“I know,” he said.
Vera kept her eyes shut most of the way back as if doing so could shield them from anyone out on the grounds witnessing their passage. Neither she nor Arthur had said it, but instinct imparted a clear warning: they needed to remain unseen.
Matilda nearly always met Vera at her chamber in the evenings to help her get ready for bed, so it was no surprise to hear her shocked cry at Vera and Arthur’s gruesome appearance. “Oh my God! What happened? Is she alive?” she asked, sounding as if she expected the answer to be no.
“Yes,” Arthur said as he lowered Vera and lay her on something soft, presumably her bed, and she opened her eyes. Much of what had been making her feel so sick was the motion. She already felt better from lying still, or perhaps from being in a room with no stench of death.
“Should you call for Merlin?” Vera asked. She didn’t mean to whisper. She intended to speak at a normal volume, but her voice was weak. Even so, Matilda’s hand flew to her chest as if Vera speaking at all was a miracle.
Arthur did not answer. He gathered clean cloths, filled a pitcher with cool water from the sink, and knelt beside her, pressing one cloth to her shoulder.
“Can you hold this here?” he asked her. Vera nodded, invigorated by having something to do. “Matilda, I need you to get medical supplies.” He peered down at her mess of a leg. “Where’s the wound?”
Vera pointed at the precise spot on her upper thigh. Though it was actively bleeding, the blood was so thick across her whole thigh that it was hard to tell the origin.
He made to press the other cloth there but stopped, his hand hanging in the air between them. “Would you rather Matilda help you?”
“Arthur, it’s not at all my expertise. I’m not—” Matilda silenced as he looked at her. One look, and she clamped her lips shut. Whatever unspoken language had passed between them flowed fluently.
Tears blurred Vera’s eyes anew as she shook her head. Merlin’s curse or not, she wanted Arthur there and dreaded the thought of anyone’s hands near her but his. Matilda hurried out the door.
“All right,” he said. His voice hadn’t always been so tender, but then again, she hadn’t always been bleeding from two different stab wounds and a head injury.
One hand on the wound at her thigh, his other worked quickly to clean the blood from the rest of her leg with a wet cloth. It looked more like a leg than a massacre by the time Matilda returned with supplies.
Arthur stepped away with her. Vera could hear tense whispers before Matilda left again. When he returned to Vera’s side, he squatted nearer her head by the top of the bed. “Can you sit up so we can get your gown off?”
She nodded. Arthur gently helped her rise into a seated position. She hadn’t realized he had a knife ready until he cut the laces at the back of her gown and helped her wiggle the dress over her head. Vera winced, especially as she pulled her shoulder free from the sleeve. The pain was remarkable. She had to remind herself to keep breathing.
He threw the ruined dress aside and began tending Vera’s shoulder straightaway, cleaning the wound and pouring liquid that smelled of vinegar on it. She didn’t think to feel exposed in her sports bra and knickers as she hissed at the sharp sting of acid burning into her shoulder. She would have recoiled through the mattress if she could have.
Arthur cringed with her. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He applied a sticky goo to bond the edges of her punctured skin together and wrapped her shoulder tightly with a strip of bandage, again drawing a groan through Vera’s gritted teeth. Again, he apologized, his face matching the sound of her pain.
Arthur moved to do the same for the wound at her thigh, so careful not to look at her nearly naked body. “Neither of these are too deep,” he muttered.
“It was a short knife,” Vera said with a grimace as Arthur pulled the bandage tight around her thigh.
He looked at her as if he had a thousand things to say in response. “It was long enough,” he said. “Long enough to do this to you. And long enough to end him.”
Dread and regret in the first half, grim satisfaction in the latter.
“Can you hold this on the back of your head?” he asked.
Vera took another cloth from him and pressed it against her head wound. She had not realized before now that her circlet was gone, and she wondered where it lay in the chapel’s upheaval. She wondered, too, where her ruined embroidery piece ended up and what the first person who stumbled upon the scene might think.
Arthur turned his attention to cleaning the blood from her body. There was no telling what was hers and what had come from Thomas. He meticulously wiped it all away. Then he covered her with a blanket and moved on to her head.
His face was so near to hers and so controlled. Her eyes went to that muscle in front of his ear, and—yes, there it was: the bulge there, the only indication that he was clenching his teeth. For some reason, being this close to him made her cry again. She tried not to, but he’d already noticed. Of course he’d noticed. His brow furrowed as he picked up a clean cloth and swept it beneath her eyes. She didn’t want him to wipe tears with the dirt and dust and blood. It was too much, too vulnerable. The effort to stop was fruitless, as good as opening a water spigot all the way when she’d meant to tighten it down.
Vera shuddered from her sobs and forced herself to breathe deeply. One breath (push it down, bury it), another (steadier now), and a final one. Her tears stopped.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice dull.
“Stop.” Arthur practically growled it. “Stop doing that—making yourself go …” He shook his head as he searched for the word. “Empty.”
A spark stirred in Vera as rage bubbled up, more powerful than how badly her injuries hurt. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t exactly fall apart with the weight of existence resting on these memories. And you need a fucking potion to even be near me. You can’t even stomach it to save your kingdom. There’s something more than her betrayal, isn’t there?” she asked through a clenched jaw as she fought the pain. “So what is it? What am I missing?”
“You’re bleeding. This is not the time. Tomorrow—”
