“Should I be alarmed at your proficiency with a blade?”
She broke her focus only momentarily to find that Arthur had left his spectator spot and was watching her instead.
Vera laughed. “I was trained by the best.”
He tilted his head and raised his eyebrow.
“My mum,” she explained, surprising herself by sharing so readily. She’d mostly avoided any conversation about her parents and certainly hadn’t willingly brought them up before now. “She had me chopping veg before it was wise to put a knife in my hands. I take it your mother didn’t recruit you in the kitchen?”
The moment the question cleared her lips, she wanted to pull it back in. His smile hadn’t fallen, nor his shoulders tensed, but there was something inscrutable that shifted in him and made Vera feel sure she’d touched a tender place.
“No,” he said, and he dropped his gaze to the table as he rolled a bulbous white onion beneath his palm. Just like that, the shadow fell from his features. “Care to teach me?”
“Don’t you want to watch the game?” She nodded at the pit, trying to give him a kind excuse to walk away. But he didn’t budge.
“We can see from here.” His eyes glimmered a little as his lips tipped to a smile. She found she couldn’t look away from them. She was struck by the realization that Arthur knew very well what it was like to kiss her. He knew the taste of her lips when she had no idea the taste of his.
She shoved the thought away as she found an extra knife for him and began showing the proper chopping technique as Allison had once taught her. He wasn’t accustomed to being so close to onion fumes and tears streamed down his cheeks in seconds, reducing them both to fits of laughter before Vera swapped his onion out for a cabbage.
People had begun watching them, pointing at the king and queen preparing vegetables for the town’s dinner. Grady waved to her as he passed by with one of the newly broken horses. She smiled and inclined her head, grateful for the friendly face. Chopping veg for dinner wasn’t exactly a proper royal activity, which nearly gave Vera pause, but Arthur was with her. Anyone watching saw that they were having fun, that he was being so warm—ah.
It hit her with a pang. The flirtation was an effective show.
It wouldn’t have bothered her if she stupidly hadn’t been swept up in it. He was far too charming.
When the sound of a horn cut through the air again, she was lucky her knife didn’t slip. It sounded again, only this time, it stopped mid-blast.
What happened next all went very quickly. Vera wouldn’t have seen anything amiss except that her eyes were already on Lancelot in the pit when his expression hardened. He stopped playing and, trancelike, climbed onto the pit’s wall, holding a post as he balanced on the slim ledge. No one reacted much at first save for askance glances at him.
“Two blasts means the hunt’s over,” Arthur said, but he also stared up at Lancelot. “They’ll open the gates over there.” He gestured in the direction Lancelot was looking, where there was an expansive field between Camelot’s wall and the forest. “So the party can parade into town with their prize.”
But Lancelot was shaking his head. Arthur set his knife down and went to Lancelot’s side. Vera followed.
“That blast didn’t sound right,” he murmured.
“What do you mean?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know … just … Arthur, I think you should have them close the gates.”
Arthur didn’t hesitate to ask questions. He flagged Percival down and sent him running for the town’s wall. It wasn’t far, only down the lane and around the corner.
But they were already too late.
“Shit!” Lancelot jumped down from the ledge as a cacophony of shouting rose from where Percival had disappeared. “The hunt’s not over. The bloody boar’s gotten loose. It’s within the wall.”
All at once, everything was in motion.
“Get inside!” Arthur bellowed.
He and Lancelot shouted repeated warnings as Arthur scooped up a fallen child and passed him to a frantic mother, and Lancelot sprinted to where they had left their swords, but they were out of time. He had barely lain a finger on the hilt of his weapon when the furious beast rounded the corner and pummeled through the square.
Vera gasped. She couldn’t have guessed how fast and ferocious a boar would be. It was no pig. It was closer to the size of a bull, and its eyes were so wide in rage that they were more whites than pupils. It trampled past her, near enough that she could see that its black hair was coarse and oily, that it had worked up a lather around its mouth, and that its short tusks were wickedly sharp. Arthur jumped down next to her, able to do nothing more than take hold of her arm as the boar thundered by them. The panicked shouts mostly came from inside houses as, mercifully, most people in the square had gotten to safety.
Percival rounded the corner, sword drawn, shield ready. Lancelot was already sprinting toward the boar when it skidded to a halt. Even if he’d had a spear in hand, ready to throw, he was too far to get enough power to pierce its hide. And anyway, he didn’t have one. None of the armed warriors running after the beast did.
Lancelot’s gait stuttered to an unexpected stop. Vera heard the horse’s whinny before she followed the boar’s grunting stare to see it. Grady had one arm around the newly broken stallion’s neck, the other clutching its lead with all his might, but the barely trained horse’s terror was far more powerful than a fourteen-year-old boy’s grip. The horse reared up on its hind legs, sending Grady tumbling backward onto his bottom with a grunt. Freed from his grasp, the horse galloped away at full speed, leaving Grady alone and dazed on the ground, stuck in a corner between two buildings on either side and a frothing monster in front of him.
“Grady!” Arthur shouted. The boy looked up at once, eyes searching for Arthur but first finding the boar and widening. Arthur, armed with absolutely nothing, tore toward him, but there was no way he would get to Grady in time. Lancelot was closest. He wouldn’t get there either.
