his long, painful history. Gwen’s shredded cry was a close second. He and Gwen ran for Ari while Jordan felled the attacking knight with a great blow to the helmet.
Ari tipped forward into Gwen’s arms. Merlin hovered over them, inspecting Ari’s wound. The dagger was in up to the hilt—which meant it had gone all the way through her chest. Now it was Merlin’s turn to cry out. An hour ago he and Ari had been standing in the red sands of Ketch, imagining a future without Mercer.
Now he’d fast-forwarded to a part of their story he could not recognize.
“Heal her!” Jordan commanded.
Merlin needed a spark that could disintegrate that dagger without causing more damage. He had to seal Ari’s wound and cauterize it, fast. He couldn’t survive all the ages and all of the Arthurs and come back to blasted Camelot only to lose her. But when he closed his eyes and hummed, his fingers fizzled and went cold. Merlin had returned just in time to not save anyone.
The battle died out around them. Gwen screamed a command at Jordan. Jordan hunkered in her ruined dress, took something small out of her cleavage and shoved it in Ari’s mouth, forcing her jaw closed. Merlin didn’t understand what was happening. He opened and closed his useless, magic-drained hands. His power hadn’t come back quickly enough.
Time was against him—it always had been.
Ari was hiding out in the Middle Ages, but the future was never far from her mind.
Especially now.
She couldn’t seem to lose consciousness but she wasn’t truly there, either. Her thoughts screamed foul memories while the Mercer first aid pill—bitter and boiling in her veins—drowned her body with adrenaline that made her, well, feisty as fuck. When the Administrator loomed suddenly, Ari swung so hard she spun and missed.
“Grab her legs!” Lamarack hollered just as someone Merlin-shaped dove for her knees, locking tight arms around her until her balance was compromised. Lam pinned one arm while the other arced in a left hook that caught Jordan in the face.
Jordan smiled, a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth and a look of dark pleasure in her eye as she hit Ari so hard that she went down and stayed down. When Ari closed her eyes, she saw an endlessly swirling taneen on fire,
