Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Vera stared at Thomas’s body, not initially able to grasp that she now looked upon a corpse. His face was pressed against the statue’s pregnant belly so that his cheek was mashed up next to his vacantly staring eyes, as lifeless as the stone beneath him. Blood trickled from a mouth hung slack.

As she waited for Thomas to draw a breath that would never come, her breathing accelerated. So fast, until it all lodged somewhere between mouth and lungs, useless air hanging in the void.

What the fuck just happened? And for Christ’s sake, why?

Arthur’s sword clattered to the floor as he knelt next to her. He lay a wary hand on her back. It was like Vera had forgotten how to use air. She gasped over and over, barely able to draw in a shallow sip. She hardly felt Arthur’s second hand on her upper arm. Vera turned to him, trying to anchor herself in something breathing, something alive. His face was a blur, an abstract smudge against a backdrop of chaos.

“Guinevere.” She thought he’d said her name. She couldn’t be sure over a riotous ringing in her ears. When had that started?

Vera sat up, her panic rising with her. She’d survived Thomas. She’d killed Thomas, and now she could not breathe. Maybe his last blow to her head was killing her. What if she was bleeding as much as Thomas had, only all of hers was inside her head, causing her brain to swell and forget how to perform basic, life-sustaining tasks?

Vera felt Arthur behind her, his arm reaching under hers and across her torso as he helped her stand. She clutched his forearm to her chest, but she found right away that her legs couldn’t hold her weight. Her knees buckled, and she fell back against him. Her attempts to draw in air grew louder and more frantic by the second.

“I—I can’t breathe,” she choked.

“You’re safe. You’re all right.” Arthur’s voice broke through her panic as he lowered with her to the floor. He leaned back against the wall, knees drawn up on either side of her as he held her to his chest.

“Breathe,” he said, and as if to show her how, he took a deep breath, his chest rising against her back. She tried. She tried so desperately that her nails dug into his arm from the effort.

“I can’t!” She managed to force the words from her.

“You can,” he said as he continued his steady breaths. He spoke more quietly, right next to her ear. “You already are. Slow down. Come on, with me.”

He took another deep breath, but Vera kept struggling. Darkness tugged at the corners of her vision. When Martin and Allison never heard from her again, she hoped they would assume she had found happiness. She prayed they’d never know what happened to her, couldn’t bear the thought that—

“Breathe with me, Vera,” Arthur said, his mouth a thumb’s length from her ear.

Something snapped in place. The next time Arthur’s chest rose, Vera’s joined with it. One full breath of life to soothe her stinging lungs. Her exhale shuddered from her body. Soon, more of her breaths matched Arthur’s rhythm than the discord of hyperventilation. Once she’d calmed to near quiet, Arthur let go of her.

She crawled forward on her hands and knees. Why, she did not know. Maybe the surge of grief and anger and confusion and relief was too much; she needed an island unto herself to release it. Her vision cleared, and the wreckage before her unearthed a guttural and inhuman scream, perhaps from her very soul. Vera curled into a ball on the floor and sobbed. The sounds she heard coming from her body were utterly foreign to her.

And then, she quieted.

“You’re injured,” she heard Arthur say. When Vera shifted to look up at him, the side of her head still against the nightmarishly wet stone floor, he was pulling his bloody fingertips away from the place on his shoulder where the back of her head had rested. He scooted along the floor next to her and tenderly touched the wound on her head. Although she didn’t wince, he withdrew his hand quickly as if aware it hurt her.

“He stabbed me.” Vera’s voice sounded small in her ears.

Arthur shifted to cut off her view of the horrid corpse. He was so out of place here, despite his being the only body in the room dressed for battle. Vera and Thomas were the casualties of war, whereas Arthur’s golden crown shone on his head. The smell of his pristine, unblemished leather armor was as good as potpourri amongst the rusty odor of blood and death.

“I need to get you to your room so we can dress your wounds,” Arthur said.

“I can stand. I’d like to try to walk.” She didn’t want to be helpless, and he did not question her.

After the madness of what happened, she feared she’d find him awash with pity. But in his face, she found only the soldier. He was focused on what needed to be done next, on surviving the right now, and there was no room in his expression for extraneous things like pity. But it wasn’t mechanical.

Arthur inadvertently pressed his fingers against the stab wound at her shoulder as he tried to help her stand, eliciting a pained cry from Vera. He pulled back, and she saw through the clenched squint of her eyes that his hands trembled. If she hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have known that he was afraid, too. Arthur rubbed the heels of his hands against his forehead as he took a slow breath before helping her to her feet with restored steadiness.

She leaned her uninjured shoulder into him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. But Vera’s good shoulder and leg were both on her left side, which made for poor hobbling. She didn’t question Arthur as he led her away from the chapel’s main doors and toward the altar. They turned left into an alcove, and there was a door there, different from the distinguished main entry, simple and small. A monk’s door. She would have remarked on it another day. All that mattered now was that it got her out of here faster.

It led to a path right in the shadow of the castle wall. Arthur tried to quicken their pace once they were in the open air. Vera’s breath hissed through her teeth as the pressure of every step pushed a fresh surge of blood from her thigh. Each footfall on her right side throbbed more than the last. Arthur stopped, casting a sidelong glance at her. She hadn’t realized how much the wound was bleeding. The fabric of her dress was so soaked in blood that it was black. And the slit in her skirt that Thomas carved blew open to her waist in the night breeze. Her whole exposed leg down to the slipper on her foot was a scene from a horror movie.

“Can I carry you?” Arthur asked, his face tense with effort to keep his expression flat.

Vera nodded.

He bent to scoop his free arm beneath her knees. It was silly that she’d even tried to walk. The effort had only weakened her. Now, Vera was cradled in his arms, her blood soaking both of them, and his pace doubled. She tucked her chin, wedging her head in the crook of his neck. Despite the pain all through her body, despite her whole heart being wrecked at what she’d had to do to survive, despite now feeling on the edge of vomiting from the nausea of blood loss, a distracted satisfaction rumbled through Vera at being held by him, curled against his chest. She sobbed anew at it, cursing whatever Merlin had done to her.

Nothing … nothing about this should have felt good.

“I want to go home,” she whispered between sobs.

“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—”

She leaned forward and grabbed his wrist, mastering the urge to cry out from the abrupt movement and instead pouring all she had, all her pain and fear and impotence, into her next words. “Now.” Her voice shook. Her hands shook. “Right now. Either you tell me whatever the fuck it is that you’ve been keeping from me, or I absolutely will go on making myself be fine because I don’t have any other way of surviving.” The exertion left her gasping for breath.

“All right,” he relented, and quickly moved his free hand to cradle the back of her neck. She was ready to berate him for it but nearly collapsed into his grasp. He eased her back down onto the pillow, his eyes holding hers with a strange glint of adoration. But she was dizzy and had to be mistaken.

“You’re right,” he said as he pulled his hands back and dropped his head between them. The logistics of caring for her left him in a posture of supplication, kneeling at her side, his hands clasped on the bed next to Vera with his head bowed. “I’ve been an utter fool.” His face bore no trace of the mask of stone. Now, all she saw was sadness and regret. “I’ve been far worse than that, and I’m so sorry.”

She nestled back into her pillows, unable to contain the groan that escaped her. But she didn’t soften her glare. “How much have you kept from me?”

“Too much.” He said it so quickly that it startled Vera out of her ire. “Everything that matters. It was wrong—”

“Tell me why you need a potion to be near me.” There would be no resting when the offer of truth was on the table.

“I don’t.” Arthur took one shaking breath before he gave in and sat down on the bed next to her, heedless of where blood marred the sheets. “When Viviane attacked Guinevere, and Merlin restarted her essence, there was so much damage that—and I don’t fully understand this—but he wasn’t sure it would work. He was able to get three parts. Three separate pieces of her essence.”

He stopped speaking and held Vera’s stare. Her heart thundered in her chest. “What does that mean?”

“There were three of you,” Arthur said. “Two other versions of Guinevere were restarted when you were. They came back before you.”

All the physical pain, the feelings of dread, even her anger at Arthur—it all abruptly vanished as Vera absorbed his words.

“What—” she began, but all that came out was an unintelligible rasp. She cleared her throat. “What happened to them?”

Arthur looked at Vera with dread-soaked resolve. “They’re dead.”

Vera inhaled sharply.

“It was the same idea as with you,” Arthur continued. “They were raised in another time. Merlin brought the first back a week after Viviane’s attack.”

“Did she remember?” Vera asked.

“She did. Not the attack. She had no recollection of that, but she remembered me after a while, who she was, about her life … And then, it was like something snapped. She became homicidal, almost rabidly so. She attacked me and the soldier who intervened, and she was killed.”

The strange phrasing was not lost on Vera.

“By you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. He forged on before Vera could question it further. “At that point, neither Merlin nor I wanted it to be in vain. He insisted we try again. So much about it had been right, and it was new magic. Complicated magic. We couldn’t just give up. Merlin brought the second one back, and she seemed more like herself. She remembered about the same as the first, but she slipped into an even deeper melancholy than Guinevere—Guinevere from before. One morning, she woke …” Arthur’s voice caught. He closed his eyes and swallowed. His cheeks went red as he fought down an onslaught of emotion. He dragged his gaze back to meet Vera’s. “And there was nothing left of her. She was,” he shook his head, “sorrow incarnate.” His eyes flashed to the window. “She jumped.”

It reminded Vera of Matilda, the horror in her eyes when she saw Vera leaning against the window the other night. “And Matilda saw,” she said. She needed no confirmation, though Arthur nodded.

And the pain in his face made her ask, “Were you there, too?”

Arthur nodded.

“You saw it both times?”

“Yes.” He paused. “And the first time, too. After Viviane’s attack.”

Arthur witnessed that horror three separate times. She felt like the wind was knocked out of her. She should have reached out to comfort him, but she sat there, frozen. She couldn’t be sure if it was the story or if the shock was wearing off and leaving her empty, but a dull sick had started churning in her stomach.

“When she fell—jumped,” Arthur amended. “It was more public. People saw it, saw her body. Only from a distance, granted, but there was no denying that some sort of accident had happened. The word spread quickly, and it had to be addressed. That’s where the story about healing at the monastery came from. Merlin wanted to try again right away, and I refused. He agreed to wait a year, which also fulfilled the need for an explanation. Anyone who saw it knew she couldn’t possibly have been all right, not for a long while. Merlin spent that year trying to convince me to change my mind. The time came, and I still refused. I wanted to tell the people that Guinevere died from her injuries and leave you be where you were. Merlin went behind my back and brought you anyway. All I could think to do was to stay as far away from you as possible so that it didn’t end as it had before.” He looked at her apologetically, pleadingly.

“Why are you so convinced that you were the part that broke them?” Vera asked. “The magic went wrong, Arthur. You didn’t do that.”

He was in visible misery, and she knew he only forged on with his eyes locked onto her because he had committed to telling her everything.

“There was a turning point, and it was the same thing. Both times,” he said, “it all went very badly very quickly after she and I were physically intimate. When I saw you last night after Merlin hurt you and you were so,” he searched for the word, “destroyed, I thought it was because of me. I thought that what happened in Glastonbury had … well, it doesn’t matter. I’d have known better if I’d asked or even listened when you tried to tell me.”

“Oh,” Vera said, stunned. “And …” Shit. She had to ask. “If we hadn’t stopped that night, you think that what happened to the others would have happened to me?”

“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.

He looked at her like she’d slapped him. “An apology isn’t enough. That shouldn’t be enough for you.”

“If you truly want me to be in control of my life, that’s not your call,” Vera said. “Do you promise not to keep anything from me going forward? I mean it. I mean nothing.”

“Yes,” he said solemnly.

“And …” If she was expecting honesty, she might as well give it. “After what happened between us in Glastonbury—”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Vera said. Her hands shook and her heart thundered. “I’m not.”

Arthur’s lips parted as he stared at her, his eyes blazing. She had the distinct sensation that she’d shocked him into desire. That he wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them and finish what they’d started. It passed in a heartbeat, replaced by his resolute regret—probably owing, in part, to the freshly dressed wounds and the mess of blood surrounding her. And to the potion. Arthur carefully considered what he said next. “We can’t pretend magic hasn’t intervened between us. There are lines we cannot cross even should we want to.”

His cheeks reddened as he paused and peered down at his hands. Vera nodded quickly. The shame of this was unbearable.

“You need rest,” he said.

She could have asked him a hundred more questions, but he was right. She was holding onto consciousness by a thread. He helped her change into a nightgown and swapped out clean blankets for the bed.

He brought her a cup of water, which she gratefully downed, aware as the first drop touched her tongue how thirsty she was.

“May I clean the blood out of your hair?” he asked. Vera nodded. She’d forgotten that her hair was matted and bloody at the back of her head.

Arthur took one of many excess pillows and placed it on the side of the bed. He cautiously offered Vera his arm to help her shift to lie on it. His face, etched with doubt that she’d accept his help, almost made her smile. Almost. The only person who’d suffer from Vera’s stubbornness was her.

She lay on her back, hair dangling over the side of the bed.

Arthur sat on a footstool behind her and poured warm water down the back of her head to help work the blood out in patches. His fingers were adept and gentle.

“Is this all right?” he asked.

“Yes.” His touch brought more comfort than it had any right. “I don’t want to be angry with you,” said Vera, surprising herself that she’d decided to say it aloud.

His fingers halted. She wished she could see his reaction.

“All right,” he eventually said as he resumed working through her hair. “But if you change your mind, I’ll be ready.”

She smiled, the breath of a laugh but one good night’s sleep away.

They slipped into quiet. It was peaceful enough that Vera started to drift between wakefulness and sleep as he worked. She felt him towel-drying her hair and applying something to the abrasion on her head. He piled her hair on the pillow and pulled the blankets up around her, believing her asleep. She relished in the half-consciousness, aware enough to feel his presence but distant enough not to need to respond. He hadn’t moved far. He sat back down on the footstool.

When Vera heard the door latch, she wasn’t sure if it was a dream until she heard Matilda’s voice. “Your Majesty, may I have a word?”

Vera’s eyes shot open, and she grabbed Arthur’s hand as he stood. “Don’t leave me again.”

She didn’t care if he left the room for a moment. That wasn’t what she meant, and he knew that. He knew what she meant. Arthur knelt back down and encased her hand in both of his.

“I won’t.” And there was so much unsaid behind his words. “I promise.”

Vera held his gaze, expecting him to hurry to escape their closeness for the comfort of some critical task like ruling the country. He didn’t. Vera was the one who eventually nodded and broke the moment.

“Let’s turn you right-ways,” Arthur said.

He helped reposition her in the bed, her right arm elevated on a folded blanket, a pillow under the crook of her knee. Her eyes drooped as she heard him say, “I’ll be right back.”

She believed him.