what happened when I was asleep again?” Merlin asked. “It’s not my fault you stay perpetually awake. You should invest in a good cave.”
Ire scratched Morgana’s face. Merlin had gotten under her icy demeanor, and it felt addictively good. “I don’t need to show you that pain again,” she spat. “Let’s find something that really hurts. Let’s visit the ways you’ve failed my brother in every lifetime, shall we?”
“This is ridiculous,” Kay said, pushing between the two of them, his burly arms casting Merlin back toward Val. “She’s not even human. How much can she actually do to us?”
Morgana was upon him in a second, a lightning strike of a woman, fast enough to give the crowd whiplash. She pressed Kay’s chest, and he crumbled like a handful of ash. He was on the ground, rolling and shouting, speaking in tongues. The only thing that Merlin could pick out was Ari’s name… until Kay fell silent.
And Lam was still down a few yards away.
Merlin had promised Ari none of her friends would come to harm. How had he failed so fast? He kept his body between Morgana and Val, arms spread wide. “Stop pestering mortals and give yourself a challenge,” Merlin taunted, his throat dry.
Morgana smiled at the invitation. Merlin knew she couldn’t drive him into the grave like she could with his Arthurs. But she could make him hurt as deeply as possible. That should have been Merlin’s motto for his role in the cycle—all of the pain, none of the death.
Morgana brushed her fingers over Merlin’s cheek, sending a shower of needles through his skin, stabbing deeper until it reached his mind. He tried to catch a glimpse of Lam and Kay. To determine if Val was safe. To make sure that Ari was far away. But Morgana pressed a thumb to his forehead, the singe of her laugh following him into a vision.
He saw the Arthurs that Morgana had killed, the memories stacked high. Arthur 9, driven to insanity. Arthur 23, suicide. Arthur 35, reduced to frantic babbling about how a dark-haired sorceress haunted his dreams.
When the pictures faded, Morgana was smiling at him. Merlin could see through her face, his focus wavering in and out. She ran her fingers down his arm, leaving trails of white-hot pain. His vision went blank, replaced by the cruelest memory.
His lover’s face so near it blurred his features, all except those bright brown eyes. The rush of Art’s kiss, the welcoming darkness. And then Merlin was pushing Art away, saying, “We can’t do this forever,” meaning those words quite literally. When Art tried to argue, to kiss him again, when he broke down and cried, Merlin tightened his jaw and lectured on all the reasons they wouldn’t work. He made himself sound wise, when all he truly felt was fear.
Merlin came out of that one lying on the ground, unable to tell if the bruising he felt was on the inside or out. He pushed up to his elbows. While he’d been stuck in his own head, Morgana had had plenty of time to cast Val to the ground, all three knights glassy-eyed. And there was more. She’d taken out the people around them, every last one.
Morgana had struck down Merlin’s human shield.
“Merlin!” Ari’s voice brightened the courtyard.
“No,” he croaked, but his voice, like his heart, was in tatters. “Don’t…” Merlin breathed hard. He didn’t need Morgana’s touch to unlock any more of his memories. She’d thrown the doors wide. Now he saw a castle in a chilled northern country that no longer existed, Arthur 12 listening as Merlin used visions of the future to help guide him. But it hadn’t worked; he blamed Merlin for his heartbreak over Gweneviere and ran him through with Excalibur. It was the only time one of his Arthurs had tried to kill him.
Then that blistering day in a country far too hot for his robes, when Merlin grew so desperate to leave the cycle that he tossed himself off a cliff—only to wake up with seventeen broken bones and the rest of cycle 20 to finish.
And the moment he’d realized he was truly stuck on repeat. Arthur 6. Merlin had been so existentially seasick that he’d tried to sit that one out. He found the nearest monastery and argued with the monks until they decided he must have a demon for a mother. Arthur hadn’t made it far without Merlin’s help, dying with a thatch of arrows in his gut before he set