“Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “I barely stayed on my horse.”
“Well, me too, Guinna!” Percival exclaimed. “That was bloody good!”
Not knowing what to do, Vera looked at her hands, her cheeks hot from the attention. There was a wooden shard sticking out of her metal glove. Right where it disappeared into the gauntlet was where her hand now throbbed. To make matters more complicated, the tingling sensation all across her skin was creeping toward a burn.
Lancelot and Gawain approached from the middle of the field. Surely Lancelot wouldn’t panic over such a minor injury. Still, Vera hastily yanked the sizable shard out and dropped it before crushing it into the dirt with her foot. No one seemed to notice. Gawain was his ordinary sullen-faced self, which was something of a comfort. Lancelot, however, was pale as he exhaled a long breath and only managed a thin smile at her.
“You’re bleeding,” Arthur said.
Vera opened her mouth to respond, but he was speaking to Percival, not her, who had a trickle of what was unmistakably blood dripping down the silver armor on his chest. She’d injured him.
Percival glanced down with an appreciative frown. He hadn’t even noticed. Vera held her breath as his chest plate was removed, revealing only a minor cut at his shoulder where the edge of his armor must have dug in and broken the skin under the force of the lance’s impact. Percival shrugged, and Vera exhaled a low laugh.
Then, very suddenly, it was like she’d been plunged into boiling water. It was the hottest her skin had ever burned. She doubled over and braced her hands on her knees.
“Are you hurt?” Arthur asked. She couldn’t see him. The pain had her clenching her eyes shut.
As quickly as the sensation started, it was gone.
“No,” Vera said, standing upright. Gawain still had a hand on Percival’s wound, but he watched her with narrowed eyes. Lancelot raised a white-knuckled fist to his mouth.
“I’m fine.” She didn’t understand why her skin sometimes burned like that. It started after her first memory session and had happened with increasing frequency since, even after the memory work stopped. It passed quickly today, as it always had, and Vera tried to brush it off as nothing. “Just—” She chuckled uneasily, searching for the lie. “Overwhelmed. Percival, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be!” He waved her off. His broad smile had yet to fall from his face. “You’re not quite ready this year, but keep training, and you could compete in the joust next spring!”
Lancelot groaned, bringing a full, heaving laugh from Percival. Vera and Arthur shared a glance. Neither’s smile faltered, though she saw the recognition in his eyes, too. She wouldn’t be here next spring.
She went back to her horse’s side to remove her armor. When she heard the movement behind her, Vera assumed it was Arthur, so she was surprised when it was Gawain who spoke. “Guinna?”
Some of the others had picked up Lancelot’s nickname for her, but it sounded bizarre coming from Gawain. “May I check you for injuries?” he asked.
Vera looked past him, noticing Lancelot ten steps behind him, chewing at his thumbnail and pretending not to notice them. “Is this Lancelot’s idea?”
“Yes,” Gawain said, very matter of fact.
“Oh, all right,” she relented. “I might have a cut on my hand.” Vera worked the metal glove free, and sure enough, a rivulet of blood ran out of it. The cut on the back of her hand smarted, but the gauntlet must have helped the blood coagulate and slow the bleeding. It wasn’t gushing the way she’d expect from being impaled by a six-inch splinter.
Gawain ran his fingers over the cut, back and forth, with increasing pressure as he examined it. The last time, he pressed so hard that Vera yelped in pain.
“Sorry.” Gawain’s fingers stopped, but his brow remained furrowed. “This is shallower than I anticipated.”
Vera expected the dreamy fog to come as he lay his right hand over the injury and closed his eyes in concentration. But her mind stayed clear. “Ishau mar domibaru,” he mumbled.
Her body hummed with a sense of release. Gawain inhaled deeply, audibly, and exhaled the same way. It was akin to how she’d been instructed to breathe by a doctor holding a cold stethoscope to her back, but Gawain did it with control and intention—as if it were the most valuable breath in his body.
“I know those words,” Vera breathed as Gawain’s hand lifted from hers.
He drew back, fixing her with his piercing stare. “You do?”
“I think I’ve dreamed them.” Already, though, Vera couldn’t remember what he’d said. She couldn’t find the words in her mind either. “Can you repeat them?”
He shook his head. “Some secrets of the mages are so important to keep that we are bound to them by magic. Most people forget those words immediately.” He surveyed Vera carefully. “But I’m sure Merlin would have used them when he saved you.”
“What are they?”
“Words of power. Passed down to the mages over generations. Most often spoken aloud when doing magic that pertains to lifeforce. There’s power in words,” he told her. “I can’t repeat them, but I can tell you about the end.” Gawain patted her hand in a funny, grandmotherly sort of way. He paused before he breathed in that audible, intentional way once more.
“The breath of life,” he explained. “It is the name for the source of all things.”
