trade it for tortilla chips, no matter how many it could buy. “Bad idea,” she muttered, putting on her best Kay impression. “So now you’ve got an impulse control problem and a sword.”
A cracking shriek sounded from the oak. Ari turned as the trunk gave way, a crumbling dark heart of bark where the sword had been. She ran as it snapped, snarled, and cascaded into a heartless fall.
Ari had to dive out from under the whipping branches. Rolling onto her back, she breathed in gasps on the soft ground, cradling her new treasure. “What are you?” she found herself mumbling, running her fingers over letters etched above the hilt. It wasn’t in Ari’s native tongue, but it was the same alphabet Mercer pumped through the galaxy along with their crappy goods. The only language she’d spoken during the decade she’d been forcibly separated from her home planet.
Ari thought she recognized the word. It was so regal she whispered the name aloud.
“Excalibur.”
Merlin woke up.
The ceiling of the crystal cave glimmered. He could make out, in a fuzzy way, points that stabbed the air high above his head. He reached for his glasses, smacking around on the cold floor until he found the thin wafers of glass, the horn-rims. He settled them onto his face and everything danced into focus. Merlin sighed. He didn’t know why he bothered correcting his eyesight when there was no one to look at.
At this point, he preferred his nightmares to being awake. Waking up meant caring about things like Morgana and magic. It meant the hamster wheel of tragedy was spinning, and it wouldn’t stop until Arthur died—again.
The chivalrous fool must have pulled the sword out of something. It wasn’t always a stone. Once it had been a sewer grate, another time, a beanbag chair. Let no one say that Morgana lacked a sense of the absurd.
And now that he was awake, it was time to work. Merlin had to go through the same steps he did in every cycle. Find Arthur. Train Arthur. Relieve his bladder of centuries of pressure. Not in that order.
He stood up, knees springy. When he looked down, his skin was wrinkle-free and baby fresh. He caught sight of himself in the nearest crystal. He was no longer old and venerable, or even middle-aged and respectable. Merlin’s cheeks were round, his glasses set over eyebrows that had been stripped of their bushy character. His lips frowned back at him, the color of English roses in springtime.
The glory of his beard? Reduced to a scratch of stubble.
“Stop,” he muttered to his body. “Stop doing this.”
Merlin remembered taking Arthur 37 to a Mexican restaurant for his thirteenth birthday, when over fried ice cream Arthur shouted that he, like Merlin, intended to get younger every year. Merlin had wanted to throttle that particular Arthur, in a friendly and informative sort of way.
Everyone assumed Merlin had done it on purpose, but he’d never asked to age backward. And now he was sliding into adolescence, with a sickening anticipation of what must be in store. How old would he be when he woke up for the next cycle? Ten? Five? Would Arthur listen to a tiny child who claimed to be his mentor?
And afterward—after babyhood—would Merlin merely blink out of existence?
He moved with a stewing sense of anger. He couldn’t decide if the fuming was meant for Morgana, who kept them trapped in this cycle, or Arthur, who had woken it up. Again.
Merlin found an out-of-the-way cluster of crystals to use as a toilet before he made his way through the many paths of the cave. They all led one way. Out. Away from his hibernation spot and into the world—such a terrible place, the world, always needing to be saved.
When he reached the cave’s entrance, the portal appeared like always, as reflective as a mirror, oily black instead of silver, ready to send Merlin wherever he needed to be. He touched his fingertips to the surface. It swirled like troubled ink. “Where are you, Arthur 42?”
That number. Merlin tried not to feel the weight of forty-one Arthurs, all dead before they fulfilled their great destiny. Mankind was never truly united. And so Merlin kept spinning through the cycle, hoping that the newest incarnation of an ancient king would do the job.
Merlin hummed a calming tone and sent his mind careering toward whatever came next. Being able to sense the vague shape of the future was one of his gifts. An ill-gotten one. He shook