Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

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—”

The thin line of his lips tipped downward at the corners, not a frown but a scowl set on Vera. “I require a private word.”

He grabbed Vera’s upper arm, his fingers digging in painfully. She cast a helpless glance over her shoulder at Matilda as the man—her father—dragged her into the side corridor, out of any bystanders’ eyeshot.

“You have shamed the north,” he spat as he yanked Vera’s arm to pull her around to face him. “You have shamed me.”

She had imagined she’d feel something if she met her father. She never expected him to be frightening. His face was inches from hers, and she couldn’t help but fruitlessly search for something recognizable in his features.

“Wulfstan would have been bad enough. And now I hear you’ve been playing the whore,” he said through gritted teeth as he bore down upon her. Vera stumbled backward against the corridor wall. “I swear to you, child, if you have defiled yourself, I will make sure you wish you’d died in that accident.”

Vera stared back, speechless, bracing herself against the stones behind her.

It wasn’t the right response. Her father reeled back and surveyed her from toes to head, disgusted. “You stupid cunt, did you open your legs?”

She should have categorically denied it. Of course. But she sputtered meaninglessly and, unable to bear his judgment, tore her eyes from him.

He grabbed her by the chin and forcibly turned her face toward his.

A deeper, more primal instinct than her need to pacify him rocketed through her. She yanked away to stare at the floor. She knew it was a mistake only a heartbeat before the back of his hand ripped across her face. Vera cried out when the ring he wore bit into the corner of her lip and stung even once it was gone.

His slap had pulled her face back in his direction. “I raised you for this. You must be perfect.” He grabbed Vera’s shoulders and gave her a violent shake. “You—”

“Lord Aballach!” Arthur’s voice came from the end of the corridor, and while it wasn’t a command, it sounded like one. Vera’s father obeyed by falling silent and dropping his hands to his sides. By the time he and Vera looked at him, Arthur had already closed the distance between them, but he drew up uncomfortably close to her father, his chest nearly touching Aballach’s shoulder as he exhaled a forceful breath.

“Do not,” he said with a growling fury that left Vera stunned, “touch my wife again.”

Aballach took a reflexive step back. “She is my daughter and—”

“And now she is your queen.” Arthur’s face quivered in his barely restrained ire. He shifted to stand in front of Vera, turning to face her and entirely blocking her view of her father. His eyes didn’t reach hers; they stopped at her lips and darkened. Vera touched the spot where the ring had struck and drew her fingers away. Blood. She felt a flash of pity for Guinevere—the real Guinevere—who’d grown up with this man.

“Go,” Arthur said, as quiet as a breath, before wheeling back around on Lord Aballach.

Vera had no delusions about the purpose of his intervention. He had to protect his rule. Still, she was grateful. Giving her an escape was the kindest thing he could do for her. She didn’t know what would have happened without his intervention.

If there hadn’t been guards at the gate to stop her, she’d have wandered out of the castle and kept going. Disappearing would be the best she could do for all their sake. But her feet took her to the chapel free of her mind’s guidance. Out of habit, she supposed, she wandered next to the statue of Mary and sank to the ground. She drew her knees in close, wrapped her arms around her legs, and lay her head atop them. It was as small as she could be.

Vera didn’t cry. She stared vacantly at the floor. She’d spent a lifetime learning how to steer her mind away from sadness, but now there was nothing else. So she stared at nothing as the weight of her transgressions pressed down on her. This was worse than being worthless.

When the door opened and the sound of footsteps followed, she tucked her head to her chest and closed her eyes. That would likely be Thomas. She wasn’t sure she could manage a conversation with him just now.

But it wasn’t him.

“Do you want me to get Lancelot?” Arthur’s voice, gentle and soft. He must have seen her come in this direction.

Vera’s eyes snapped open. She expected to find him angry or pitying her. But the stony mask was solidly in place. Anger sparked and pulled her from her stupor.

“No,” she said, “I need you”—she felt unbearable shame at the admission and hastily added—“to be able to be in the same room as me. Running to Lancelot is exactly how I’ve wrecked this so terribly.” Vera dropped her forehead into her arms. “I know you hate me—and at this point, you have every reason to. I am worse than an imposter. I have smeared Guinevere’s name and her memory. I’ve broken everything you made. I—I’m so sorry. I can’t do this. I can’t fix this.”

She waited for his voice to fill the silence long enough that she started to think she’d imagined him ever being there. She looked at him, utterly still except for his shoulders raising and lowering with his breath. His jaw shifted to the side, and he seemed to decide something.

“You’re right,” Arthur said, and dread flooded her, but he came over and sat on the floor next to Vera. “You cannot fix this. And you did not break it. There are some things that you need to understand. What you’ve heard—that Guinevere saved us in the final battle—is true. But a lot of people died because of it. It worked because it was so deadly, and no matter what I said, she bore the weight of it.

“I was meant to care for her. To protect her. I failed her so many times.” He swallowed and turned his head against the stone wall to look at Vera, and there was nothing cold or calculated there. Only anguish. “I thought if I stayed away from you that it would …” Arthur shook his head. “That it would be better for you, but I failed you, too. I need you to hear me. None of this is your fault. I have done everything wrong. All that’s happened these last few days, it’s because of my behavior. These are my failings.”

“But that baby,” Vera said, her throat instantly tight. “I held her, and now she’s dying. Maybe there is a curse—”

“That wasn’t you.”

“It was, though—”

“No,” he said firmly. “It was the fumes from the Venovum. The cursed object that man threw at you. That’s what made the baby sick. Gawain already had the potion ready from treating my hand. She’s going to be fine.”

“She is?” Her voice quivered. “You’re sure?”

“Look.” Arthur held his left hand up so Vera could examine it. The bandages were gone. It was only faintly pink in a few spots. “Gawain is good at what he does. The baby started improving immediately.”

“Oh. That’s good. That’s—” Her breath came in a lurch. Push it away. She tensed her muscles. Don’t think of it. Vera took three deliberate breaths and swallowed heavily.

She was about to say, “I’m fine,” when Arthur slid his left arm around the back of her shoulders and wrapped the right around the front of her shins, encircling her balled-up form in his arms. Perhaps it was the mere shock of encountering such tenderness from him, or perhaps the rickety barrier Vera had constructed to hold the horror at bay within her simply snapped, but a gasping sob ripped through her. She didn’t know where relief stopped, and fear and sadness began. They might have all been the same, and they crested out in her tears. She dropped her forehead onto his shoulder, heedless in that moment of what his care meant or why he’d given it, only knowing that it felt safe, and she wept. She wept every tear that she’d been swallowing since the day she left home—and some from before then, too.

There’d been no place for them. Vera had floated like the misty specter from the Tor, and Arthur’s arms had somehow caught her and given her a shape, a container she could collapse into. He didn’t utter a single word. It was only when her tears slowed that she began to question it. It was too intimate, especially with him. Vera sat up, and Arthur pulled his hands back to his lap.

“You don’t have to do this.” She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes, a fruitless effort to erase the evidence of her tears. “I’m grateful you’re talking to me, but I don’t want you to pretend to like me.”

“I’m not pretending. I’m—I’m quite fond of you.”

“No you aren’t,” Vera protested, though she wanted to believe him. “Maybe you were fond of her, but I’m not her.”

“You don’t need to be her. Be you.”

Vera glowered at him, which, for some reason, drew a fleeting half smile from Arthur. “I sort of tried that. It didn’t go well before.”

He nodded. “I was a colossal prat before.”

Vera nearly laughed at that. She hadn’t yet been able to hold his eyes like this nor see him so unguarded. “I don’t know how to do this,” she said.

“I don’t either.” His hand flinched, and she’d thought he might have been about to reach for her, but now he seemed hesitant to touch her. His face went rigid, and he dropped his eyes to her chin. “I’m sorry. I owe you many apologies. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I have to fix this. I don’t see any other way than, at least publicly, I’ll ask you to endure my affections … to spare you from poor treatment and for the good of the kingdom. And—” She was relieved when he met her eyes again, even though sadness marred his face. At least it was real. “And privately, I would offer you friendship if you’re willing to entertain it. I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not.”

“That’s all I’ve wanted from you. This whole time, that’s all I’ve wanted.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He rubbed his right hand where his knuckles were swollen and awfully red. Vera hadn’t realized the boils left such swelling. But it was his left hand that he’d caught the egg with. It bore only light pink spots where there’d once been blisters.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Oh. Erm …” He tried to hide it at his side, but Vera gingerly grabbed it.

His knuckles were so terribly swollen, especially by his index finger, that Vera could feel the bulge of it at a cursory touch. “What happened?” she asked again.

He pursed his lips. “Well. I, er, lost my temper. With your father.”

“How would that—” Oh. Her lips formed the word, though she didn’t say it. “You punched him?”

He slid his hand free and tucked it back by his side. “Er. Yes.”

“Hm.” She tried to suppress a grin, the same tingling sense that she’d felt at his protective affection with Wulfstan blooming in her chest before she remembered that it was about his rule. Not about caring for her.

He must have noticed the way her expression changed. “Does that upset you?”

She didn’t know how to answer. “That was the first time I ever met my biological father.” She wasn’t sure why she was telling him that, except it felt important that someone knew. “Is he always like that?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s …” Arthur shook his head. “He’s an ass. Guinevere told me that her childhood was not a happy one.”

“What did he say?” Vera asked.

“Hmm?”

“What did he say to make you take a swing at him?” She forced her voice to be light, but she craved to know.

“Oh.” Arthur’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling. “It was nothing.”

Vera scoffed. “Don’t spare my feelings. Tell me.”

Arthur sighed, and his cheeks went pink. “He said I should get you pregnant to tame you.”

The tingle flared in her chest. “That made you punch him?”

“Right in the mouth,” Arthur said. He looked at her lips, and Vera reflexively reached up to touch the cut that still stung. “It only seemed fair.”

Lancelot had found them in the chapel with a summons for Arthur from Vera’s father and the local lords. Arthur offered to send Percival instead, but Vera had insisted she was fine. They all knew Arthur was the one who was needed. She planned to head to Merlin’s study alone after that, determined not to delay their session, but Lancelot fell in step with her rather than following Arthur.

“You aren’t needed for whatever diplomacy is about to happen?” Vera asked.

“Oh no,” he said. “Arthur’s far better suited for it. It doesn’t take being pushed beyond the brink of offense and exhaustion for me to start taking swings.”

She thought he’d bid her farewell at the door to Merlin’s tower, but he was right on her heels and looked at her expectantly when she stopped at the threshold.

“You’ve seen me safely here,” she said. “You don’t have to walk me all the way down.”

“Oh, I’m not just walking you. I’m staying.”

She’d been so certain that all the trouble she’d caused would have him running to get away from her. “I’m sure you’d rather be with the soldiers at training or—”

“Guinna,” he said sternly. “I want to be here.”

“Only if you’re sure …”

“I am. I insist.” His intensity fell away as an ornery grin stole over his face. “In case someone needs to take a swing at Merlin.”

At first glance, Merlin’s study remained the same: oddities dangling beneath hooks, piled on shelves, stuffed in baskets. It was a pleasant sort of mess that was actually tidy, with only the appearance of whimsical disorder—except for one island of pure chaos exploding from the epicenter of what was once Viviane’s empty desk. Bits of rumpled parchment and discarded piles of rubbish littered the floor around it. The desk was transformed into a makeshift stronghold, fortified by stacks of hefty tomes lining the edges of it on three sides and partway on a fourth, leaving a gap in the middle where Gawain now worked. Well, presumably, it was Gawain. All that was visible beyond the gap in the book walls was the seated lower half of a robed man.

Vera imagined completing the desk fort with a handwritten Keep Out! sign and smiled—until she caught Merlin’s eye over in the kitchen area. She’d imagined countless versions of what he might say to her, of how he might be angry. Disappointed in her. She’d wondered if there’d be pity.

But he simply looked a little bit frightened, which might have been worse than the alternatives. He busied himself, carefully combining ingredients on the counter. Lancelot plopped down in Merlin’s chair, going so far as to open the giant tome on his desk and flip through the pages.

“What are you doing?” Merlin snapped once he noticed.

“Reading,” Lancelot said innocently. “Merlin, what’s—” he bent his head low over the book, “the defensible transference postulation?”

The top of a head and two eyes barely crested the fort walls as Gawain sat up and blinked at Lancelot, his interest apparently roused.

“Hullo there,” Lancelot said to him. “Wasn’t sure that was you in there.”

“I’m leaving,” Gawain said. “I’ve been instructed that this is a private matter.”

Lancelot smiled pleasantly as he folded his hands on the desk.

“Yet you are staying,” Gawain added with no small amount of disapproval.

Lancelot’s grin widened.

Merlin crossed the room and slammed the book shut. Lancelot barely pulled back in time to spare his nose from being clobbered by it.

“The king has ordered it, Gawain,” Merlin said.

“There you have it.” Lancelot threw his hands in the air in mock annoyance. “I’m here on orders. Nothing I can do about it.”

Gawain tipped his head forward and glowered up at Lancelot through his eyebrows. “I do not find you amusing.”

This only further delighted Lancelot. “That is a shame.”

“We should be finished by supper,” Merlin said, putting an end to the conversation.

Gawain stared, fixated on Merlin’s hand—but no … Vera could see he held a glass vial. He adjusted so that his fingers covered it, drawing Gawain’s attention up as the elder mage delicately tilted his head toward the door.

“Of course,” Gawain said quickly, his chair’s feet raking across the floor as he scuttled from his seat, a rectangular plank of wood clutched in one hand. Vera had only noticed it because she’d thought it was a cellphone at first glance. It was exactly the right size. But he tucked whatever it was into his robe’s pocket and strode out the door without so much as a greeting nor a goodbye to Vera. She wasn’t sure he’d noticed she was there at all.

“He’s a good lad,” Merlin said. Then he sighed and shook his head. “I’ll have to think of what to tell him about you soon. He’s uncannily perceptive.”

“Oh yes,” Lancelot piped in, comfortably twiddling his thumbs in Merlin’s seat. “Really has a knack for nuance, that one.”

Merlin wasn’t any more pleased about Lancelot’s presence than Gawain had been. Their dynamic was that of a toddler who could smell the annoyance of his caretaker and who would now prey upon that weakness mercilessly.

He chuckled when Merlin snatched the closed book and turned away.

Stop! Vera mouthed in exasperation, though she smiled, too. She was nervous. His mischief was a welcome distraction.

Merlin led them over to the bathing pool in the darkest corner of his study. It was larger than it appeared from a distance and eerily the shape of a coffin. “We’ll be trying an enhanced form of sensory deprivation,” Merlin said.

“To, like, put me in a trance?” Vera asked.

“It serves that function and then some. With the aid of magic through a potion, your regular brain function will be nearly stilled. It lets the unconscious part of your mind take control.”

“How does she come out of it?” Lancelot asked as he inspected the tub and ran his fingers across the water’s surface. It was a good question. Being stuck in her unconscious mind would be its own form of hell.

“Mostly, it will take its course,” Merlin said, “but we can also set a limit, and I can pull her back if we go over.”

“And this will definitely work?” Vera asked.

Merlin quested his head back and forth. “It is the less invasive option. I don’t believe the block on your mind has been adequately loosened. This should help. I can’t say for certain that it will reveal a memory from your life before, but it will reveal something of your unconscious mind. At the very least, it will be a step in the right direction.”

Fear rippled through Vera. There were many things tucked away that she’d rather not touch, but her drive to recover Guinevere’s memories was stronger. She stole a glance at Lancelot. He’d stopped cracking jokes and stared at her with a tight smile and a furrowed brow. If he was here, she’d be fine.

“All right,” she said.

Merlin procured a heavy white gown that reminded Vera of a choir robe. She didn’t hesitate when she asked Lancelot to loosen the cords of her dress (though Merlin pursed his lips and minutely shook his head) before stepping around a privacy barrier to change. When she returned, Merlin passed her the small bottle and a thick, black loop of fabric.

“When you’re ready to get in, drink all of this. You’ll have about fifteen seconds before conscious thought fades. It should be enough time to safely get in the water, lie back, and put your eye mask on. Once you’ve drunk the potion, neither of us can touch you or the effects will be negated. I am ready when you are.”

Lancelot gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Bottoms up, love,” he said as he knelt down next to the basin.

Vera stared at the palm-sized vial of clear liquid in her hand. It was less than a shot of liquor, so she took a deep breath and threw it back as if it were vodka. There was no smell—no flavor, though her throat went numb as the liquid slid down it.

She climbed into the comfortably warm waters and pulled the blindfold over her eyes as she lay back. The water held her weightless, with her feet hovering above the tub’s bottom and only her face above the surface.

“The salt and potion I’ve added to the water might feel strange,” Merlin said. The sensation that rose over Vera’s skin prickled pleasantly. She heard the mage’s words as if from a long way off, and as she drifted further away, a last conscious thought occurred to her. She heard words, the same words, every time she fell asleep. It had started with her journey back to this time and happened daily, but she could never remember them even a moment later … like a rubber eraser scrubbed them away as soon as she heard them, leaving only a smudge of dust, the sole hint that they’d been said at all. And there they were.

“Ishau mar domibaru.”

Vera’s thoughts grew hazy, sense and fantasy bleeding into one. And the words were gone. And all the world was darkness.

Until it wasn’t.

Vera was barefoot in a field. She felt the prick of pebbles and the scratch of dry grass beneath her toes. There were low mountains in the distance, and between her and the mountains, a river’s tributary, and closer, a field rich with spindly yellow flowers as tall as her knees. Hundreds of them. They waved at her as they swayed back and forth. She heard the babbling river and felt the breeze kissing her cheek. The sweet smell of life springing from the dirt was vivid, but there was a second note of rancid rot.

And the sound changed.

It started softer than the water’s friendly ruckus but stood out because the two noises were at odds. It grew louder and louder until Vera could hardly hear the river anymore.

Screaming. Petrified screaming that didn’t need words to be a cry for help. Vera whirled around, and all breath left her body, for there was her mother. Allison knelt in the field, clutching her stomach below her naval, and as she wailed, blood gushed between her fingers.

Vera tore over to her mother. Allison’s face flitted through a range of emotions from the fear she must have felt to being appalled that Vera was here and then to a stalwart reassurance that only a mother could manage, and then—her face shimmered like it was under water. It wasn’t Allison anymore. For a moment, Vera stared into the mirror image of herself. Another shimmer.

The new woman was a stranger, though her expression hadn’t changed across the three iterations. But she was just as real. Vera’s sobs joined hers, her heart just as wrecked as when it had been Allison. There was so much blood pumping from the gaping wound. She hadn’t known that freely flowing blood was so thick and, as it congealed, it was nearly purple.

Vera pressed her hands to the wound, but they were too small, or the wound was too big. Her fingers slid through the slick mess of blood. Her hands were covered in it after seconds, and the sharp smell of rust overwhelmed her. All she could see and smell and feel was blood, and the only sound was screaming, though now it was her own, for the woman was silent.

Vera’s eyes shot open, and she rose from the tub with a gasp. There was a hand clutching her wrist and another on her shoulder.

“You can’t touch her!” Merlin scolded.

She ripped the blindfold free. The hands on her were Lancelot’s. His breath came in heaves. “You were screaming,” he said.

She couldn’t spare a moment to reassure him. Vera grabbed Merlin by the wrist. “It’s my mum—I saw her dying. I have to go back. I have to—”

Merlin cupped her face in his hand. “Guinevere,” he said sternly but not unkindly. “Allison is fine. Nothing has happened to her. You were dreaming. It is not uncommon to fall asleep during this process.”

She was shaking her head to protest even as she remembered the way Allison’s face had morphed. It had all been real except for that.

“Her face turned into mine, too. Do you think … was I remembering Guinevere’s death—Viviane’s attack from before?” Vera asked.

Lancelot’s hand tightened on her shoulder as Merlin cocked his head thoughtfully to the side. “Where was the wound?”

Vera pointed to the spot on her stomach.

Merlin shook his head. “No. No, that’s not it.” His eyes glazed like he saw nothing in front of him. He was quiet so long that Vera was surprised when he spoke. “Your previous injury was to the heart. You were dreaming. That was a nightmare.”