Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy Page 0,73

found a tiny wooden falcon that reminded him of the past in the warmest possible way, Val convinced him to buy it. Val had believed that Merlin deserved to be stupidly happy.

The baby gave a final-sounding roar, complete with another shower of magical sparks.

Merlin tucked the toy falcon in the little one’s mouth, and the baby went instantly silent. “Oh, so you’re hungry,” Merlin murmured as the baby gummed the falcon heartily. “I am, too. And I do always get a bit sparkly when I need to eat.” He spoke to calm his own racing heart, although he’d brought up an important point.

Where had this child come by such magic? Certainly not from Gwen or Kay.

Was this what Ari had meant when she said the baby was a little different?

“Carbuncle!” Old Merlin’s voice scoured the woods. “Come here and I might not kill you!”

That was a blatant lie. He was going to wipe Merlin right out of the story. Maybe… it didn’t require him anymore. Had he come back to Camelot to die at his own hand? What if this was truly his end, back at the beginning? What if this was how Nin won, and she was watching from her cave—the way she’d made him watch Arthur’s death?

The way she watched everything Merlin did.

The baby cooed with delight, and their fingers glowed, tips like tiny holiday lights, bright and glittering, as if the joy of the falcon was too much.

“Hey, that’s my signature move,” Merlin said.

As if to prove it, sparks exploded farther off in the forest and illuminated the figure of Old Merlin crashing in their direction. “Carbuncle! I can see you! No use hiding now!”

Merlin clutched the baby close and ran deeper into the woods, avoiding all obvious paths, keeping to the soft beds of dark moss, occasionally cracking a dead stick. Had the sparks given away their location?

And how had Gwen and Ari’s baby done Merlin’s magic? Twice?

Merlin had accused his old self of ignoring the obvious. Now here he was, doing the same thing. He found a large black oak to hide behind, stopping to catch his breath and grip the impossible. The baby’s sparkle fingers had dimmed, but they glowed like tiny stars while clutching the falcon—the only evidence Merlin had ever been loved.

Perhaps because he’d just handed it to himself.

“I mean, there can’t be…” Merlin’s voice tiptoed toward the impossible, trying not to scare it away. “Three Merlins?”

The tree that Merlin was standing behind exploded, disappearing in a hailstorm of white sparks. Merlin hunched forward, his entire body shielding the baby.

Old Merlin emerged from between the trees, blazing them to nothing as he walked by. His hands were full of lightning, his eyes burning up all possibilities for mercy. “Give me the child, carbuncle. The augury—”

“It’s not about this baby! You know auguries are vague as fuck!”

Old Merlin raised a hand, one blazing finger leveled at Merlin. He ducked, keeping the baby at the center of his huddled body as the magic hit the tree behind him. It sizzled like a sparkler. Merlin couldn’t keep his hold on the blankets and fight back at the same time, so he ran once more, any sense of direction disappearing in the haze of fire and smoke. He came out, coughing and sagging, back on the shores of the lake.

In one direction, Old Merlin was advancing on him, stalking between the white-hot hearts of burning trees. In the other, the water of Nin’s lake lapped silently. Hungrily.

Oh, good. He was stuck between a rock and an evil place.

“You don’t understand the doom you’re bringing on us all,” Old Merlin growled through a smoke-ravaged throat. “This world needs heroes. It needs Arthur.”

“I agree!” Merlin cried. “But I’ve seen the future. I’ve lived it. This baby might not be the hero you want, but you do need him. You need him so very much.” If he was right about his wild doppelbaby suspicions, killing this tiny person would mean wiping all three of them out of existence in one go.

“Merlin!” Ari cried, bursting out of the woods farther down the shore, sword raised.

Gwen was right behind her. “Where’s my baby?”

Wait, if the sparkly ragamuffin in his arms really was him, did that make Gwen his mother? It was too much to swallow—and yet far better than choking down the idea of Nin as a parent.

Old Merlin turned on Gwen and Ari as sparks hailed from the trees, pelting them with tiny points of fire like unholy rain. Ari