“Can’t you see she already has?”
You shook your head.
Christ, you were stubborn.
“She can take whatever she wants, and then we’ll have forever together,” you said earnestly. “I pledge it, Merlin, I vow it. I won’t leave you.”
Maybe not all of my sight was gone, because I could see how you thrummed with your vow, with your intention, and I knew nothing I could say would convince you to leave. And if you didn’t leave, there was the very real possibility you would die, and your child along with you. And Nimue, whatever you might believe of me, you have to know I never resented the child for not being mine. I loved him for being yours, and the thought of the babe perishing too was too much for me to bear.
I kissed you as our bodies separated below. It was a gallows kiss—full of desperate hunger and clinging need, and I poured all the years we’d never have into it. I poured all my fervent hopes and demands—that you would guide Arthur well in my absence, that you’d try to steer Britain toward peace, that you would be happy. That you’d keep singing, to your baby, yes, even to your husband, and that you’d spend the rest of your life merry and well.
That you’d never forget me, which was a selfish wish, I know, but am I not entitled to a little selfishness now and again? After two lifetimes dedicated to the service of others?
You were breathless when the kiss ended, your cheeks flushed and your eyes so sweetly blown to black, the way you looked when you wanted my body again even though you’d only just had it.
“Say goodbye to your mother,” I told you, my hands still roaming everywhere on your body, because letting you go felt impossible. “Let her take what she needs to take. And then come back to me.”
“Always back to you,” you murmured, brushing your lips against mine before you stood. And there was this moment as you left the cave that you turned back and faced me, a slightly puzzled look on your face. You also looked nervous—no doubt worried about what your mother would do when you told her—but brave. So brave. I knew looking at you then that you would survive the loss of me, that you would still thrive. But if your mother killed you? Would I survive?
No. I knew it with the grim certainty only the sight could give me. And I gave you a reassuring smile that seemed to steel your strength; you smiled back with the kind of smile that said I’ll be right back and you walked down the path to find your mother.
Once even the tendrils of your blowing hair were out of view, I reached for the last of my power. It was very faint indeed, only a dying ember nestled so deep it might as well have been already dead. But I called to it, sang it to my fingers and my hands, reached my mind deep into the roots of this island to feed it.
Just this once, I begged the island. Help me just this once.
Bardsey answered, its buried saints and priests answered, and the smell of apples ripe and crisp flooded my senses as my body flooded with power—but power for only this one act. Bardsey would help me right here, right now, for my desperate sacrifice, but I knew the moment I attempted anything other than what I had planned, the power would vanish.
It’s a curious thing about power. About fate. They have minds of their own, and looking back at it all now, I know that it could have happened no other way.
I knelt at the opening of the cave and pressed my hands against the rocky ground, seeking out the rocks themselves, their anchors and their seams, their faults and weaknesses. I closed my eyes. I remembered our kisses, the way it felt to fuck you, the snug warmth of you sleeping against my chest.
I imagined you singing.
The legends got another thing wrong, you see: it wasn’t you who entombed me alive, but me. I brought the rocks of the cave crashing down; I chose my death so you wouldn’t risk yours.
And still I loved you.
The earth shook with my love that day.
8
“Merlin,” Nimue whispers, stunned. S
he looks devastated.
Horrified.
Ashamed.
“When I left you by the lake all those years ago, it wasn’t only about Jack Pelleas,” I confess to her, though I guess she’s surmised as much by now. “I left because I wasn’t ready to die again. Not until I’d seen Ash to the end of his path.”
Nimue rises off my body; I miss her warmth immensely. “And you’re ready to die now? That’s it?” she asks bitterly. “Jesus, Merlin. Jesus fucking Christ.”
I press up to my elbows, my still-hard cock sliding free of the silicone sleeve as I sit up on the lounge to look at her as she stands facing away from me, her hands braced on the leather bench. I give her the truth. “I think I am.”
“Well, I’m not ready for it,” she snaps. “Not at all. Shit, Merlin, did it never occur to you to tell me this? Tell me what happened the first time?”
“Every day since I met you. Every hour after I left you by the lake. I rehearsed speeches and wrote letters. Twice I flew to Seattle just to find you and tell you, and twice I realized I couldn’t do it.”
