After all, love was one of the few things Mercer could not sell.
The Administrator’s elevated voice filtered through Ari’s ears. His aww shucks turned into impatient chatter. “Break it up now. We have business to discuss!” he tried playfully.
Finally, breath slipping fast between both of their lips, Ari asked, “Are you ready?”
Gwen nodded and ripped the crown off of Ari’s head, throwing it into the stands with an impressive arc for its weight. After the brief flash of delight from the crowd, the Administrator’s cold stare chilled the entire arena.
“Nobody puts a crown on my girl but me,” Gwen said with a pleased smile, her voice echoing for miles. The Administrator’s jaw popped like it had right before he’d smashed that crown into Kay’s chest, and Ari felt the mere seconds they had to live, right as the arena exploded with an arcing rainbow of fireworks.
Gwen glanced up. Everyone did—except Ari. She searched the stands, feeling him. And he was there, several sections up, and yet she would have recognized his skinny power stance from a few hundred light-years away.
“Merlin,” Ari whispered, tears threatening.
His expression and rapid gesturing seemed to say, Well? Get on with your revolution.
Ari grabbed Gwen and pulled her down the steps that had been pressed into the side of the stone dais for the Administrator. They fled toward their knights while the crowd continued to marvel over Merlin’s special brand of distraction.
Jordan—wonderful, noble fucking Jordan—was already taking out an entire line of Mercer associates with one swing of her broadsword. Ari and her knights huddled together, using the horses to create a shield between them and the small army of Mercer associates.
“What are we doing?” Val yelled. “Running for it?”
“We’re fighting!” Lam said.
“I’m already fighting!” Jordan yelled over her shoulder, taking out a rogue associate with a hard elbow to the face.
“We’re…” Ari couldn’t look into their soon-to-be-dead faces. “We’re…”
Gwen’s fingers slipped between Ari’s, strengthening her hold. “We’re making our stand.”
“We are the truth the universe has to see. We will show them the lengths to which Mercer will go. Everyone wanted a king. A coronation. A spectacle. We’re going to show them the tragedy behind such wishes.” Ari’s voice broke as she thought about her brother. “There’s only one door on the arena level, the one we came through, and we only have a chance if we don’t let reinforcements in. Even if that means we are locked in here.” She turned to the black knight. “Jordan, keep the door shut. Lam—”
“Figure out how to blow it to splinters when we’re ready to escape. Got it.” Everyone stared at them as they untied the bracer from their left wrist, revealing a secret lining that held a series of vials. “Told you, I have explosives.”
Jordan squinted at the small glass tubes of bright-blue liquid. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, it is,” Lam said proudly.
Ari blew out a breath. “All right then, but hold off until I’ve gotten to the Administrator. Lam, will that stuff be enough to take the whole starship apart?”
Lam shook their head. “No, but it’ll make it uninhabitable, to say the least. Should give the spectators plenty of time to get back to their vessels and blast away. Us, too.”
“We should make them go down with the ship,” Jordan said. “Mercer-owned cowards.”
“Some of them are, yes.” Ari looked up into the stands. The crowd was still rioting over the fireworks. “But some of them are like us, waiting for a time and place to make a stand. We might be surprised,” she said. “But hold back the associates as long as you can. Give me time.”
The associates were forming ranks around the knights, while the Administrator had started to holler orders down from the dais. “Where are you going?” Val asked.
“To get my magician!” Ari’s hand sealed around Excalibur while she used the other to bring Gwen’s knuckles to her lips. “We end this together,” she promised Gwen. “For Kay.”
Lam pushed one of the horses toward Ari, but she shook her head. “I don’t need it. I’m going to ride my dragon.”
She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled as hard as she could.
And Big Mama roared back to life.
Ari flew around the arena on Big Mama’s back, scattering the Mercer ranks into screaming, trampled piles. She fought to get her bearings, to find Merlin again, and then she sent the taneen up into the stands.
Big Mama scaled the tiers of the stadium as easily as she’d once climbed Ras Almal. Ari found her magician trying to make his way down to the arena by climbing over row after row of seats, the cushions flapping.
“Good to see you, old man!” she hollered, hauling him onto the back of her dragon.
He held her around the waist, and yelled in her ear, “Thank you for being alive! Again!”
Ari couldn’t help but laugh as she turned the dragon around and returned to the arena. The raised stone dais was now the Administrator’s stronghold, and he’d barricaded himself in the middle of an array of associates. Ari could just barely make out his terrible thatched hair.
That was fine; he could stay up there, hiding. As long as he couldn’t leave or call for reinforcements, she had a chance to make an example out of him before—well, before it was all over. She was relieved to see that Jordan was on her task and the massive sliding door was tightly closed, no new Mercer reinforcements coming through.
Ari charged Big Mama back toward her knights, scattering associates in every direction. The taneen took a few tentative nips of flesh here and there, and Ari let her, jumping off her back with Merlin and into the spot where Lam and Val were fighting the good fight. Lam looked amazing in their leather armor, leveling associates with furious one-handed swings, but Val was bleeding from the shoulder. Merlin and Ari took down the half a dozen associates closest to them, and Ari held on to Lam, catching her breath to ask about their progress.
“The explosives?”
“In place.” They pointed to the seam on the sliding door. “We have about five minutes before it becomes caustic.”
Ari was exhausted, her body shaking. “Get this off of me,” she yelled, turning so that Lam could unstrap the miserable Pendragon breastplate. As she turned her back, her eyes fell on two boys, madly making out. “Hey!” Ari yelled. “We’re in the middle of a battle!”
Merlin waved a dismissive hand and kept on kissing Val.
The breastplate fell away, and Ari stood taller. She was ready to finish this. She had to be.
“Where’s Jordan?” Ari asked, whipping around. “Where’s Gwen?”
Lam pointed up at the stone dais. “They grabbed Gwen. Jordan went full knight rage. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Ari’s heart stormed as she squinted up to where the Administrator stood, holding Gwen, just waiting for Ari to notice. “Bastard,” she breathed. “He’s using her as bait. That’s still not bad-guy original,” she cursed, remembering their first meeting.
Ari turned back to Merlin, shaking him out of the deepest kiss she’d ever witnessed. “Merlin, where’s Morgana?”
“I accidentally killed that body I gave her. She’s… around.”
“She’d better be.”
Ari’s brain hummed as she tried to imagine a way to get close to the Administrator. She could get close to him, but not armed. He’d make sure of that. “How much magic do you have left, old man?”
Merlin chewed his lip, and Val tugged it free as if he couldn’t resist. “My fireworks were not easy, because I had this run-in with an old friend who zapped all my—”
“He’s got nothing,” Val said. “He’s staying with me. What do you want us to do?”