Merlin’s magic snapped into place, creating a bubble to keep out the cold and leave her with oxygen. He called the sword back to her hand in the same motion. She held it tightly, but she held on to Merlin tighter. Until she couldn’t. He sealed the atmosphere around her skin like a space suit and pushed her away.
“Stop! Merlin, stop!” She propelled herself toward him, which was increasingly hard in the limited gravity.
Merlin hummed until the water returned to the state of a liquid doorway. “I’m sorry,” he said, tears muffling his words. “Don’t make me say good-bye!”
She got a hand on his shoulder and held on to his robes. Her mind spun with ways to make him stop. “But we just got you back.”
“There’s no other way to get Nin to open her cave!”
But there was. And Ari knew it.
Merlin went to step into the water, and she pulled a low blow.
“You didn’t even see Val yet,” she shouted. Merlin’s resolve cracked ever so slightly, and she grabbed him by both shoulders. “You’re the hero now, Merlin. Not the martyr.” Ari put a hand to his cheek. “Our perfect moment. Our beautiful Kairos.”
And she pushed her sword through her own chest.
Merlin’s tears froze along the rims of his eyes.
“This is not what I made you the sword for!” he cried, as Ari fell to her knees, blood suddenly everywhere.
Gwen screamed and rushed back toward them as the rest of the crowd disappeared toward evacuation pods. Val must have already made it out; Merlin didn’t see him at Gwen’s side. Ari’s distraction had been only that—a ruse to keep him from carrying out his plan.
He magically sealed Gwen into an air-suit as she knelt and frantically searched through the folds of her dress. She came up with a tiny pill, as white and hopeful as the first sight of the evening star.
“Is that what I think it is?” Merlin asked. “How did you procure it?”
“I knew Ari was going to get hurt doing something exactly like this, so I traded in my crown.” Gwen forced the pill between Ari’s lips and broke it by pushing Ari’s teeth together.
Ari choked, which pushed blood from her wound, and for a second Merlin truly thought she might get better, might come back swearing and spitting and ready to fight like last time. Instead, she slumped all the way to the ground. Her eyes were two blank screens, staring up at the broken dome.
“No, no, no,” Gwen said, her voice strangely empty. She must have thought her contingency plan would work—just as Merlin had been sure of his own scheme to save her. And now she was dying, just like Nin had promised she would.
Ari’s body started to vanish.
Gwen looked to Merlin like he might be able to stop it.
“Nin is collecting her,” Merlin said helplessly.
Which meant she had to open her cave.
That’s what Ari had died to give him—a way to get to Nin.
But there was no way Merlin could stop Nin from creating a new cycle with Ari’s spirit. His magic wasn’t as powerful as the Lady of the Lake’s. Ari had ruined the only plan to make him strong enough. If Merlin cast himself into the body-sized bubble of the lake and bound his death to it now, Ari would have died for nothing.
With only seconds until she was completely gone, Merlin shouted, “Get Val off this blasted moon! Keep each other safe!” This wasn’t the way Merlin had dreamed his reunion with Gwen—with any of them—would play out. Even with all of time at his glowing fingertips, there was never enough when he needed it most. Merlin threw his arms around Ari’s quickly disappearing figure. He felt her dissolve right as the moon’s dome cracked into a final collapse. Merlin closed his eyes and caught a ride with Ari’s body.
He smelled Nin’s cave before he saw it—damp and close, like all of the misery Nin had inspired over the centuries had been trapped down here and distilled into a particularly strong odor. Wet dog and stale dreams.
When Merlin opened his eyes, Nin was standing over Ari’s body like a beautiful vulture.
Nin didn’t seem to mind that Merlin had appeared in her cave, but then, he was still cloaked to her. He undid the spell and waited for her to notice.
“Oh, good,” she said, with the first genuine smile she’d given him in centuries. It was terrifying. “Even when I can’t see you, Merlin, you remain as predictable as a tightly wound Swiss watch. Your desire to save this shiny hero brought you here just in time for the end of this show. And the beginning of the spin-off.”
Merlin scrambled to his feet and raised his hands, his magic grabbing for the first thing it could find. A scattering of loose stones rose into the air and flew at Nin—passing through her incorporeal body and hitting the cave wall.
“That’s it?” Nin asked with a canned laugh. “That’s how you’re going to fight me after all this time? Sticks and stones?”
“I don’t want to fight you, Nimue,” Merlin said.
A shadow passed over Nin’s calm for a moment so tiny that only another time child would be able to isolate it. It seemed that sticks and stones wouldn’t break Nin’s bones, but that name just might have hurt her.
“I’m tired of fighting, Nimue,” he said, pressing harder on her past. “But I’ve been caught in a circle of your making with very little choice about it for centuries, and I’ll be damned before I’ll let you start a new one with Ari.”
“Oh, you’ve already been damned,” Nin said. “By your own choices. You blame me for the universe’s troubles, but are you so sure I’m the author of this sob story? I’ve never once taken dominion over a single mind or a body. I’ve only given people choices, never taken them away.”
“Like when you kidnapped Val?” Merlin asked, ripping several stalactites from the cave’s ceiling
