Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy Page 0,6
cleavage and shoved it in Ari’s mouth, forcing her jaw closed. Merlin didn’t understand what was happening. He opened and closed his useless, magic-drained hands. His power hadn’t come back quickly enough.
Time was against him—it always had been.
Ari was hiding out in the Middle Ages, but the future was never far from her mind.
Especially now.
She couldn’t seem to lose consciousness but she wasn’t truly there, either. Her thoughts screamed foul memories while the Mercer first aid pill—bitter and boiling in her veins—drowned her body with adrenaline that made her, well, feisty as fuck. When the Administrator loomed suddenly, Ari swung so hard she spun and missed.
“Grab her legs!” Lamarack hollered just as someone Merlin-shaped dove for her knees, locking tight arms around her until her balance was compromised. Lam pinned one arm while the other arced in a left hook that caught Jordan in the face.
Jordan smiled, a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth and a look of dark pleasure in her eye as she hit Ari so hard that she went down and stayed down. When Ari closed her eyes, she saw an endlessly swirling taneen on fire, spinning in a tight circle. She shivered as her frozen moms were dug up from a mass prison grave. She lost her breath at the sight of so many murdered Ketchans, half-buried in the shifting red sand. She saw Kay…
She saw Kay with empty, lifeless eyes.
Ari thrashed until it all evaporated, coming back to her senses in strong arms. Sharp, real smells filtered through her. Hay, mold, horses. A lot of horses.
“This isn’t how I imagined our reunion.” Lam’s voice was in her head, or close to it.
Merlin’s voice floated down. “Have you ever seen that happen before?”
“I’ve never seen someone take one of those before. I’ve heard it can be unpredictable.”
“Unpredictable? I think I prefer Miracle Max’s miracle pill.”
“Merlin, what are you going on about?” Jordan’s taut words made Ari wince.
“I’ll have you know that’s a timeless cultural reference!”
“Shut up,” Ari managed, her mouth cotton. “I’m stuck in my worst memories.”
“That sounds like Ari!” Merlin knelt close, and Ari turned away, still fighting the desire to scream or punch. She peered out a window, searching the night sky and its pinpricks of stars for home. But Ketch wasn’t out there. Neither was Lionel, or even Error. They didn’t exist yet, and it left Ari feeling like she had these long months on her own. Like a futuristic ghost.
Ari closed her eyes. “Damnit, Kay. Help me, will you?”
“No doubt he’d upend Camelot for you, if he were here,” Merlin said, finally drawing her attention to the here and now. She was lying back on Lamarack in the straw mountain of a stable.
“If I let you go, will you behave?” Lam’s tone was gentle, but their hold wasn’t.
“I always behave.” Ari sat up gingerly, her heart still racing, tightening her chest with anxiety. She winced through the bitter aftertaste of Mercer’s famed first aid pills, the kind that could regenerate major tissue damage if immediately administered but were so high priced no one ever had one lying around. Ari had only used a pill like it once before, the day her mothers and Kay saved her from the void, her body riddled with infected burns.
“What happened?” she asked.
Lam rubbed her back. “You appeared like an armored angel in the midst of battle, took a dagger through both lungs, and yet you’re still with us. Thank God.”
“God? Since when do any of you reference singular, all-powerful deities?” Merlin asked.
“Lamarack is a little too good at adapting,” Jordan replied dismissively. “And you’ve been missing for a long time, mage.”
Ari held the spot under her arm that was hot and numb. For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t in her armor. Her clothes were stained and ripped, her breasts barely concealed beneath the ragged linen. “Where’s Gwen?”
“In the keep with her husband, the king,” Jordan said with far too much satisfaction.
“He came back for her,” Lam said, “after you magically appeared in the fray, saving Gwen only to get stabbed by our resident asswipe.”
Jordan narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know what you’ve cost Gwen. Again. That pill was for her.”
Ari stood too fast. Lam steadied her with a soft arm around her waist. “You had that pill for when the baby comes, in case something goes wrong.” Clarity struck like a match. “Shit.”
“No doubt the idiot people here will think this miraculous recovery is witchcraft and burn you at the stake,”