Val nodded, ticking them off on his fingers as, somehow, their bodies drifted closer. “You’re getting younger. I’m getting older. I’m probably going to die soon. You might never figure out mortality. These seem like small issues, really,” Val said, teasing Merlin like it was his life’s work. “If you can come up with a good one…”
“The barrier,” Merlin said. “If I take my eyes off it for too long, we’ll all be dead.”
You’ll all be dead, Merlin’s brain corrected. And I’ll be left alone to mourn you.
Val put his arms around Merlin’s neck, lacing his hands there, keeping Merlin’s eyes at ground level. “If you did die tomorrow…”
Merlin’s finger flew into the air. “I can’t—”
“Theoretically,” Val said, gently rolling his eyes. “What would you want people to say about you, Merlin?”
“Once upon a time, he had a very nice beard,” Merlin said. “He was the teacher of forty-two king Arthurs. He never gave in to tyrants.”
“Your fear is a tyrant,” Val shot back.
“Are you saying I’m as bad as Mercer?” Merlin asked, his offense only mostly feigned.
“You’re worse,” Val said. “Mercer doesn’t tease me and then leave me alone at night to… what’s the Old Earth phrase? Take care of myself?”
Merlin coughed. Violently.
“Are you all right?” Val asked, his smile spreading wide.
Walk away. Leave now. Abandon all hope, ye who flirt with Val.
But Merlin stayed exactly where he was, with Val’s hands looped around his neck. His body was making its own decisions, and they were questionable at best. “You’ve been… because of me?”
“Yes,” Val said, taking a step forward. “How do you deal with it?”
“I lecture myself, mostly. Long, dry lectures.” Merlin’s palms were prickling. His hands were still at his sides, forgotten and awkward. “But sometimes… yes. Sometimes I indulge in other methods. My imagination is rather potent. Shall I show you?”
Oh, celestial gods. What had he just offered?
“You’re killing me,” Val said, his smile as wide as ever.
“Then at least we’re dying together this time.” Merlin raised his hands to the place they most longed to be—Val’s chest. He slowly, slowly, started to explore, fingers moving in circles, rippling outward. He pulled their bodies together, fitting Val’s slightly longer frame with Merlin’s smaller one. Val had muscles that didn’t look prominent like Kay’s or Jordan’s, but they were there, shifting under his skin, glowing blue-purple in the barrier’s light.
Even with so much time to anticipate what this might feel like, each moment of contact surprised Merlin. The slip of hands under shirts. Their faces brushing, cheeks and jaws sliding along each other, lips soft on skin, a long slow preamble to kissing.
“Ohhhhh,” Val said slowly, standing back.
Merlin leaped. “What? What?” Had he ruined everything in some unforeseen way?
“You knew this was going to happen tonight,” Val said with a pleased, satisfied smile.
“What do you mean?” Merlin was genuinely puzzled.
“You shaved for me.” Val ran a finger along Merlin’s jawline, rubbing his curiously smooth countenance. “How did you shave this close during a planet-wide drought? You’re baby soft.”
Those words unlocked a deep fear. Merlin had never so much as set a razor to his skin. Baby soft. This was the proof of Merlin’s backward aging. He would never have a future with Val.
Shut it down. Shut it all down.
He violently cut off the feelings running through his body. The emotions blasting through his heart.
Everything.
The night went dark, and Merlin and Val gasped. For the first time in a year, there was no barrier, no brilliant web of light in the sky.
“Did we just doom the planet by almost kissing?” Val asked.
“No.” Merlin had shut down everything inside of himself—including his magic. Technically, they had doomed the planet by not kissing.
And Mercer ships were already raining down.
Merlin tried to put the barrier back up, but his magic was too weak to create the entire thing from scratch. Besides, Mercer ships were swarming the atmosphere, and now Lionel had an invasion to deal with.
Val and Merlin ran through the castle, waking everyone up, shouting down the stone hallways. They were all going to die, as Merlin looked on, unkillable. And all Merlin could think was that it was a damn shame he’d stopped himself from kissing Val before it was too late.
All he could picture was Ari’s disappointed face.
Everyone gathered by the light of a few stubby candles in the great hall, pulling on clothes. “Merlin, what happened to the barrier?” Gwen demanded. “Why is it gone?”
“I experienced a slight… malfunction,” Merlin whispered, guilt rolling inside of him like great sea swells. “Please, if you’ll let me apologize…”
But before he could grovel, Gwen’s watch lit up, ominously blue. For a year, not a single message had been able to get in or out of Lionel. Merlin’s web of magic had been down for less than five minutes, and here was someone who wanted to talk.
The Administrator’s head popped up. Everyone else looked so different after this year, but he was exactly the same, with his smooth face and bland eyes. “Good-bye, dearest Gweneviere,” he said in a vinegar voice. “We’ll always wish you had accepted our offer on Troy. We miss your wife so much, don’t you? Good news, you’ll be reunited soon—”
The signal cut out.
Killed. On purpose.
“His sense of drama is getting stale,” Val muttered.
“The Mercer ships are landing,” Gwen said. “We’ve sealed the castle doors. Jordan is outside on watch. Hopefully she’s waking people up and gathering her knights.”
Merlin knew that the Lionelian tournament knights had been training for this all year. He also knew that they were dehydrated, exhausted, and didn’t stand a chance in a full-blown fight against a Mercer attack force outfitted with the best killing machines money could buy.
“What now?” Merlin croaked.
Gwen and Lamarack exchanged a glance. “We evacuate the planet,” she said. “Go.”
Lam took off, with a quick kiss of her hand.
“Evacuate?” Merlin echoed. “How are we going to do that with a tiny ship that was far from spaceworthy in the first place?” His voice sounded pinched and hysterical in his own ears. His guilt reached a fever pitch. “Error isn’t even close. How are we supposed to get to her with Mercer forces pouring through the city?”
The cannons boomed, and everyone jumped. “I thought those were ceremonial,” Kay said.
“They work in a pinch,” Gwen said. “We have to keep the invading forces distracted for long enough to get off the ground. Lam and I have it all worked out.”
Gwen grabbed a candle in a stamped tin holder and approached the wall of tapestries in the dining hall. Most of them showed pictures of knights on horsebots. Not exactly traditional, but Merlin had grown to love the anachronisms of this place as much as everything else.
Jordan appeared, pounding down a flight of stairs, looking so red and strained with exertion that Merlin thought she would tip over on the spot. “Are you quite all right?”
“How did you even get inside?” Kay asked.
Jordan knelt before Gwen, her loyalty spotless even under such stress. “I had to get to my queen. I swung over the mercury moat on a hidden rope and scaled the castle walls by starlight.”
“Of course you did,” Merlin said, rolling his eyes.
Gwen ignored the jab. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but with the ships landing, we have no choice. There is another ship in our colony, Merlin.” She pulled aside a tapestry—one of the previous queen at her coronation—and revealed a metallic door that looked strangely like the ones on Error. “You’re standing inside of it.”
Kay spun to her, his face gratifyingly b
lank. “The castle is a spaceship?”
“The towers, crenellations, and most of the façade were added later,” she said, which explained Merlin’s observations about the additions to the odd metallic base of the castle. “The core of the building is a generation ship that the original colonists converted.”
“But it hasn’t flown since Lionel was established seventy solar cycles ago,” Val said.
“You want me to revive it with magic!” Merlin shouted, hoping he could still save the day, even though he was the one who’d put them in so much danger in the first place.
“We need you to save your strength. Besides, the ship has to fly on its own if we’re to have any real chance.” Gwen’s eyes skipped over him, to Kay. “Let’s have the only person in this company who’s lived in a spaceship since birth take a look at the machinery.”
“What?” Kay asked. “No.” Gwen’s brown-eyed stare was weighty, a weapon that bludgeoned Kay better than any words. “I can’t fly your castle!” he insisted.
“Sounds like a personal problem,” Val muttered.
“You three,” Gwen said, her gaze picking out Val, Merlin, and Kay. “Come.”
Jordan frowned openly at Gwen’s choices. “My queen, I could help—”
“I need you to lead our people to safety. We have precious little time. Mercer will have to drain the mercury moat before they invade, but that still only gives us minutes,” Gwen said, cutting off the knight with a hand to the back of her neck. She set her forehead against Jordan’s. “Today is the death of our dream, old friend. We can’t let everyone die with it. Get our people to the evacuation points.”
Jordan gave a deep nod and rushed away.
Gwen pulled open the hidden metal door, revealing a set of stairs. The rest of the party descended into a set of close chambers that Gwen navigated with quick, nervous steps, the light of her candle throwing shadows on the metal walls, while the cannon fire above grew apocalyptic. Gwen finally stopped and shoved a box of tools in Kay’s hands. The hope on her face was the most aching thing Merlin had seen since Ari’s death. “Please,” she said.
“I can’t promise anything, spaceship-wise,” Kay said carefully. “Error is the biggest thing I’ve ever flown. And I’m not going to say a word against her, but… she’s no castle.”
“More like a flying broom closet,” Val said.
Gwen pointed Kay in the direction of the main console. It looked like all of the computers Merlin had seen over the course of a very long lifetime had been melted together. “The principles are the same,” Gwen promised.
“Yeah,” Kay said. “But doom is in the details.”
Twenty minutes later, Kay was swearing at a wall of metal. Gwen and Val had disappeared to check on the castle attendants and get a progress report.
“I’ve gone through the motions, and she won’t start.” Kay punched a few buttons with a sudden ferocious energy.
“Is it really so different from Error?” Merlin asked.
“My baby,” Kay said longingly. Then he swallowed with the grim determination of a man about to embrace his last resort. “Whenever Error gets fussy, I, uh, sweet-talk her a bit. Could you maybe turn around?”
Merlin spun in a half-circle before he fully understood what he’d agreed to.
“Hey there,” Kay said. “I know we don’t know each other so well, but we’re in this together so… let’s make it happen. Okay?” He paused, and Merlin could only imagine that he was pressing buttons. Or caressing them. “Yeah. That’s a good place to start, you pretty castle.”
Merlin’s cheeks flared with the kind of heat that would kill a lesser mortal. This felt like a fitting punishment for shutting off the barrier and refusing to kiss Val… listening to Kay sweet-talk a spaceship was the kind of mortification he deserved.
“All right, that’s good,” Kay said. “Yeah. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Merlin thought he would faint from relief at the sight of Gwen and Val running down the stairs with several attendants in tunics and leggings and soft leather boots. His reprieve was short-lived, however.
“Mercer drained the moat,” Val said. “We have about two minutes before the whole castle is crawling with associates.”
Kay coughed.
Merlin stepped forward, somehow becoming the ambassador for the most embarrassing mission ever. It had gone from an absurd possibility to their only shot at escape. “We have a bit of an issue,” Merlin said. “The ship is in need of… encouragement.”
“Did you hear me say two minutes?” Val asked.
Kay let out the sigh of a condemned man. He turned back to the consoles. “Hey, sweet thing. Heyyyy. Don’t be jumpy like that. You’re doing fine. Just tell me what you need.”
Shock pried Gwen’s mouth open.
Kay pressed a string of buttons. “Okay, so I think I’ve got you configured, and since your main system generates its own power, you just need a spark, baby.” He looked to Merlin.
Merlin fired up his fingers, hummed a slow jam to fit the mood, and hit the spot Kay was pointing to with a weak, sickly bolt.
The room fell silent—the cannons had stopped firing. Merlin cast a look around at Gwen and Kay and Val, trying to memorize their faces so he would remember them as well as he remembered Ari when they were dead two minutes from now.
Then the consoles gave off a dusty-hot breath. The spaceship lifted from the surrounding rock with a catastrophic crash, and everyone was tossed to the side. Merlin grabbed a hard metallic corner, wishing it were softer and Val-shaped.
“You’re going to be the first castle in space, baby,” Kay said, patting the nearest panel. “That’s pretty hot.”
There were five meeting points outside the city, each one holding a well-concealed pocket of a hundred or more Lionelians. In the distance, they watched the Mercer forces overrun their city, burning the marketplace, shelling the tournament ring.
At the final meeting point, Error waited, a dark speck against the honeyed sunset. This place was so beautiful, and Mercer had just ripped out its beating heart so that its loyal customers could have luxury condos on stolen worlds.
“Should one of us stay with the evacuees?” Val asked as the castle doors swung closed, everyone safely inside and the controls handed over to Gwen’s most trusted tactical adviser.
“We’ll lead them from Error,” Gwen said darkly. Merlin could tell that she was worried about the Administrator’s next moves. Gwen might still be marked, even though they’d taken Lionel. She was keeping her people safe by keeping her distance, and it stung her as acutely as losing the entire planet, he could tell.
Error soared through the clear skies. Apparently, Mercer didn’t care about chasing them down as long as they won and took what was wrongfully theirs. Gwen sat in a tight ball, her knees meeting her chest. This was the other part of choosing to be on a small, private ship. She didn’t want to show her people her grief.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin said, laying his failure at her feet. “My magic shouldn’t have faltered.”
Gwen shook her head bitterly, and he thought she was so mad she couldn’t speak, but then she looked up, her eyes devastated and yet filled with fire. “Our little planet lasted against Mercer for a year because of you. We gave everyone in the universe hope that it could be done. We never folded. And we got out alive.” She sighed. “That’s what resistance looks like, Merlin. It’s not one glorious, shining victory. It’s a torch that you keep burning, no matter what.”
It was a beautiful speech—and by the end of it, Gwen was crying.
As soon as they were out of Lionel’s orbit, Kay called Jordan into the cockpit to take over for him. He went to Gwen, wrapped his arms around her and led her toward the little kitchen for a drink of water. This was what Gwen and Kay did best together ever since Ari died. They pooled their grief, swimming freely in it. Merlin wondered if they would go to the cargo bay and stare at Ari’s sealed coffin together.
Val sat at the round table in the center of the c
abin, looking for someplace to take them all now that Lionel belonged to Mercer. Not even an hour after he’d lost his home, Val was already deep in thought, doing the necessary work, saving everyone in a hundred small ways.
That was his magic.
Val’s long fingers worried the edges of a star chart. He tapped endless coordinates into his watch and sighed. They would be facing another doom tomorrow, with nowhere to go and supplies so low, and Merlin finally understood the math.
He needed to kiss Val before that happened.
He needed to kiss Val now.
Merlin stood up, breaking the calm of the tiny cabin.
“Where are you going?” Val asked, worry running through his words like a current.
“I’ll be right back,” Merlin said, holding up a finger. “With ideas.”
He wanted to scout out a place beforehand. When Merlin finally kissed Val, it would be with all of the focus and purpose he usually saved for ending this blasted cycle. But Error was so tiny. Merlin rushed from room to room. Kay’s cabin was locked up, and Lam was in the bathroom. Merlin felt dizzy with indecision and lack of food. “Snacks!” he cried, remembering the one place on the ship that no one else had access to.
The pantry. He’d unlocked it with Kay’s retinal scan once. He could do it again. He bolted toward the back of the ship, imagining Val up against the dry goods, the rustle of boxes mingling with soft breath. Merlin had just enough magic left. He put his fingertips to his chest and shocked himself with a burst, his body swelling into Kay’s. He used Kay’s large, blockish hands to open the pantry.
And shut it.
Merlin tried to un-see Kay’s pale, fully undressed backside. The twin logs of his legs, the squared-off cheeks of his buttocks, his mussed silver hair. And behind him, pressed against the shelves, her dark curls raked with sweat, her sighs dashing Merlin’s hopes, was Gweneviere.
This was the other new part of Gwen and Kay’s relationship, post-Ari. They grieved together… and then they slunk off somewhere to have sex.
Once & Future Page 20
