Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy Page 0,74

took Gwen in her arms, and Old Merlin’s scream lit the night brighter than his magical flame. “You two! In league to destroy Arthur from the moment you appeared in Camelot. Feeding him treachery and lies!”

Val and Lam came running, emerging from the smoke just behind Old Merlin.

“Go back!” Merlin shouted, waving them off.

“We’re not leaving you with him.” Ari leveled her sword, and Old Merlin looked far too happy to duel. Merlin couldn’t believe that he had friends who would stand between him and his sordid past.

Old Merlin’s fingers crackled, bolts of magic leaping out. Ari caught them on the edge of her blade, driven back toward the lake. Merlin ran to Gwen and handed off the tiny one. “Thank you,” he whispered solemnly.

“For what?” Gwen asked, one eye on Ari as she battled the screeching mage.

“I don’t know!” Merlin tried. “A lot of things, apparently!”

He turned back to Ari just as one of the old mage’s bolts caught her across the face.

“No!” Merlin cried, hands sputtering with sparks.

Ari fell back heavily and landed with a crash at the edge of the lake. Lam rushed forward with their sword drawn, but Merlin got there first, throwing himself at the head of the pack.

It was time to take down this ancient nightmare.

A song roared out of Merlin’s throat as his fingers fired up. He raised his hands, calling up a dragon of flame to match the one that had attacked Camelot. The sky above the shoreline filled with its long, flowing lines, its fiery breath.

Old Merlin didn’t miss a beat. He conjured a fire-dragon of his own, one bright sinuous line at a time, green to clash with Merlin’s orange. They met in an explosion above the water, parting to whip at the trees with their long, deadly tails. As they met again and again, the sky turned viciously bright.

Merlin flagged from heat and magic exhaustion, but in the corner of his eye he saw Lam and Val sneaking up on Old Merlin. He needed to keep the old mage distracted. He pushed harder, splitting his dragon in two and attacking from both sides at once. Old Merlin looked delighted and maddened at once. “Perhaps we are the same person, carbuncle! No one else could hold out against me like this!”

The sky sizzled with lightning and the first threatening drops of rain, as if Nin had opened her mouth to disagree on that point. Both Merlins paused, looking up, but the clouds grumbled once and that was it.

Old Merlin’s hands went back to their wild symphonic dancing, and Merlin kept pouring out magic, because he could see no other choice. His dragons bit and reared and breathed fire, and on any other day it would have given him joy.

But today, this fight was going to end him.

He shrank so fast that he could feel it happening, his bones and skin narrowing down. If Merlin had been eleven when he’d left Camelot a few hours ago, he was much younger now. Nine? Eight? Even his mind felt different, like clothes nearly falling off. He needed to stop soon. If he didn’t, he’d slip into the dark place before memories—he was risking the best of his past. The first time he’d met Ari on the moon. The last time he’d kissed Val. The golden days with Arthur, so very long ago. The new wonder of Lam’s friendship. Jordan’s ferocity and Gwen’s bright torch of resistance. Even Kay, the ridiculous. Kay, who wasn’t coming back. Merlin couldn’t bear to lose the shining thought of the people he loved.

He couldn’t let himself forget.

Merlin’s mind lit up as bright as the stars.

Old Merlin was the one who needed to forget. As long as he knew about the baby, he wouldn’t let this go. There was no convincing him that the child wasn’t a threat to Arthur. No reasoning with his fears or the violence that followed in their wake. No winning this fight, because the old mage had hundreds of years to waste and Merlin had none.

He let out one last push of magic, his dragon splitting in dozens of fiery directions. A pack of dragons to rival the knights of the round table, each one pointed at Old Merlin’s great hulking beast. Instead of attacking, they flew straight into its mouth, like a brace of arrows released down its throat. Old Merlin’s dragon thrashed and burst but re-formed just as quickly. With a great swipe of its claws, it scattered Merlin’s little dragons into