Vera hardly slept that night. Waves of anxiety pushed through her, followed by a sense of dread so overwhelming that she felt it in her pounding heart and pulsing through her skin. When even her blankets grew damp with sweat, she kicked them off.
The day had been awful, so nightmarish to even elicit pity from Arthur. Her mind flashed to his hand holding hers far too many times, but it was one of two things from the day that didn’t leave her staring at the ceiling in abject horror.
The other was the note on her bedside table. Matilda had crept through Vera’s door to deliver it just before midnight, needlessly worrying about waking her. It was from Merlin. He was back. Vera was to report to his study in the morning. Finally.
She’d been intent on waiting up for Arthur, somehow knowing that, after yesterday, he’d listen to her. She’d ached to apologize and, more than that, have one real conversation with him. But he never came back. Even when morning broke at last, and Matilda came to help Vera dress, the door to his sleeping chamber was a few inches ajar in the exact position as it had been last night.
It might all be done after today anyway. Vera hadn’t questioned whether she could survive here until spring when time travel would be possible again. Insulated by castle walls and the likes of Merlin and Lancelot and even Arthur, with her nighttime reading lit by literal magic and her dinners colored with spectacles of storytelling, she’d treated this more like being in a storybook than a real place on the brink of disaster—where her life was in real danger.
But of course, it was. Guinevere met her end here.
So today, she’d magically retrieve the memories and then … what? Actually go into hiding at some monastery in the countryside and wait out the winter? They could pretend she’d died. That would go over well. She shoved away the pang of sadness at the thought of leaving Lancelot and Matilda. Their lives would be better, and they’d forget her soon enough. And she would go home.
Home. Seeing her parents was too good to even think of. But picturing herself back in Glastonbury as she knew it … back at the George, running alone every morning, back to her forgettable life. It was what she wanted, so why was it so hard to imagine? Vera didn’t belong anywhere.
It wasn’t a long walk to Merlin’s study, down the steps of her tower, past the guards that now flanked most corridors, and across the back courtyard, but she and Matilda stopped short at the bottom of the stairs. Because the quiet morning air was shredded by the sound of screaming. A pit dropped in Vera’s stomach. Oh God. What now?
There were many voices, the loudest one a woman’s, wailing with primal terror. Before Vera knew her feet were moving, she started running toward it.
“Guinevere, wait!” Matilda called from behind her, but she followed, too, all the way to the throne room. There were four guards in the thick of things with Arthur and Lancelot, and the woman screaming … Vera recognized her. Though her face was a twisted-up mask of itself, she held the bundle of her baby tightly to her chest. Helene, the mother from yesterday.
Roger was there, too, facing away from Vera. He held the cherubfaced toddler. The boy looked frightened and had a perfect tear clinging to his cheek, but his eyes brightened when he saw Vera over his father’s shoulder. He waved a chubby fist at her.
Arthur and Lancelot were huddled tight with the parents, both working to calm Helene, when Arthur saw Vera. His face darkened, and he grabbed Lancelot’s arm and pushed him in her direction.
Lancelot only seemed confused by the gesture until he turned and saw Vera and Matilda. He hurried over to them. “The baby is sick.”
“What do you mean? Where’s the physician?” As Vera asked it, Percival ran into the courtyard with Gawain rushing behind him.
“The baby is very sick,” Lancelot said. “Come on.” He was trying to hurry her away with a hand on her elbow. Vera shrugged him off.
Gawain made a beeline for Helene and took the child from her. The bundle hardly moved, nary a wiggle as one tiny hand slipped limply from it. Vera’s knees buckled, and Lancelot caught her beneath the arms to steady her. “Is she dead?”
But then the little fingers curled into a fist.
Her hands now empty, Helene spun about, and her wild eyes fell on Vera. They transformed, clouding with rage. “What did you do to her?” she screamed.
“Helene, please,” Roger said through his own tears. Arthur tried to restrain the woman, but she had the force of a mother’s aching fury behind her and moved straight through him. Lancelot lunged out to stop her with one haggard glance over his shoulder at Vera and Matilda. He was so worn down. He and Vera had such fun together during their runs. They laughed. He understood her. But they never went deep. They never talked about any of their difficult realities, and now it was all they were left with. She expected it wouldn’t be long before he got sick of her, a petty thought next to a mother actively losing her child.
Matilda tugged at Vera’s arm. “We need to go.”
This time, she didn’t fight leaving. She followed Matilda in the opposite direction, Helene screaming behind her. Vera tried not to hear the words, but they echoed her own thoughts. She was selfish. She was ruin. She was a curse.
She shook with nausea and only kept moving, eyes trained on the ground in front of her, because she’d collapse if she stopped. How had she ever been so deluded to think she could do this?
She didn’t even know where Matilda was leading her. They’d made it to the entry hall. Vera heard the chatter of whoever was there but paid it no mind until Matilda abruptly stopped. “No,” she said in a horrified whisper.
“What’s wrong?” Vera asked.
“It’s your father.”
Vera followed Matilda’s gaze to the finely appointed man approaching them with sure strides, leaving a cluster of servants in his wake. She did not recognize him, yet fear filled her, and she had to fight the urge to cower. His eyes were set on Vera without even a flash in Matilda’s direction.
It was her first glimpse of her biological father.
He was younger than she’d imagined, with hardly any grey streaking his hair and merely touches of it in his neatly trimmed beard. She’d dreamed of knowing him and now wished she could be anywhere but in his cold sights. Wished he weren’t so tall and imposing a figure. Wished she didn’t instantly and nonsensically crave his approval.
“My lord,” Matilda said, “the queen has—”
