“It’s a demented amusement park!” Val exclaimed. “How tacky.”
Gwen gasped. “Those are my people. Look! They’re being forced to work there!” The Lionelians seemed to be perfectly framed in the ad, their suffering unsuccessfully masked by sparkling filters.
Ari squeezed Gwen’s hand. “It’s a trap. That’s why they released the ad today. They must know we’re back somehow, and they want us to come. To try to save your people.”
The ad continued. “And as a grand finale to your stay in the land of medieval dreams…”
“I just threw up in my mouth,” Val muttered.
“… try your hand at the Sword in the Stars. Pull it free and become the new Mercer Administrator! You could be the next king of the cosmos!”
Ari lost her breath. The hologram focused on a sword, showing dozens of people trying to lift it free while triumphant music blared. The commercial zoomed in until the sword was the only thing visible. It radiated light in a way that felt beyond anything Mercer could manufacture.
“Doesn’t even look like Excalibur,” Val noted. “Morons.”
“That’s because it isn’t Excalibur. This is a different sword,” Ari said, tingling all over as she stepped forward, drawn in.
“That sword has been lodged in the rock of the moon since humans first pioneered space,” one of the Ketchan elders said. “It’s always been there. Mercer has just capitalized on it. Built around it like a fortress.”
“They did,” Ari murmured, pulling herself closer to the ad. Why a Mercer stronghold on this small moon?
“Pause!” She stepped so close that she was face-to-face with the hologram of the sword. Her eyes trailed the hilt to the spot where she’d first read the name of Arthur’s famed blade.
She pointed to the finely etched word. “This sword is Kairos.”
Merlin stepped out of the portal and onto the edge of the lake. It had the same surface as ever: silver and gleaming, like a weapon polished and ready. But it also looked different than it had in the time of Camelot. Less defined at the edges, streams running to and away from it in all directions.
Avalon crouched in the mists on the far side, though Merlin didn’t know if they called it Avalon yet—he had gone that far back. The air was heavy with the cries of birds.
At first, he didn’t hear the woman screaming.
She had waded into the shallows, her hair like pale weeds, a man trudging next to her, carrying an iron knife.
Merlin ducked behind a screen of weeds. He didn’t know exactly what he was about to witness. He only knew he’d told the time portal to send him back to the beginning of Nin’s story. The truth was hiding in the past, and he was the only one who could go back to find it.
He needed to know how to stop the Lady of the Lake.
The woman crouched in the water up to her chest. Merlin peeled his attention away and found he wasn’t the only one watching—an entire village had poured out to see this moment. When the woman screamed, Merlin was surprised the sky itself didn’t tear open. The water thickened and darkened with blood. The knife plunged down, and a few moments later the man raised a tiny child.
It cried as hard as its mother had just screamed.
This must be the birth the enchantresses had told him about—the only other birth that ever happened in the waters of time.
The woman disappeared under the water, and Merlin worried that she had drifted into death, but after a moment she came back up, shining and wet, gasping for breath.
That’s when the man started to yell at her.
They spoke a tongue that beat like a battle drum, tense and taut. Merlin was mesmerized, though he didn’t know half the words they used, and the others were only kin to English. One word he picked out, over and over. “Sunn.” At first, he thought they were talking about the sky overhead, the clouds that refused to break.
“No,” the woman said softly. “Dohtor.”
“Dohtor,” the man said again, bitter as salt.
He was angry that she’d given birth to a girl instead of a boy. The man flung his hands up and argued with the heavens, as if they’d given him a bad deal. Merlin stole a word from the angry stream. Steorra. Was he claiming that their child had been born under the wrong stars? That the heavens hadn’t aligned to give him the one thing he wanted?
The woman shook off his words like dirty water, clutching the tiny child to her breast.
“Nimue,” she said, holding out her baby for everyone to admire. If they were as upset as the man in the lake, they did a better job of hiding it. Merlin felt the air fill with their celebrations as they played crude flutes and beat drums and cried out her name.
“Nimue. Nimue.”
Merlin needed to learn everything he could about Nin if he was going to defeat her. Which meant staying here until she turned into an inhuman being—however long that took. However hard it was to keep away from Ari and Gwen and Val.
Yes, he could jump back to whatever moment in time he wanted now that he could use his powers without aging down into an embryo. But how long would he last without his friends? Especially like this—small and alone and uncared for in a time when violence seemed a given, rather than an option?
He was crouched in the reeds, on the verge of a panic attack, when someone crept up on him. Merlin whirled at the footsteps and found he was being watched. A woman with long, light-brown braids approached him with a curious look. “Bearn?” she asked in a low tone.
Had she just called him a bear?
“Hello,” Merlin said, hoping that the greeting translated. “I’m just… here to see the baby. I’ll be going now.”
He didn’t care how
