Merlin held up a finger. “Technically I’m not. Or, I was, but that was a few millennia ago. See, the baby became Old Merlin, and then aged down, and down, and down to… well, me.” The girls stared until he added, “And then aged back up a bit. Toddling about, entranced by my own boogers, wasn’t for me, not when I knew there was an alternative. I hope you understand.”
“My baby turned into Old Merlin?” Gwen shouted. “The mage who stormed around Camelot telling everyone that I was a scheming harlot? That’s ridiculous. It’s horrendous. It’s—”
Merlin closed his eyes and spoke fast. “I turned the baby into Old Merlin, started him on his path in Camelot. That’s why the old version of me was so feral. I might have looked like an old man, but I had an infant’s understanding of the world. It was all hunger and fear. And that’s why I formed a desperate tether to the one person I loved.”
“Arthur,” Ari said, head down as she touched her new sword lovingly. Gwen shook her head, which only freed more sparkles. “Glitter, Merlin? Really?”
“It was the first thing that sprang to mind!”
“How could you, Merlin?” Gwen asked, scolding in a way that felt distinctly parental. “How could you do that to Kairos?”
“I did it to myself, point of fact,” Merlin said, the truth etched on him as pain. “I knew that, no matter how much I suffered by living through the cycle, I would survive it and find you eventually. Any other choice could have kept us apart forever.”
“You’re telling me you put yourself through all of those monstrous, lonely lifetimes to come back to us?” Gwen peered at him from all sides.
“I had to. You’re my family.”
Gwen grabbed his hand, pulling it close to her face. She examined each digit as if counting and inspecting a newborn’s fingers. “Are you really mine?” she asked. “I should know. I should look at you and just know.”
“Our family does stretch the imagination a tad.” Merlin smiled crookedly. “Although, the first time I saw you, you seemed familiar. I thought maybe it was because Old Merlin had had those run-ins with you back in Camelot, but now I think I was remembering your voice. Your face. I know most people don’t remember their birth, but I’m not most people.”
Gwen let go of his hand. “I’m really confused right now. I think I need a minute.”
“I understand. I had about fifteen years to think it all through.” Merlin plucked a soft pretzel out of the hands of a frozen person. “Time travel is horrible on the blood sugar.”
Gwen watched him devour it. “Oh, gods, he really is Kay’s baby.”
“He has your eyes,” Ari said. “Kay’s hair. Can’t believe I never noticed before.”
Gwen shook her head. “How do I explain to people that I have a seventeen-year-old baby?”
“I’m closer to twenty now,” Merlin said, rubbing his stubble proudly.
“My baby is older than me,” Gwen deadpanned. “Sure, why not.” She rushed at him, nearly picking him up despite their size difference. Ari’s relief wrestled with her panic. Time might be on pause, but a hundred weapons were still pointed at them.
“I’m going to stop Nin,” he said into Gwen’s shoulder, holding her tightly. “I know how she became so powerful.”
“Do you also know she’s been pretending to be the new Administrator?” Ari asked, sheathing the beautiful sword in her belt.
Merlin opened and closed his mouth. “What? She has no body. It’s part of the problem, truth be told, although it does keep her locked in that cave, which is a help.”
“Well, she’s figured out how to use Mercer’s technology to be here now, as a hologram of some sort.” Ari cursed. “There have been signs all along that she’s been dabbling with humanity in this time period. I should have seen it.”
“That’s why she wanted my baby…” Gwen touched Merlin’s scruffy, lightly bearded cheek. “Why she wanted you. If Mercer had taken you, you never would have been born in the water. You never would have become the powerful Merlin who will stop her.”
He grimaced. “I haven’t done it just yet.”
Ari’s thoughts were sudden and bleak. “The water.”
“What was that?” Merlin asked.
“The poisoned water that killed nearly all the Ketchans… that was Nin, too!”
The silence was new darkness.
“Wait, there are Ketchans still alive?” Merlin said. “That sounds like good news.”
Gwen spoke up. “They went into deep space hiding years ago and came back when we took a public stand against Mercer. Only we’d vanished to the past before they arrived.” She turned back to Ari. “How could Nin do that? I thought she was bound on Old Earth.”
Ari grabbed at her skull, roughing up her short hair. “I should have seen this before! The way she showed off how easy it was to drop me in the fountain on Ketch. She was laughing at me.” Ari pointed at Merlin. “You said her power is in every atom of that lake. When I first pulled Excalibur from that oak, there were Mercer machines harvesting the trees and bedrock. They would have gone for the water, too, wouldn’t they? All of the resources? They sucked up Nin’s lake and launched her into the cosmos. She probably reached everywhere in no time. Infiltrating the universe one drop at a time, controlling things from her cave, unlimited power via Mercer’s same-day shipping!”
Ari looked over the thousands of frozen faces, and then up through the massive crystal dome at outer space. Soon Amal would arrive, but it wouldn’t matter because Mercer wasn’t the bad guy after all. They were the weapon.
“Look, we probably only have a minute before the universe starts rolling again.” Merlin spoke quietly. “I know this sounds bad, yes. It sounds awful, but I also know how to defeat Nin. That’s where I’ve been so many years, spying on Nin’s backstory.
