Their footsteps echoed down the hall, leaving her and Tristan alone. Unsure what else to do, she resumed packing while he wandered over to the window. Its shutter was latched open, and a pleasant breeze slipped through the rods. Tristan grabbed one of the bars and gave it a sturdy shake. Vera hadn’t realized she’d stopped, a travel cloak mid-fold between her hands, to watch him. There was something she was missing about Tristan. She was right on the edge of it and couldn’t break through, couldn’t clear the last cobweb obscuring the memory. Vera clamped her eyes shut in an effort to focus. She dropped to sit on the bed behind her.
“Gwen?” Tristan said warily. Vera let her eyes flutter open. He was already closing the space between them. “Are you frightened?”
“I’m—” She cast about for the right words, but her head spun. She was so close to it.
Tristan pulled a chair over and sat, facing her. He smiled grimly. “I know. It hasn’t felt like this since the wars. It’ll be all right.” He rubbed her arm above the elbow, and there it was.
Vera remembered.
There was no dramatic moment of recollection, no reliving the scenes like in the sensory tub. One second, she’d have never thought to touch this dusty corner of her mind, and the next, Tristan and so many things about him were just … there as if they always had been. There was a whole childhood of memories with the man in front of her. Their parents had one tutor who taught both of them. Tristan had shown Vera how to hang upside down from a tree branch by her knees, and she’d gotten him into a world of trouble when they started a midsummer bonfire that nearly set his neighbor’s barley field aflame. Between two lifetimes of growing up, Tristan was the dearest childhood friend she’d ever had.
So many years ago, on a rainy summer day in Tristan’s father’s barn, he had been her first kiss. Sour, salty, or sweet. It was a game they played when one’s eyes were closed, and the other was meant to surprise with a bite of food, and they’d laugh together when it shocked the tastebuds. They took it in turns, and it was Tristan’s turn to keep his eyes shut. Vera was fourteen, and the tension had been rising between them for months. Years, really. She had decided hours before that today would be the day. When Vera had filled his lips with her own rather than the sweet cake between her fingers, Tristan’s lips joined the dance.
But it didn’t end there. And their fathers’ plans that they should marry weren’t merely advantageous; they were kind. Tristan and Vera had been in love. The missing years she hadn’t been able to reach before flooded in. Flashes of joy, brushing hands beneath tablecloths at banquets, dances when he held her a little too tightly, stolen kisses when they thought they were being sneaky behind their parents’ or the servants’ backs, but everyone had known.
And she remembered the day it all ended when she met him in that same barn. This time, it was a perfect sunny day. The light found each chink and crack in the wood-slatted wall and lit Tristan and Vera in uneven stripes. She cried as she told him she’d chosen to marry the king. He’d begged her not to and painted the story of the life that Tristan and Guinevere could have together. It would have been a good life, a great one. She’d known what she was giving up, but she also knew it was best for the kingdom … that bringing her father’s lands and troops (Tristan among them) would make it all possible to build the new dream of a nation.
Tristan had even ridden with their party the whole journey to Camelot, not yet having given up that Guinevere might change her mind after she met Arthur and that he could whisk her away. But then he met Arthur, and Tristan came to her that night.
That time, it was him who told Vera through tears that she was right, because Tristan had seen the light in Arthur that everyone else saw, too.
He’d even traveled the distance from his home in the north after the wars. Arthur had sent for him when the original Guinevere was at her lowest, barely able to rise from the bed. Tristan sat by her side for days, but it made no difference to her.
“I regret ever leaving,” Tristan said. It brought Vera out of her remembering. His gaze darted to the window. “I left, and then you fell.” Sorrow marred his handsome face.
“That wasn’t your fault,” Vera said. That wasn’t what had happened to the Guinevere he’d known and loved. But she couldn’t tell him that.
“Are you … happy with him?” Tristan asked, not daring to look at her.
“Yes,” Vera said, and it wasn’t a lie.
“I’m glad for you. I mean it,” he said as he stood. “It is my honor to serve as your guard.”
“Thank you,” she managed to murmur once he was halfway to the door.
By the time Arthur came back, Vera knew that she should tell him, but she couldn’t find the words.
They left as soon as the horizon devoured the sun’s last light, and they rode through the night, taking only short breaks. The Magesary was in Oxford, well over a hundred kilometers away. They’d ride the next two days as well.
Dawn was a solid two hours off and the sky an inky void when they arrived at their destination, an unassuming nunnery north of Bristol. The prioress was a woman Arthur knew and trusted. She discreetly put them up in their guest rooms.
Vera collapsed gratefully on the bed and would have fallen asleep sitting up if Arthur had not taken her hand. She blinked at him through her stupor.
“Can you stay awake a bit longer?” he whispered.
She nodded, intrigued enough that her brain roused from its fog. Arthur led her through a door opposite the one they’d used to enter the chamber and into a modest chapel. Vera stumbled over her own feet. “Our room backs up to a chapel?” she said.
It was a small space: two benches in front of a wooden altar. Arthur sat on the front bench, so Vera followed suit, waiting for an explanation.
She turned at the main door opening behind her. Lancelot came first, followed by Gawain.
“We only have a few minutes,” Lancelot said.
Arthur nodded at Gawain to begin. So this was why they were here, but why so secretive?
“I believe that the Saxon mage who terrorized Crayford is the same as the one who committed the massacre in Dorchester,” Gawain said. Arthur, Lancelot, and Vera all shared expressions of shock. “The way their messenger described those deaths, both by magic and traditional violence, that’s how it was there.”
Arthur leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “In Dorchester, it was all those without magic who were killed. This time, he slaughtered everyone with a gift. That doesn’t make sense.”
