“What do you mean? You did it to me. You saved me!”
“I didn’t!” he said. “It is not my power!”
Vera reeled back. What the fuck? He meant it. She wailed wordlessly, ripping her hands free and slamming her fists against his chest. “What are you good for!” she screamed. “Go back to the mages. Get someone who can help.” Her voice faltered into desperation. “Please!” she begged through a sob.
Merlin reached out a hand to comfort her, but she saw the pity in his eyes and wrenched away. “Go!” she screamed.
Vera didn’t watch to make sure he’d gone, but she heard the thunder of hooves fading as she spun back to Arthur and dropped down at his side. She was dizzy, nauseous, and in such physical agony from the pulsing fire on her skin.
Lancelot clutched Arthur’s hand and knelt with his face close to his.
“Get Vera to safety,” Arthur said in a strangled voice. “If you can get her home, do it. If you can’t—just …” He sucked in shallow breaths from the effort.
“I will,” Lancelot assured him through tears. “You know I will.”
Lancelot gripped Vera’s arm over Arthur’s chest, binding himself to her. She clung to him, too. Vera cupped Arthur’s face with her other hand like if she held it just right, his life wouldn’t slip away … water between her fingers.
She wanted to beg him not to die and let all the pain and burning and fear explode from her in desperate screams, but those could not be the last sounds Arthur heard. Vera wondered if he was afraid as he struggled to breathe and fought against the pain, his beautiful face drawn and clenching when the waves of it hit. She wanted him to know he was surrounded and loved.
It was all she could give him.
“You’re going to be okay,” Vera said. A lie and a prayer. She didn’t know what she was going to say until it was already out of her mouth. “We’ll go back to my Glastonbury together. I want you to meet my parents. My dad will love you.” Lancelot let out a strangled sob. She squeezed his arm more tightly. Tears streamed down her face.
Vera imagined cradling Arthur in her words, and his eyes fixed on her, held by her voice. “We’ll read the Lord of the Rings together at night, and we can run the Tor at sunrise if you want. Or walk.” Arthur’s lips turned up at the corners, and Vera managed a strangled laugh before her tears choked her. She’d painted the life she dreamed of because this one was ending, and she wanted to keep it from being a nightmare for him.
Arthur blinked his eyes clear and took great effort to lift his hand to Vera’s cheek. It shook. He couldn’t hold it up, so she held it there for him. The blood from his wound soaked all of his body, even his hands, running down his fingers in delicate rivers on the current of Vera’s tears.
“Vera,” he said, more a breath. “You have given me everything.” His fingertips trembled violently against her cheek. He smiled faintly and with extraordinary effort. Blood began to trickle from the corner of his mouth. Arthur was about to die. This couldn’t be real. “I wouldn’t trade the time with you for any long life. I love—”
His voice failed as blood gurgled in his throat.
“No,” Vera said forcefully.
Lancelot launched forward, trying to clear Arthur’s airway with his fingers.
Arthur was about to say he loved her. She somehow knew that meant it was done, and he would be gone. Yet Vera could hardly keep her eyes on him through the screaming pain in her skin. She was uninjured and unblemished, but she would have sworn that she was burning alive, about to explode from a pent-up force with nowhere to go.
Ishau mar domibaru.
It echoed within her from someplace untouchable.
And she knew.
Vera had a certainty that she didn’t understand, and it came through foreign words that her tongue craved to cry.
“You need to move,” she hurriedly said to Lancelot. Now that she knew the words, it took all her effort to keep from saying them.
“What?” He looked at her like she was insane. But she couldn’t explain, and they were running out of time.
“MOVE!” Vera bellowed with a voice that would carry for acres.
Lancelot scrambled to his feet and stumbled backward.
Vera rose to the full height of her knees, and the words tumbled off her tongue. “Ishau mar domibaru.”
There was power in her voice that she didn’t recognize. And she knew what to do next. A deep inhale and exhale, the name of the origin of all things, the breath of life itself. As the last wisp of breath parted from her lips, an unnatural silence filled her ears for microseconds. Then a surge of power rocked through Vera, up from her toes and down from the top of her head, meeting and exploding at her chest, down her arms and out her palms, too. It was a light so bright, radiating out from her with a blinding blast.
Instantly after, there was something alive inside Vera. She knew it like her oldest friend. Now that it was here, she understood that it always had been. She and Lancelot shared one wide-eyed look.
