“That is absolutely correct,” Marian said as she sank into a seat, lounging back with each hand draped over an armrest. She looked like a pristine painting in motion.
Edwin scoffed as he scooted his chair closer to the table. “No sense in that. We’ve seen her piss on the front lines, same as the rest of us.”
“Yes,” Marian said, “but that wasn’t a contest. And if it had been, I’d have won. This will be more fun for all of you if I spectate.”
Vera pulled a chair next to the empty one Arthur had occupied only minutes ago. But when he sat back down, it was across the table from her. Tristan slid into the chair by her side. They all scooted in close together for the ten of them to fit at the table. Vera and Lancelot gave the instructions, collected enough varied coins to use as chips, and, after a few questions and practice rounds, they were ready to begin.
It wasn’t without bumps. After winning the first hand, Wyatt was a self-deemed savant and spent the rest of the game telling everyone what to do—in what turned out to be terrible advice. Twice, Tristan tried to play a flush using two different suits. Vera laughed so hard, correcting him the second time, that she could barely sit up straight.
They started to get the hang of it after a while, and it was a brilliant way to thaw the ice between her and the visiting knights. Vera liked Elaine very much. She was wickedly funny and had the most unreadable bluff of anyone at the table.
Unlike Wyatt, Marian roved around and offered sound advice until Lancelot called her out. “Oy! You can’t peek at all our hands and then meddle in the game.”
One corner of her mouth quirked up. That was exactly what she’d been doing. She settled into a seat at Arthur’s shoulder, becoming an advisor solely to him, often leaning forward to murmur in his ear. He inclined his head toward her when she spoke, and Vera tried not to bristle. She realized with a jolt that she’d been staring at them for the entirety of this hand and determinedly pulled her attention back to Tristan.
He was great fun, excited like a puppy when he won a hand, but he didn’t care enough about the game to be upset when he lost. It drove the more competitive players mad as he carelessly called when he shouldn’t have or raised on a pair of threes that turned into a four-of-a-kind on the flop. He felt familiar to her, similar to how Lancelot had, and he didn’t find it suspicious that she loved hearing him recollect their childhood adventures. Percival was on Tristan’s other side and encouraged him to tell the most embarrassing ones. This packed table was the happiest family Vera could imagine.
Tristan and Percival’s laughter dimmed in her ears as Vera’s eyes found Arthur. He’d pulled them all together. The kingdom was practically a paradise, more peaceful and prosperous even than the life of comforts from the future that Vera grew up with. It didn’t seem possible—but here they were.
Arthur’s eyes flicked up from his cards and met hers. Butterflies thrummed through her as he smiled at her. She returned it, embarrassed because she knew her adoration glowed plainly on her face.
Lancelot shouted and pulled her from her reverie.
“Dammit, Gawain!” He slammed his cards down on the table. “That’s so stupid. How did you know I didn’t have the ace?” Gawain had successfully called out Lancelot’s attempts at a bluff every time. The last one cleaned out his paltry stack of chips, and he was the first to be eliminated from the game.
“Nicely played, Sir Gawain,” Vera said, keeping her eyes locked on Lancelot as she high-fived Gawain.
Lancelot scowled and pointed at each of them. “Fuck you both,” he said.
The table burst into laughter, any notion that Vera might be offended by their language long forgotten.
On the next hand, Percival went out and erupted in frustration because Elaine, seated next to him, had peeked at his cards.
“Well, hold them closer if you don’t want me to see. You’ve got them all the way out here.” She mimed holding her cards with her arm fully extended. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I am not doing that,” he snapped. “You’re right next to me; it doesn’t matter how I hold them. Guinna, how did they keep people from being unrighteous cheaters at the monastery?”
It was Vera’s turn, so she was busy studying her hand as she responded. “Poker tables are usually circular. I think that helps.”
“That’s what we need.” Percival rapped the table sharply with his knuckles. “A round table.”
She heard it.
A round table. She looked up from her cards and around at the knights, Arthur’s most trusted council of knights. The round table. Vera did the only thing that made a lick of sense to her: she laughed. Really laughed. Laughed until tears wet her cheeks. With no way to explain it, she’d simply have to accept their cocked eyebrows and bewildered stares.
“Probably a monastery thing,” Gawain said as he pushed more coins to the center.
The game pulled them back from Vera’s hysterics. She lost shortly after that and stayed for a while, leaning toward Tristan to offer him quiet advice or to explain the difference in suits when she could sense he was about to mess up. Lionel took to yell-singing made-up sea shanties to roast everyone around the table, but even amid the raging ruckus, Vera’s eyes grew heavy, and she nodded off where she sat.
“Hey.” Lancelot’s whisper at her ear jolted her. Vera lifted her head from Tristan’s shoulder, where it had lolled as she dozed. “Ready to turn in?”
She nodded in a haze. “Sorry,” she mumbled to Tristan, who wasn’t bothered at all. Vera wasn’t so groggy that she missed Arthur looking up at her from his cards every few seconds as he pretended not to watch.
“I’ll walk you,” Lancelot said with a glance at Gawain.
He rose quickly. “I’ll come, too.”
“Why not?” Lancelot said. He played it off perfectly, as if he’d not orchestrated it all ahead of time. “Let’s make it a proper escort.”
