“Now?” Lancelot raised an eyebrow.
“Right now,” Arthur said as he stood, the motion deeming it final.
And that was that.
They’d been so close to unearthing the truth. How could Arthur not share her urgency? An idea stole through her thoughts, fleeting but present, nevertheless. For the first time, Vera wondered whether he might not want her to remember. And a question came on the thought’s heels: why?
Vera couldn’t get her eyes to focus when she settled into her bed to read that night. She couldn’t have even finished a page before she must have fallen asleep, but she jolted awake when Arthur came in. Before, he’d always gone right to the side room, occasionally with a detour to his desk to pick a new book. But the past two days (God, had it really only been two days?) might as well have been a decade for all that had changed.
When he saw that Vera was awake, he crossed to the bed and sat down on it next to her ankles.
She sat up straighter. This was very new. And … it made her heart flutter. Also new. She didn’t like that. His care after such deliberate avoidance left her with a pathetic sense of longing to be close to him. She would fight it with her frustration.
“I would have been fine for one more go,” Vera said.
“I have no doubt that you are capable of enduring, but that procedure should only be a last resort.” Arthur had a far-off look, the shadow of earlier. For how the three of them had reacted, Vera’s suffering in the tub must have been a jarring sight. “Merlin’s dedication to the kingdom is commendable, but it has skewed his judgment. We must proceed more carefully. He’s going to do more research on how to offset the toll the memory work took on you. We can try after Yule and Christmas.”
“We can’t wait that long!”
He fixed her with a sad, knowing smile. “It’s only two weeks.”
“I—” She was dumbfounded. Vera knew it was winter, obviously. But without checking a phone or computer every day, she hadn’t realized the date.
Arthur parted his lips, inhaling as if to speak, and then shook his head. What was he not telling her?
He looked at the book in Vera’s lap. “The Hobbit?” he asked, surprising her with the change of subject.
She nodded. Of course he recognized it. It was the only book from the desk with a mossy green cover.
“I read all the books Merlin brought for you. At first, to learn more about the world you came from. Selfishly, I just … enjoy them.”
“It’s one of my favorites,” Vera said. “My parents and I used to read it aloud at Christmastime together.”
“Would you like to—?” He gestured sheepishly with the tilt of his head toward her, then toward the book.
Warmth bloomed in her chest. “You want to read it together?”
“I’d like that,” he said.
“All right.”
Arthur started to shift his weight, but he paused. “Would you be comfortable if I sat close to you?”
Vera focused on keeping her expression even despite the way her pulse had jumped. She silently counted to three before she answered. “That’s fine.”
She scooted to the middle of the bed to make room for him to sit next to her. They were shoulder to shoulder, both sitting up and leaning against the headboard.
“We could start at the beginning,” she offered. She’d been partway through.
“No, that’s all right. Let’s pick up where you left off.”
Vera opened The Hobbit to the page she’d marked with the photograph of her and her parents. Arthur ran his thumb across the image.
“That’s you there,” he said. “What is this?”
“It’s a photograph. It’s like …” Vera thought about how to explain it. “It’s like a painting, but it’s made with light using a clever thing called a camera. Someone points it, you press a button, and it takes a picture.”
“Are these your parents?”
