“I will keep it for now.” Merlin’s voice is low, laced with something between an admonishment and a worry. “Thank you.”

Morgaine flushes red and dips her head, a small bow to her mentor. “Apologies. I did not mean to overstep.” Morgaine catches my eye, then Lancelot’s, and flushes a deeper red before mumbling a farewell and making her retreat—likely back to her and Merlin’s shared laboratory.

“Your apprentice yearns for your approval, sorcerer.” My eyes widen, but Nick smirks back. This is what Lancelot said. He is following the script. “Perhaps she yearns for more than that, as well.”

Merlin watches Morgaine’s figure disappear into the shadows beyond the candlelight. “I am aware.”

Nick and I both freeze; the phrasing is so Sel’s, said almost in the same tone, that I nearly miss Arthur’s next line. “Please keep talk of ‘yearning’ to quiet tones when it comes to my sister, and far from me.”

Lancelot answers before sipping his mead. “Half sister, so I will remain half-quiet.”

Merlin wraps the crown back into its covered bag, ignoring Lancelot’s jibes. “I will be the one to keep it safe, my king.” He glances at us, then out to the room, back again. “If that is all…?”

I swallow. Now or never. I am Bree, in Arthur’s memory. This is not the past; it is not a dream. It is an experience, recreated. An experience that I can manipulate. Nick gasps beside me; he knows what I am doing. I reach toward Merlin’s silver-ringed fingers where they rest atop the Shadow King’s crown. When our skin touches, I hold my breath. The room shudders. The memory flickers.

The rest of the scene freezes… and this blood walked world is ours.

Sel stares down at my hand on his.

Sel’s eyes follow my fingers to my wrist, my wrist to my elbow, my elbow to my shoulder and face. His field of vision expands. His eyes find Nick. He inhales sharply, then exhales two words.

“Holy fuck.”

Nick stands, eyes wide and glistening. “Sel?”

“Nicholas?” Sel breathes.

Nick reaches out first, right hand grasping Sel’s shoulder, pulling him closer over the table, sliding to cup the nape of Sel’s neck. Sel’s right hand mirrors his—and then they are forehead to forehead, eyes squeezed shut, breathing each other’s air for the first time in months.

As I watch them connect, I realize that the feeling Sel offered me, the feeling he knew I wanted, is here. It’s between both of them, and between us all. Safety grows warm in my chest, expanding to some other emotion, twisting into something painful and beautiful at the same time.

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