“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s so clear in retrospect. Splitting one person into three was madness. Magic or not, there was no way it was going to work. Only one of you ever had a chance, and it’s a miracle you did. You are your own person. I will never corner you into anything if I can help it. You shouldn’t be with me because I’m here … because I’m the first person you’ve been shoved into close quarters with who can know you and remember you. Who can care for you. Your feelings have already been manipulated with magic against your will. You should be with anyone you want. I have no claim on you. You owe me nothing. If you want to be with Lancelot—”
“I don’t,” Vera said, unable to resist interrupting.
“I know,” Arthur said with a certainty that surprised her. “Or Percival or … Gawain.” Vera laughed, a meek sound in her present condition, but a laugh, nonetheless. He let one corner of his lips turn up in a half smile. “The point is that it’s your choice. You will not be forced. Not by magic nor by circumstance.”
“It’s the only way I’ve remembered anything,” she said. “I have to remember. I can’t go home until I do. My dad—”
“You can’t go back if the memory work kills you,” Arthur said. “I will get you home. We’ll find another way. Merlin said the next time the portal will be accessible is late spring. We have time. If the world starts to end or … well, we can cross that bridge if we get to it. But for now, we have time.”
Far less than they would have if Vera had simply known the truth from the start. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked.
“Merlin thought it unwise, and before I knew you, I was afraid it would destroy you, too.” He dropped his head into his hands. “And then I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought if you could get your memories back, and we could get you home, then it wouldn’t matter. But I was wrong. Keeping this from you was wrong.”
Yet Merlin had insisted. She’d seen in Guinevere’s memory how the woman had trusted him, how she’d adored him. And Vera had put all her faith in him, too. For him to do this, though? “Do you trust Merlin?” she asked.
Arthur tensed. “He’s been backed into his own corner. Also of my doing.” He was more riddled with guilt than anyone she had ever known, and Vera suspected she was only seeing the tip of it. “I trust him with the kingdom, but I do not trust him with you. He cares for you, but he will do what he believes is best for the kingdom, no matter the expense. That’s where his first loyalty will always lay.”
“And what about yours?” Vera said. “Aren’t your loyalties to the kingdom?”
“Not at your expense,” he said without hesitation. “Not anymore. I’ve made that mistake three times. I won’t do it again. I will not destroy you to restore her.”
“Is that why you didn’t call for him?”
“I saw the way that first procedure left you scrambled. And what Merlin did the other day … when he well knows what happened to the ones who came before you,” he said. “I’m sending him back to the Magesary at first light tomorrow. He is not to return to Camelot unless he finds an alternative to this torture. You—”
She thought he had more to say, though he swallowed it as he so often did.
“What is it?” Vera asked. “Please tell me.”
“What you did a while ago when you went … blank? She used to do that near the end. More and more, actually, until it felt like that was all that remained.”
It frightened Vera how much she related to the impulse to go numb, how close she’d come to it on the floor of the chapel. “It’s more palatable than the alternative. Falling apart … hurting so badly I can’t breathe.”
“I don’t know how to ease your pain,” Arthur said, and she could see how desperately he wished he could. “But I promise I won’t leave you to face it alone again. I am so sorry, Guinevere.”
When he called her Guinevere, Vera’s memory flashed to being on the floor of the chapel when she couldn’t breathe, and then something had clicked, and she could.
“You said my name,” she said.
It was Arthur’s turn to look bewildered. “What do you—”
“In the chapel. You said my name. You called me Vera. How did you even know it?”
Arthur rubbed at the scruff on his chin. She knew this to be an anxious gesture from all the hours of watching him at court. “I heard you tell that little boy when you blessed his sister. I’m sorry. I was desperate. I thought it might help.”
“It did,” said Vera. As the truth of it settled in, she corrected herself. “It does.”
“Is that better? If I call you Vera?”
“Yes.” A shiver passed through her. She’d not thought of a name as having power before, but the breath of it, the act of someone saying it out loud and her hearing it … it made a difference.
“Vera,” Arthur said as he gently laid his hand on top of hers. “I am so deeply sorry.”
Vera had a choice to make right now. The truth had washed away her anger. She couldn’t summon it now if she tried. She was hurt.
But so was Arthur.
“I forgive you,” she said.
