“What are you doing?” she asked, looking up at Merlin with a flash of disgust. Her voice was small, a cold drop of water where it used to be a raging tide. “You’ll never be able to keep me like this. You’ll drain your magic and then…”
“Then what?” Merlin asked. “You’ll be Nin again?”
He rushed over to her, fingers blazing with the threat of sparks, his hand closing around her startlingly real neck. “I’m afraid you’ll be too dead for that.”
Nimue laid a hand over her heart. A whirlwind of magic started up, time pushing at Merlin, trying to age him prematurely. He could feel his skin prune, his hair shoot longer. He sang and reversed it; she screeched and he sprouted gray hairs. They were fighting now, but for the first time they were matched. Merlin’s magic was depleted in a way that Nimue’s wasn’t, but she was so out of practice at being in a body that she stumbled like a new colt.
“Boy,” she spat. “Are you going to kill me? That’s what men do. That’s what men have always done. They kill and burn and take, and they stuff their ears against the screams, but at the end of the day they want to be remembered as good. So they write stories about their shining deeds and all are made to watch and listen and love them.”
“You’re right!” Merlin said, tossing boulders from the cave into Nimue’s whirlwind so she had to evade them, throwing off her attack. “Everything you’re saying is spot-on! You could actually go further with it!” He nodded at Ari’s body, nearly forgotten on the bier. “Humanity is trying to get better, though, and this time you’re the one holding it back.”
Nimue faltered—which gave Merlin the perfect opportunity to push her down, pinning her to the rocks of this odious cave with a blast of light and heat so fierce it shone like a sword, ready to slice.
Nimue closed her eyes.
But for some reason, Merlin wasn’t magically stabbing her.
He would have taken out Nin, destroyed her. But this wasn’t Nin.
“Heroes aren’t what you think,” he said. “It’s… it’s not just one boy and his pride against the world. Or it doesn’t have to be. If we give more people a chance, if we give them each a moment, those moments will add up.”
Merlin stepped back. He’d finally stumbled over the answer, after all of these centuries. “That’s why you’re going to be the hero this time, Nimue.”
“What kind of trick is this?” she asked flatly, still lying on the rocks.
“No trick,” he said, holding up his magical fingers to prove they weren’t about to spark her into nothingness.
Nimue had done terrible things. So had Merlin. But he’d been given a chance to get better—a chance that she was never given.
To change this story, really change it, he had to finally break this cycle.
The only catch being that if he was wrong, Nin would come back and they would all be doomed. But he was no longer the mage with a gnarled heart who would do any dark deed for a moment of safety.
He hummed the tones of a song that Morgana had always liked, and a dark doorway lit up with glowing white runes.
“What are you going to do?” Nimue asked roughly, getting to her feet. “Let the enchantresses of Avalon finish your job for you? They hate me as much as you do.”
“They feared you, Nimue. You never let yourself be truly one of them. You stood off to the side, powerful and alone.” He winced. “I know what that’s like.”
“You don’t let me go,” she said faintly, as Nin’s glow fought its way through her pale, ordinary skin. “That’s not how this story ends.”
“You can’t see the future anymore,” Merlin reminded her. Nimue blinked hard, and Nin’s glow receded. She was no longer fighting Merlin. It looked more like she was fighting herself. “This door is your second chance,” he rushed, needing to convince her before Nin came rushing back. “Leave this future. Use your magic to live in this body. Live out your life as an enchantress, powerful and respected, as you always should have been.”
The Lady of the Lake’s warm, round tones slipped out of Nimue’s thin lips. “There’s always a price. What is yours?”
“That’s a very Nin question, and I don’t appreciate it,” Merlin said. “The only thing I want, in this exhausted universe, is a guarantee that your eternal counterpart won’t come back.”
“Getting rid of one powerful spirit won’t make all people good,” Nimue said.
Merlin sighed. “I’ve lived through enough of humanity to see the stunning range of mistakes that we can make. At least without Nin, we can make some new ones.”
Nimue looked from the doorway to Merlin, and back again. “When I died, I bound the waters of time. Unbind them, and Nin will never be able to return.” She looked around the cave as if it were a nightmare trying to sneak up on her. “She wants to come back. Do it quickly.”
“Motherfucking assballs of unrelenting space whores!” Ari yelled and jumped to her feet. She leaped down from the stone pyre and started kicking and punching it until her knuckles bloodied and feeling returned to her legs in the form of new bruises.
“Ari?”
She swung around and found Merlin staring at her. “Hey, old man,” she managed through the pounding of her pulse, the racing of veins. “Thanks for the jump start.”
“You… you’re alive again.”
“Have been for a few minutes. I was trying not to interrupt your victory there. Do you know how hard it is to lie still when your heart is on fire?” She spun in a full circle, unable to stop herself. She really needed to beat the tar out of something. “Didn’t that less salty version of Nin tell you to hurry?”
Merlin nodded, beckoning her closer, but also seemingly wary of her adrenaline-fueled state. “We have to destroy the
