Sword in the Stars (Once & Future #2) - Cori McCarthy Page 0,75

the sky, where they fizzled into nothing.

In that moment when Old Merlin was crowing his victory, Merlin shouted, “Grab him!”

Lam and Val took hold of the skinny old mage, keeping him down. “Restrain his fingers! Cover his mouth!” With the old mage’s access to magic cut off, Merlin limped forward.

Gwen was kneeling in the shallows of the lake, over Ari’s unconscious body. At least the baby was firmly ensconced in her arms. “He’ll be punished for this,” Gwen demanded hoarsely. “The old mage has no idea what a real queen can do.”

“I know what to do,” Merlin said—sounding a little too much like a child bragging to his mother. “And believe me, he’ll be punished.”

He pushed up the sleeves of his robes, which were puddles of fabric now. His breath stuttered with uncertainty. This was something he’d never tried. But over the course of this fight, he’d gotten so young that it freed him from his old ways. Here, finally, was a silver lining of these backward aging shenanigans. Becoming a child had changed the architecture of his mind. There was no lifetime of fear holding him back.

Val had told him the truth: he had time powers.

And he had them because he was tied to the lake.

Like Nin.

Suddenly, he understood himself in ways he hadn’t before. Because he’d come back to Camelot, to this moment, he’d found his lost origins. Merlin knew the place where his story began, the ways that he was different. Having that truth set him free—and in that same moment it set his magic free as well.

It felt like a rushing of dark water inside of him.

It felt like time flowing in every direction.

He closed the gap between himself and Old Merlin. “You thought you beat me,” he said. “But we are more than songs and sparks.”

Merlin didn’t know exactly what to do—but then he remembered Morgana, touching his forehead, gifting him a few hundred years of wretched history. What he needed to do was nearly the reverse. He needed to take the past, steal the baby right out of Old Merlin’s head.

He touched the wrinkles on the mage’s troubled forehead.

And then Merlin was gone, spinning through the darkness. This was different than traveling through portals, behind the scenes of pure time. He was pushing into the folds of personal time—distorted and musty and strange. Still, he navigated it like he was born to the task, as instinctive as Jordan swinging a sword or Kay flying Error.

He crashed around in Old Merlin’s memories of Camelot, finding Uther, the vile Pendragon patriarch. Merlin had gone back too far. He moved forward, through a golden age with the Wart, briefly reliving that miraculous moment of a sword pulled from stone.

Here it was: a coronation, a marriage, a baby kept hidden. Merlin tugged, absconding with any memories of the baby’s existence, but they were connected to other things. It was like a root system—tug on one and the rest came up with it. Every moment the baby had touched had to go, which meant that Old Merlin’s memories of Gweneviere and Lancelot ripped away along with the rumor of their love. His own time as an apprentice went next. He felt the memory of this very fight breaking free, crumbling Old Merlin’s mind when it left.

The old mage howled as Merlin took everything.

Ari was lying on her back in a shallow pool of water beneath a black sky full of crystal stars.

Familiar stars.

She wasn’t on Old Earth.

Ari sat up on her elbows, dizzy from the bolt of Old Merlin’s magic she’d taken straight to the face. She tried to touch the wound, but the pain wouldn’t let her. And what was she doing lying in the city center fountain? She glanced around at Omaira, the capital of Ketch. It was night, but there were still orange lights in distant windows. Signs of life. Gwen’s people? Or had Nin thrust her back to a time when Ketch was still full of Ketchans?

The lights glowed brighter, spreading. Flames painted the city red, followed by screams that reached her as if being filtered through deep water. Which meant Ari wasn’t here; she was seeing what Nin wanted her to see.

Ketch on fire.

“Stop this, Nin!” Ari croaked. “I’ll take your fucking deal!”

Nin plucked her out of the spreading devastation as if drawing a curtain.

Ari was lying in the mercilessly cold water of Nin’s lake. Her friends gathered around her, hauling her limp limbs toward the shore. “Get her out of the water!” Val