Nin sighed and blinked out of existence. She came back, glowing and pouring a cold whisper right into his ear. “I saved Percival from the time period you were afraid to lose him to. I kept him away from your twisted old self. I let him watch over you in safety and comfort and I even made snacks. Really, I thought you would thank me.”
“Should I thank you for nearly drowning him, too?” Merlin asked, turning to Nin only to find that she’d blinked back to Ari’s side.
Nin shrugged. “You saved him. One of your finer moments, really. You got to play the hero, and it was adorable.” Merlin shuddered from the cold of this place, from the deep freeze of Nin’s soul. “We both know how the stories of heroes end. You won’t be able to save Ari. Back to the safety of being the magical lapdog for you, Merlin. Back to your true place in the cycle.”
Merlin flinched and unleashed a torrent of magic. Sparks hit the walls of the cave like dynamite, sending rocks in every direction. The water crashed, the lake churning up. But Nin didn’t look a bit worried. She was perfectly implacable. She was winning.
Merlin should have sacrificed himself to the lake without making a glitter show of saving his family first. Now Ari was dead, because he’d been too human. Because he’d loved them too much. He looked down at Ari’s body. There was still so much color left in her cheeks—was that a side effect of the Mercer pill?
“She’s gone, Merlin,” Nin said. “Or should I call you Kairos?”
The hurt of that name—that person he’d never gotten to be—crackled through him. His magic burned, looking for another way to take down this master manipulator. Merlin wasn’t strong enough. No one was.
No one rivaled Nin. Except… Nin herself.
Merlin sang a door into existence. A dark, starry portal right in the middle of Nin’s cave. He closed his eyes and fished through the past. Merlin found what he was looking for easily, because he didn’t have to stray from the path of his own history. When he opened his eyes, Arthurs were pouring out of the door. Forty of them, to be exact, stolen from moments when they were doing unimportant things. Sleeping, trimming their beards, training to fight the smaller-but-no-less-evil evils of their day.
Nin shook her head as her cave filled with manly muscles and varying historical hairstyles. Gods, Merlin had forgotten Arthur 29 had muttonchops.
“Heroes? I thought you would have learned that lesson by now, Merlin. Heroes are just well-armed boys that everyone uses to make themselves feel better about doing nothing in the face of horrors.”
“That… can be a painfully accurate description at times!” Merlin shouted. Nin’s eyebrow rose even as she floated softly above the surface of the lake. “But heroes can also give people hope to keep fighting. And these Arthurs aren’t the draw, I’ll admit. If I can’t touch you, maybe forty swords made with your own hopped-up magic can.”
That was the one thing all forty of these Arthurs had in common—besides the soul of an ancient king and a shared gender, of course. They all carried Excalibur.
“Arthurs!” he cried to the confused horde of warriors, kings, and celebrities. “It’s me!” They turned to him, and just in case the dislocation of being stolen from time was a little too much for their minds—gods, he’d have to make them all forget this later—he added, “It’s Merlin the mage!”
There was a strange chorus in which many Arthurs shouted that he looked too young. One tried to fight his way to the front to get closer to him: a dark-haired man who’d clearly been ripped away from a dream, judging by the mussed hair and the sleepy eyes.
“Oh, Art,” Merlin whispered. He’d conjured his Arthurian ex-boyfriend into this fight. “Listen to me! Nin is the reason you’ve been trapped in this story. You must use Excalibur to stop her.” The Arthurs looked at one another, and perhaps the spirit inside them recognized each other, because they all stilled and shared a moment before rushing at Nin.
She was floating above the water, but Merlin could fix that. He pulled more rocks from the cave walls, creating bridges for the Arthurs to rush across. Every time one got close enough to attack her, she flicked a finger and his sword froze. “Merlin, I made those swords. You think I can’t stop them? You think I can’t make them do any little thing I please?”
All of the Excaliburs rose in the air, danced a little jig, and returned to the hands of their owners.
Nin sighed heavily and then every Arthur disappeared at once, along with the Lady of the Lake. When she reappeared, she wiped her hands clean as if all of those boy heroes had left a sticky residue on her incorporeal skin.
“What did you do with them?” Merlin asked, suddenly terrified.
“Sent them back where they were meant to be and convinced them it was a horrible dream,” she said. “Really, Merlin. Always expecting Arthurs to do your dirty work.” Her glowing face morphed, expression stretching until it took on a familiar cast. A crown rose from her incorporeal brow. “I notice you didn’t include the first Arthur in that little brigade,” Nin said, tugging at one of his wayward golden curls. “Too soon?”
Merlin’s heart skidded over the next several beats.
“Oh, you must be rather distraught, having just watched Ari die.”
Merlin’s heart was no longer rampaging. Now it was on fire. “She wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t put your hand up Mercer’s rear and used them as your own personal puppet!”
“I don’t usually have to become so… involved,” she said, sliding back into her original form. “But Ari makes things difficult, doesn’t she? You’re mad at her right now. You’re furious that she killed herself and stopped you from carrying out whatever plan you’d concocted to save the day. People don’t ever listen when you want
