Ever My Merlin (Book 3, My Merlin Series) (37 page)

“
You’ll get over it,
” came the calm reply.

I dropped the blade, hoping it would sink into his neck. It didn’t. With god-like arrogance, he simply shot me with a sleep spell and knocked Excalibur aside.

Vane sat up as I pitched forward. He put a hand under my knees and rose to his feet while still holding me. My head flopped against his chest.

Leonidas pushed Robin forward. “What do you want to do with him?”

“Set him free,” Vane replied. Shifting me, he took the seeing stone out of his pocket and tossed it to Robin. “Return it to your superiors. Tell them they’ve lost. Merlin can no longer help them. It is time to admit the world is lost.”

The cryptic statement was all I heard before my eyes shut.

***

I am Vane
, I said to myself and asked for strength.

My nightmare walked closer. The hill seemed to tremble with every step he took. I tensed. Deadened eyes swept over the camp until they found Sergius.

Septimus sighed. “I am proved right again. If you want something done, you must do it yourself.”

I pushed myself off my knees. “I’m not going with you.”

“I’m not here for you.” Septimus smiled, a very different smile from the lascivious one he usually gave me. This smile was calm, neither friendly nor unfriendly, yet at its edge I sensed a dangerous cliff. The earth trembled under his every step. Nervous sweat broke out down my back… something that never happened with Septimus. Whatever stood in front of me, I realized, was not Septimus. I very much doubted him to be a man at all.

“Who are you?” I dared to say.

Septimus’s lips curved into a chilly smile. His eyes glowed a furious green. “You are correct. The true spirit of this body has already crossed realms. I am merely borrowing it. However, I am disappointed. Have you forgotten me already, Vane? Have I not always treated you like a favored son?”

The sweat on my back chilled my skin down to the bone. I couldn’t say the name out loud. I didn’t dare.
Poseidon.

He strode to the little princess and picked her up.

It was the only thing that could have made me move. “What do you want with her?”

Poseidon glanced at me with mild amusement. “You ask a lot of questions. I shall forgive your impetuousness since you have served me well. You found the little one, but her destiny lies not in this place.”

I stared at the princess. “Is she yours?”

Poseidon laughed. “No, she is not mine. I leave such things to my brother.”

I swallowed. “She is one of you?”

He shook his head. “A mere mortal with just a touch of the divine and thus, entirely vulnerable. I meant for the gargoyle to protect her, but it seems I chose poorly. I admit we have allowed their numbers to dwindle, but perhaps with the dark times coming they will have room to flourish again.” Bright green eyes fixed on me. His voice warbled with suppressed power as he demanded, “Now, where are the apples?”

Unable to resist the compelling voice—a gift I always enjoyed using on others and didn’t enjoy having used on me—I glanced at our bedrolls. A whip of power rose in the air. The apple tore through the bag of hidden gold we buried and floated before us. Poseidon plucked it from the air. He opened his mouth and a strange song filled our ears.

I jumped as the ground ripped open. Clumps of dirt mixed with stone rose up. The dirt fell back to earth, leaving only stone. Poseidon re-shaped it into a three-sided bluestone structure. I recognized it. The Domnoni knew the stone circle of the giants.
Caer Sidi.
Saturn’s circle. The Roman god, Saturn, known to the Greeks as Kronos. The stone monolith was one from Kronos’s Circle of time.

Poseidon took the sleeping girl and tucked the apple in the crook of her arm. “Time for you to make your journey, little one.”

“No,” I cried out in protest.

Green eyes softened. “She is not meant for you, Vivane.”

His eyes made a movement. If I hadn’t been watching with petrified awareness, if I hadn’t been trained to look for every weakness, I would not have noticed the slight movement of his eyes that sought out my brother.
Merlin.

What could my brother have to do with her? They just met.

“She has another purpose. You must let her go. My mother has chosen.” Poseidon answered the question I hadn’t formed.

His words nagged at my spotty memory, but I couldn’t decipher them. Yet, the way he said it, I knew I’d already lost her.

“Do not worry.” Poseidon inclined his head at the sleeping bodies across the hill. “Limited strength remains in me, but I will make certain none of you remember her. You will all forget until the time is at hand.”

Forget her.
I would not even have that much. The meager pieces of my life, leftover scraps sown together with flimsy ties and desperate need, would once again be torn apart. I didn’t know if I had it in me to bear more. I said hoarsely, “Why?”

Poseidon’s gaze flickered over Prince Arthur. “Because the threads of fate are held in delicate balance. We can only interfere so much before they start unraveling.”

He waved a hand at Sergius. The wrenching sound of breaking bone filled the air as Poseidon tore Sergius’s body apart. Blobs of blood floated in the air. Poseidon held up the apple. It absorbed the gargoyle blood; the gold color turned luscious red. He mingled his own energy with the blood and walked to the bluestones.

“A bit of the monster and the divine,” he murmured.

He neared the bluestones, and empty air inside the monolith flickered with a flash of light. The light calmed and a deep mist appeared inside the stone doorway. Through the hole he’d opened in the cosmos, I saw the dawn of a morning sky in some distant land.

Poseidon walked toward the mist.

I didn’t understand it, but I knew what he was about to do.

I sent magic hurtling toward him… magic I knew would be useless against a god. Yet, I didn’t care. I yelled, “She’s not yours!”

Poseidon raised a hand.

I went flying back to the ground. Wrenching pain went through me at the impact and at the loss. In Poseidon’s arms, the little princess murmured, echoing my silent cry, and stirred. The movement caused Poseidon to catch sight of the rowan bracelet I’d put on her wrist. For the first time, he smiled truly. He seemed to be stunned, yet not displeased.

He laughed. “It seems she has chosen. My mother may have underestimated you, my son. Who knows? All may not be as lost as it looks today. As my father says, the stars are not mapped.”

He put a foot into the mist.

I asked, “Where will you take her?”

Poseidon watched the mist. In the trick of the light, the expression on his inhuman face seemed almost wistful. “To her home. To Camelot.”

CHAPTER 17

TELL ME YOU LOVE ME

I
woke up on a sofa inside the common room of the teacher’s residence.

Out of a set of four, it was the only sofa remaining. The common room had been converted to be a command center of sorts. Instead of a piano, only a bench remained. Leonidas sat on it and ate something while Leonora paced in front of him. Occasionally, she stole glances at Vane. I tried not to roll my eyes. She’d developed a major crush on him on Aegae and apparently it hadn’t abated. Beyond them, two mermaids practiced sword forms in the far corner that I knew led off to the elevators.

The sofa lay at one end of a rectangle, along with a low coffee table. Beyond it, two rows of long tables held computers and extended across the width of the room. Several wizards hunched over the ten flat-screens with intense concentration. One monitored news footage. One scrolled through street maps of different cities. Some watched what looked like security feeds of different people. I saw Matt on one screen.

At the other end of the rectangle, Vane sat behind a massive desk. A tinted window behind him diffused the bright sunlight. I had no idea what he was up to and at the moment, I couldn’t find the strength to demand the answer. Everything inside me lay broken. I’d lost… again.

He was gone. The Vane I loved was gone.

Matt was right. I hadn’t listened to him and he’d been right.

“She’s awake,” Leonora said.

Vane’s head jerked up from a computer screen. He left the desk and crossed the empty middle of the rectangle to me. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I was barely holding on. He sat down on the coffee table, his eyes no longer green, but a normal hazel.

“Feeling calmer, sword-bearer?”

Sword-bearer.
Inwardly, I shrank further into myself. Outwardly, I made myself sit up. My stomach rumbled.

“You’re hungry. I’ll take you to the dining hall.”

After ripping me to shreds, now he wanted to feed me. I wanted to cry, but had no tears. “I’d rather starve than eat with you.”

Vane’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “
This is getting old.
”

“
You’re right.
” I stood up. “Do I still have a room here?”

“Always,” he said.

I ignored the caress in his tone. I took a step toward the elevators.

Vane caught my hand. “I haven’t given you permission.”

I tried to twist my hand loose. Vane held it in a manacle-like grip. Having taught me how to escape such holds, he also knew how not to let me. He tilted his head. “Why?”

I retorted, “Because I never want to see you again.”

Beside him, Leonora gasped.  She watched us with avid attention. Leonidas gave me a bored look. The wizards at the computers gaped at us. Vane glared at them and they quickly turned back to their screens.

“Because you hate me,” he said mockingly.

I stared steadily into hazel eyes, saying simply, “Because I don’t care anymore.”

His eyes shuttered, a cold green covered them again. He stood up.

“Then, you won’t care if I do this.” He pulled Leonora to him and kissed her. It wasn’t a mild kiss or a small gentle peck. It was a full-on, mouth-to-mouth, not-coming-up-for-air kind of kiss. The
Dragon’s Eye
warmed with his desire and it washed over me. He yanked open the door between our minds. He deliberately juxtapositioned her with me. If I closed my eyes, I would have seen us back on the darkened balcony. Instead, I watched him kiss her.

The musty smell of desire filled the room. His. Hers. Mine.

It made me sick.

Leonidas, recovering from momentary shock, jumped up with a roar. He lunged at Vane. Vane flicked him away like a bothersome mosquito, but he released Leonora. She stared at him with a dazed expression, lips bruised in the same way I imagined mine had been just hours ago. Vane’s heated eyes turned to meet mine. He dismissed Leonora with a casual wave of his hand, disposing her as easily as a used tissue.

Leonora’s face crumpled. Tears springing to her eyes, she ran out of the common room. On the floor, Leonidas sat up with a furious expression. I pointed Leonidas to follow in her direction. “Go get her, idiot.”

Leonidas gave Vane a final disgusted look and hurried after her.

“How could you do that to her?” I demanded.

He raised a brow. “I thought you no longer cared.”

“I don’t care about
you
.” I turned on my heel and stalked off. “You’re not worth it.”

I made it down the hall and into the residence hall’s tiny elevator. I barely stepped inside when Doppelganger-Matt slipped inside behind me, a hulking form crowding me inside the small space. He punched a button and the door jerked closed behind him and the elevator creaked up. I faced the back of the elevator and refused to turn around.

Unfortunately it didn’t help. Mirrored panels all around the elevator box surrounded me with Matt’s calm reflection. The illusion didn’t fool me. Under the civilized expression, he couldn’t hide the monster. The Kronos Eye sat heavily atop my chest, inside the gown.

Doppelganger-Matt looked at me in the mirror. “Is Merlin worth it?”

“Yes,” I replied honestly.

“Why?”

I stared at his reflection. Matt’s reflection. “He doesn’t think everyone is collateral.”
Blake. Gia.

He heard me. Doppelganger-Matt punched a hand against a panel. It cracked the mirror. I watched as blood streaked down from his knuckles into the mirror’s shattered glass. It was how I felt.

“They
were
collateral. And necessary. Everything I’ve done has been necessary.”

I stared at the red mess on the glass. “Necessary for you.”

“I’m trying to save you!”

“You’re trying to save yourself.”

He raked his clean hand through his hair. “I see you’ve started to believe my brother.”

“Isn’t he right? You got everything you wanted.”

“You know the answer to that better than anyone.” He leaned into his bloodied hand, digging it farther into broken glass. “When have I ever gotten anything I wanted?”