Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy Page 0,39

Merlin and his friends emerged into the haze and roar of the most intense festival he had ever seen.

And he had, against all odds, gone to Coachella with Arthur 37.

“Val would love this party,” Lam said wistfully as music started up, tabers and drums and some nasal third instrument that Merlin had forgotten but sounded strangely like a synthesizer. “Forget that. He would own this party. Half the boys here would have been writing him sonnets by the end. Do they do sonnets yet?”

Lam had made a simple offhand comment because they missed their brother, but those words spun in Merlin’s brain. How many of the boys here tonight were cuter than Merlin, and more important, not slipping backward out of adolescence? Was that part of why he had been comfortable letting Val stay with Nin so long? Because in some rotted spot in his heart, he couldn’t bear the thought of Val watching him grow younger and younger until they were an equation with utterly mismatched sides?

Merlin touched the tender spots on his cheeks where his teeth had just vanished.

Ari and Gwen veered away from Lam and Merlin. “We’ll find Arthur,” Gwen said. “He’ll be relieved that Lancelot is returned.”

Gwen steered the still-ragged Ari through the crowds straight to the king, who was standing near the bonfire with Galahad and Gawain to either side. He broke away at once to embrace Ari. She returned the hug in a way that didn’t look fake. Whatever had passed between the two of them on the path to Avalon, they were closer now, which only multiplied the distance Merlin felt. He used to live at Arthur’s side, and now he was a mere bystander.

King Arthur raised his hand, and the crowds quieted. “Tonight, my feast is graced with one of the finest knights Camelot has ever known. Sir Lancelot is not only powerful in a fight, he has helped bring us new allies and rid our kingdom of those who would cause harm.”

Merlin started. It was true—Camelot’s golden age was starting to peek over the horizon, and it was largely thanks to Ari. She pushed to make things better, even when it would have been easy to make an excuse and allow the same problems to spin on endlessly.

Arthur drew Excalibur and it glowed in the firelight, orange and gold, blazing and true. Gwen motioned to Ari, and she sank to one knee, head bowed. Gwen looking on with pride as Arthur touched each of her shoulders with Excalibur’s point.

“Sir Lancelot, Knight of Camelot!”

The crowd lost itself in wild cheering.

Merlin felt cold, despite the riotous bonfire. Ari was safe and the Arthurian legend was back on track. He should have felt hopeful, but between sending Jordan back and seeing this moment, it felt like he was being sealed in the tomb of this story.

They were supposed to leave.

Not stay.

Merlin grabbed Lam’s arm, suddenly desperate to rid himself of a thought. “Did you know that time circles are possible? Down in the oubliette, I was thinking about it. The later scientists of Old Earth called them closed temporal loops. Most lives march from past to future because that’s what the human brain requires to understand things. But time itself doesn’t care about human rules.”

“So you’re saying… the Arthurian cycles are one big loop?”

“I thought Ari and Gwen couldn’t be in the story at both the beginning and the end. But if we’re stuck in a circle, there’s no reason they can’t be. They sort of have to be.”

“That’s wild,” Lam said.

“It’s worse than wild,” Merlin whispered. “I think it might be my doom.”

Soon his magic would be drained, his life reduced to the rubble of childhood, and all of his friends stuck in the past. He’d never end the cycle. It would dump him here, back where it started, and leave him for dead.

But Arthur’s spirit had given him hope that this story could end. Maybe it was still possible. Merlin had to get his hands on that chalice and get them out of here. Now.

“Carbuncle!” The word scraped against the air. “Carbuncle!” Somehow Old Merlin had picked the least musical, most anatomically upsetting word in the entire language as his nickname. “Come here, boy!”

“I wouldn’t keep yourself waiting,” Lam said with a pitying look.

Merlin pushed his way across the courtyard, looking for hints of the chalice everywhere he went. It didn’t seem to have surfaced yet. He reached Old Merlin, who was conducting the party—literally. His hands waltzed in neat patterns, his