“Do you think it will take us to her?” Arthur asked.
“I think it will do exactly that,” Lancelot said with a smug rap on the table.
Vera was ready to leave then and there. It wasn’t much of a plan, but doing something felt right. After Arthur, Lancelot, and even Otto insisted that she should rest for the remainder of the day, she grudgingly agreed. They’d leave in the morning.
Lancelot hassled Otto into heading to the barn with him so he could fix the door. Arthur tried to get Vera to lie back down but, seeing that she was stubbornly refusing, offered to go for a walk with her and show her around. She was eager to know more about his life.
“Your mother?” she asked as they walked out the back door.
“Died when I was young,” Arthur said. He offered Vera his hand to help her step over the knee-high garden wall behind the house. “That’s actually one of her dresses you’re wearing. I can tell it makes my dad happy to see you wearing it.”
He led her to a fenced pen with half a dozen goats grazing inside. She laughed at the smallest kid as it hopped around like a wind-up toy. They also watched Lancelot in the distance, jovially laughing with Otto as he clapped him on the back.
“He’s not okay, you know,” Vera said.
Arthur nodded. “Your passing out was the only thing that kept him from riding off in search of Gawain that very moment.” He was silent for a long stretch, his eyes still on Lancelot. “You know about him and Gawain.” It was a statement, not a question, and Vera held her breath to keep from reacting. “Did Lancelot tell you?”
“Oh. Erm, no. I …” She looked at her feet, Lancelot’s worry about what Arthur would think springing to the front of her mind. “I saw them together, but I didn’t think you knew—”
“Vera,” Arthur said sharply, “I need to be clear before you say anything else. I’m not sure how you feel about Lancelot’s proclivity or if that changes your opinion of him. I realized this about him when we were young and decided that it did not matter. You may feel how you want, and I won’t try to change you, but I will not hear a word against Lancelot on this matter.” His confidence fell as soon as he finished speaking. He glanced at her worriedly from the corner of his eye.
She’d thought she couldn’t possibly adore Arthur more, and there he’d gone and proven her wrong.
“What did you want to say?” he asked more gently.
Vera stared at him. As long as they were being boldly honest, there was only one thing left to say. She shook her head. “I love you,” she said. “I’m in love with you.”
He hadn’t been expecting that. His smile lit every part of his face as he moved his mouth soundlessly, looking like a man drunk on goodness itself. He bent his head and rested his forehead on hers. He was happy and also … relieved.
“I love you, Vera,” he managed to say through the obstacle of his joy.
When his lips found hers, they moved deliberately. There was no rush to their embrace, no sense that it could be stolen away. They said nothing else to mar this perfect bliss for quite a while.
“I heard you asking your father about how magic might manipulate emotions,” she finally said, hearing her voice quiver and willing it to be strong. “The way Merlin transferred my feelings for Vincent onto you frightens me. And I knew the potions have had a hand in desiring one another, but I’ve been wondering about how deep it’s taken us.” He gazed at her with so much yearning that she could hardly breathe. “Because,” and this part was difficult to say, “it’s also more than what it was with Vincent. I haven’t felt anything like what I feel for you in my whole life.”
He nodded. “I feel that, too. And what if it comes from magic?”
What if. Vera let all the questions hang there: what if it was puppetry? What if nothing they felt was real?
Arthur took her hand.
“Even if it’s all magic,” he said, “knowing right now that you feel the same is more than I could hope for.” Goosebumps raised all over Vera’s body. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers.
There was no telling what tomorrow might bring. For all that they’d lost—for Gawain, who was likely enduring horrors, for their dear friend, the protector who could not protect his beloved, for a kingdom which teetered on the edge of disaster—and for a love that might fall apart and betray them both as pawns in the mages’ game. It all hung in a horrible balance.
But today, tiny dots of yellow flowers waved in the tall grass under a clear sky. The sun shone. The three of them were safe. Arthur and Vera loved one another.
They were alive.
And for now, that was enough.
