Gwen sighed, and Ari pulled her tighter. This plan, at least, made sense; they would send Kai and Merlin to Avalon for safekeeping, and then come back for both of them. Somehow.
They were so enamored with their little one, speaking nonsense love in tangled whispers, that they were unprepared for the moment the sleeping baby started to… glow.
“What the…?”
“It’s the moonlight,” Gwen said, as the baby hummed with light that seemed to come from within.
“I don’t think so.” Ari remembered the strange swirl of black that had transformed the lake water the moment the baby was born.
A falcon circled overhead, screeching in a way that made Ari look up.
“Ari!” Gwen cried at the same moment the hideous bird dropped at their feet, wings beating against the dead leaves as it transformed. Ari’s sword was with her armor and the horse. She tried to kick the bird toward the fire, but she was too late.
Old Merlin unfurled his gnarled self before them, froze Ari and Gwen, and stole the baby from their mother’s arms.
The woods were vile, dark, and deep. Merlin ran through them at top speed, following the lonely hooting of an owl. Without turning around, he knew Val and Lam were lagging behind. It seemed that being an eleven-year-old gave him boundless energy for things like leaping through underbrush and chasing down his older, morally bankrupt self.
He would never forget the look on Old Merlin’s face in the tower, as the vile mage broke out of the deep freeze first. He hadn’t looked villainous and callous and craven.
No—he’d looked terrified.
Coming close enough that their noses almost touched, Old Merlin whispered, hot and musty, “I never should have let you in my tower. It was wrong to trust you. Everyone in Camelot is conspiring against Arthur.”
Merlin wanted to shout that Nin was the one conspiring against all of them, and anything else was really small potatoes. But Old Merlin had already poofed into the form of a sleek, dark-feathered falcon and jetted out the tower window.
The next few minutes of frozen waiting amounted to torture: a mashup of his greatest fears on repeat. Fear for Ari, Gwen, the baby. Fear for himself. Fear of himself. But none of that was going to get Merlin out of this mess. Terror might be a natural reaction to a dark and unexpected universe, but at a certain point, giving in to it became a selfish way to live. His old self was proof of that.
Merlin’s pinky finally twitched, followed by his left eye.
“Progress,” he mumbled mushily. His lips still wouldn’t close all the way.
As soon as he could walk, he crashed across the tower. A plan had just leaped into his mind, and it started with Archimedes. He ripped the cloth off the owl’s covered perch. “Old Merlin just went out that window, and you’re going to help me track him.”
Archimedes blinked and looked away, beaky and superior.
“I know you understand me!” Merlin shouted.
The owl screeched so hard that he had to clap his hands over his ears.
“I’ll tell Old Merlin that you’ve been eating the mice he keeps for auguries.”
Archimedes scowled; an impressive feat considering he didn’t have lips. There was no time for proper falconry. Merlin lifted his wrist, and Archimedes condescended to hop on, his claws digging into the meat of Merlin’s arms a little harder than was necessary. He ran down the tower stairs as Archimedes kept screeching and clawing. Merlin wasn’t going to leave the castle without Lam and Val. He didn’t know what kind of ambush he was walking into with Gwen’s kidnapping, and he very well might need backup if he was to focus on Old Merlin.
He panted as he came to a stop in front of the siblings, who were seated at an otherwise ill-attended round table.
“Did Ari find Gwen?” Val asked, toppling his chair back as he pushed to his feet.
“No idea,” Merlin said. “But I have a bird that’s going to find Old Merlin.”
“What does he have to do with this?” Lam asked. “He didn’t take her, did he?”
“It might be the only terrible thing he didn’t do,” Merlin said. “We have to stop him. He knows about the baby.”
Lam and Val had never sworn so loud nor moved so quickly.
And now here they were, all three of them pitching headlong through the woods as Archimedes tracked Old Merlin in falcon form, farther and farther from Camelot, into the lawless woods where the fear of rogue knights and cutpurses gave way to a much deeper worry as they neared Nin’s lake. Val’s voice came from behind Merlin, ragged but ferocious. “If Nin had anything to do with Gwen disappearing, I will drag her out of that lake by whatever wig she’s wearing, and—”
“Her hair is incorporeal,” Merlin puffed, turning slightly without breaking stride.
“I know,” Val said. “Just let me have one moment of righteous anger against that beautiful horrorshow.”
Merlin thought of Nin taking pleasure in this latest painful twist. Coming to Camelot had only been acceptable because he believed it would shield Gwen’s baby from harm, and now he was the very person who posed the biggest threat to the child—an irony that Nin would no doubt find delicious.
When Merlin broke onto the banks of the lake, he found neither Old Merlin nor Nin. Two figures were by the water, hands reaching out as if to stop someone, bodies locked in place. In the dusky light, their features stayed dark until Merlin grew close, but he already knew what he would find.
Gwen and Ari, frozen.
As Lam and Val came to a rough stop on the gravel bank, Merlin popped Gwen and Ari with a tiny bit of magic. They came back to life in stiff, shocked bursts.
“Gwen, are you all right?” Lam asked. “Who stole you from the castle?”
“No one,” Ari said quickly, trying to get Gwen to sit down. “She’s all right. Just, you
