Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

She’d done it.

She’d forgotten to shove her feelings out of reach. Instead, Vera had crowded in on them and ended up cradling her love until she couldn’t deny it. And now? Now, it was inescapable. In the days leading up to the festival, the words were right there, tempting her tongue every time she looked at Arthur.

But she kept swallowing them.

There was the rancid uncertainty of the love’s origin. Was it what she’d had for Vincent, mapped via magic onto a new source?

And if the whole kingdom was thriving like Camelot, they had to be close to breaking the curse. They had to. Which brought her to the simpler matter of reality: there and back again. Vera’s tale. She’d be leaving in late spring. That left … what? Two months? Maybe less?

So she wouldn’t breathe the words, but she would spend every possible moment with him. On the day of the festival’s welcome feast, Vera’s morning was chock-filled with helping ready the castle while Arthur took audiences with travelers and knights who had been pouring into town all week.

But they were both to have a midday break, and when the clock’s chime tolled, Vera made a beeline across the castle grounds, nearly charging in when she reached the throne room—the door was left ajar, after all, but she stopped short at the sound of voices. Arthur must not have been finished yet.

She inclined her ear toward the opening, trying to make out whether the conversation had the polite sounds of ending, but nearly jumped out of her skin when the next sound wasn’t that of a voice but of something (a fist?) slamming down on the table.

“It will work, Your Majesty.” She recognized that voice with a jolt. It was Merlin. Vera hadn’t realized he’d returned from his travels.

“I won’t allow it!”

She recoiled from the door. Arthur had … shouted. He was furious.

“You haven’t traveled since Yule.” Merlin countered Arthur’s volume with an agitated whisper. “You haven’t seen the ways infrastructure is failing. We have over one hundred mages, and magic is breaking down at a rate we cannot keep up with. Your kingdom is suffering. If you think word of our weakness has not reached the Saxon—”

“Can you guarantee that she will not be harmed?”

Oh shit. They were talking about Vera. She leaned close enough to look into the room and found the two men separated by a table. Arthur leaned over it, braced with his hands wide on its surface. If he sounded angry, it was nothing to how enraged he looked.

There was silence before Merlin answered. “I can guarantee that I’ll be able to retrieve her memories—”

“I won’t hear it.” Arthur’s tone was measured and even again. It was as much of a peace offering as Merlin could hope for.

“You must!” The mage rounded the table to Arthur’s side. “When the Saxons attack and you have no plan, no one’s survival will be guaranteed. This is your duty!”

That was the wrong thing to say. Arthur leveled Merlin with a cold stare. “And what of your duty? So far, the mages have made promises about magic that they cannot keep.” His voice was rising again. “What of your responsibility? That you would ask me for a human sacrifice for the magic you don’t understand is appalling. But that it’s Guinevere? You said she was like a daughter to you.”

“She was. She is!” Merlin cried. “Which should convey nothing but the importance of—”

Arthur slammed his fist on the table again. “I told you not to return without a safe solution. You do not rule this kingdom. You do not rule me. And you will not touch her.”

Vera was careful not to move in the silence that followed, aware that even the softest noise would be audible.

“If you do not wish to serve under me,” Arthur said quietly. Merlin huffed. “I will release you back to the council of mages. Is that what you want?”

“Of course it isn’t,” Merlin said. “Your Majesty, is that what you want?”

Arthur cast a glance toward the door, and Vera jolted backward and out of view before she heard him say, “Prove to me that you can unlock her memories and keep her safe.”

She couldn’t stay here. In a daze, with her head buzzing, Vera left. She knew where she needed to go.

The door to the mages’ study was closed. Merlin could be coming back any moment, but she’d decided the chance of a word in private with Gawain was worth taking. He might not even be there, but … she knocked.

“Not now,” Gawain’s voice scolded from beyond the shut door. “I already told you that I will meet you at the festival set up—” he’d flung the door open midsentence and stopped as he saw Vera there. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Is this a bad time?” she asked, curious who he’d been expecting to find.

He opened the door further in invitation, and Vera obligingly stepped in. “I’m just finishing …” he gestured vaguely toward his desk as he closed the door.

There was a glass instrument on the desk—a round globe with a tube as wide as the tip of Vera’s pinky stemming from its bottom and running beside the bulbous main container up to the top.

“What is that?” she asked. She was stalling.

But Gawain’s expression brightened. “It’s … well, magic creates a sort of pressure. Its presence impacts the atmosphere of a space, particularly an enclosed space.” He picked it up. It fit comfortably in his palm as he held it between them. “This device is able to measure that pressure. I’ve just done my first successful test.” He beamed at her.

“Brilliant,” Vera said, bewildered by what it meant. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. It is rather brilliant.” He laughed like he held the key to the world in his palm. “It’s actually revolutionary.” When he met her gaze again, his excitement faltered, and his head tilted. “But that’s not why you’re here. Is there something wrong?”

“How is the kingdom outside Camelot?” she asked, endeavoring to sound casual. “Is magic doing better out there, too?”

Gawain set the device down. “Why do you ask?”

She’d come to believe that any time Gawain shirked from answering a question, there was a reason. Vera’s heart fell, afraid she’d already gotten her answer. “I overheard Merlin and Arthur arguing about it.”

He sighed and moved the chair that sat beside Merlin’s desk closer. Then he sat on the edge of his desk across from Vera. “Conditions have worsened. Especially in the eastern part of the kingdom.”

“They don’t have a Gawain,” she said, trying to make light of it while a pit gnawed at her insides. She was shaking a little and sank into the seat.

He smiled briefly. “They don’t have yourself and His Majesty.”

“You’re getting better at jokes.”

But Gawain didn’t so much as chuckle.

Vera needed to be brave now. “It sounded like Merlin’s figured out how to break through my locked memories.”

“That’s my understanding as well,” he said slowly.

“Arthur wouldn’t hear it because Merlin can’t guarantee my safety.”

He nodded. “A prudent choice.”

“I was relieved at first … to not have to do it.” But the relief had hit a wall. She was terrified to let magic in her mind. But if the kingdom was suffering, and they weren’t any closer to breaking Viviane’s curse outside the walls of this city, what choice did that leave? She didn’t want to do it.

What if Merlin was right, and it was the only way? Late spring was no longer a distant imagining. The kingdom was running out of time—and so was Vera. “I can never go home if I don’t remember,” she said. “Do you know how Merlin would get through my mind?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s not so different from what he did before.”

She tried to hide the way an involuntary shiver pulsed through her, but she was sure Gawain had seen it. His deep-set eyes were fixed on her.

“Would it be like before with the pain and …” The pain. She could feel that searing, shattering horror just thinking of it. And there was the hole left in her memory, gaping where Vincent’s face should have been. “And the loss,” she added.

“I don’t know,” Gawain said.

“What if … could you try?”

Surprise made him look younger. “I only know the theory. I’ve never put it to practice.”

“Well, neither has Merlin,” Vera said. “Could you?”

Gawain frowned. She had spent enough time with him to know that he did this occasionally—went silent mid-conversation to think. So she waited.

“I could try,” he said. “I won’t pretend that my motives are entirely altruistic. I am curious. I’d like to study this block better for myself. I have the potion for it. And …” At this, he leaned forward and said through a tight jaw, “I will not proceed without your permission.”

If someone had told Vera three months ago that she’d choose Gawain to meddle inside her brain over Merlin, she’d have laughed. Merlin was the one Guinevere had trusted. Even Vera’s childhood dream memories included him making Guinevere smile on her dark days. And Merlin—the one the queen confided in when she came to her senses. Merlin, who had saved Guinevere’s life.

Not entirely out of kindness, though. He’d saved her to fulfill a task, one he believed vital to their survival. She’d heard it said more than once: Merlin would always put the kingdom first. Ahead of everything. Everyone. Vera should be half as selfless as him. This was her purpose, dammit.

But … what did it hurt for Vera to have some foreknowledge of what she’d be getting into this time? And Gawain, the rude and insufferable young mage who’d spied on her most private moments, who none of them really knew, was the one she chose to trust. Gawain, the secretly tender soul who thrived when teaching others how to use magic and dreamed of gifts being used to make musical instruments rather than weapons.

Yes. It was selfish, maybe even foolish. But she chose Gawain.

She took the potion and felt all her senses awaken as she sat in the chair. He stood behind her as Merlin had, his hands in the same position over her ears, fingers on her temples. Vera’s heart raced, pounding at her chest as if it wanted to escape her body.

Yet as soon as he breached the space where her mind began, it was different. He moved gently. As he roamed through the corridors of Vera’s mind, she could sense his care in avoiding things that weren’t pertinent. He inspected her memories from a safe distance like a child with his hands in his pocket at a museum, scrolling quickly past her moments alone with Arthur. Paying no heed to Lancelot at all. He didn’t tug anything to the forefront, though he lingered near the spots where Merlin had interfered before.

Those sections felt like … like torn paper. A page ripped from where it belonged.

She knew—she didn’t know how, she just knew—that if he’d gone any closer to those jagged places, it would have hurt. But he didn’t. Vera began to relax.

Then, Gawain reached a spot where he outright stopped.

“Oh,” he said, stunned, and it echoed through the cavern of her mind. “Can you feel this?”

She shook her head beneath his fingers. There wasn’t anything where he stopped. It was … blank.

Wait.

It was blank. No other part of her mind had been empty.

“I think if I …” His presence moved closer to the dark void, drawing a perimeter around it, bringing it into focus for Vera. It had a feeling to it, too. A dull throb that was quite at home in her, like a toothache she’d had for so long that she’d forgotten about it.

It was a barrier.

“Holy shit,” Vera said. It was expansive and—this was it. She was entirely certain. This was everything she couldn’t access. It was in there. Gawain traced along it, back, back, back into the recesses of her memory.

“I would guess that the front, where I started, are your most recent memories. It’s ironclad. I believe this part,” he said of the space farthest into her mind, “is early in your life as Guinevere. It feels more porous. We could probably find some openings there, though it will hurt if I apply pressure.”

They were close, though. Now, having sensed it and knowing that it truly was there, Vera couldn’t stand the thought of walking away. “Can you try?”

Gawain’s presence went still. “Are you sure?”

“I am.”

She braced herself for it to begin. When he started to apply pressure, the pain came with it. She gasped, and he hesitated, but she’d felt it. The barrier had given a tiny shiver.

“Keep going,” she said. But he didn’t move. She’d lose her nerve if he didn’t go now. “Do it!”

He did, with renewed vigor. The agony swelled like her head was being slowly crushed. Vera had a death grip on the arms of the chair, her teeth grinding together with such force they might crack. It hurt so badly that she couldn’t breathe. That explosions of light appeared on the backs of her eyelids. That awareness and reason drifted far from her grasp.

Then it all stopped.

Gawain’s careful presence was gone inside and out, his fingers having released her. Vera was left gasping as the pressure abated into sweet, blissful relief.

“I was fine,” she barely managed to mumble as her chin lolled onto her chest, which only served to emphasize that, indeed, she wasn’t.

She rubbed at her temples—they were shockingly hot to her own touch. Vera opened her eyes and blinked. She couldn’t see straight. She heard a loud scraping that didn’t make sense before something cool and solid was pressed into her hand.

“Drink,” Gawain said. It was a cup filled with water.

She drained it all before her vision swam into focus. Gawain had dragged his chair over and was sitting in front of her. A blessedly cool blast of air blew over her skin. He’d opened the door and extinguished the fire, too.

Vera willed herself to speak and found she couldn’t.

“I could have broken that barrier,” Gawain said quietly, his low volume a gift to her throbbing skull. “It’s the same way Merlin would do it.” He swallowed and shook his head. “You would not be all right. It would sever many of the connections in your brain, leaving you permanently changed.”

It sounded like a lobotomy. Well … plenty of people had gotten those. It wasn’t ideal, but some had good lives after, didn’t they? Different, but … maybe good.

Gawain made sure she was looking at him before he continued. “But that is the best outcome you could hope for, and it’s highly likely there would be far worse impacts. My best guess is that you would succumb to the trauma of your injuries before you could share those memories. The sort of magic that would be required to save you only exists in myth. Merlin should know that.” He stared at the smoldering embers in the hearth. “You would be dead, and all that you contained gone with you.”

It was a strange notion to consider her life like a question in an ethics class: should you take the chance of finding the key to fixing a whole world at the expense of one life?

It would have been an easy choice to make—if it had a decent shot of working. “Shit,” Vera said.

Gawain hummed a rueful chuckle. “Indeed.”

“And you’re beginning to agree with Merlin … You think my memories are needed, don’t you?” she asked.

“There’s something important within you,” he said carefully, just as he’d told her before. “But the king is right: this is not an option.”

“What am I going to do?” Vera dropped her head into her hands. “I have to fix this, Gawain.”

“If I break the barrier by force, that’s what would cause the damage. But did you feel the way it moved a bit under pressure?”

“Yes,” she said.

“With healing intervention, we could keep doing this. I push enough to chip away at the barrier but give you potion and time to heal in between sessions, and then we try again. It won’t be as fast as Merlin hopes, and it’s certainly not ideal for your well-being, but after some time, I believe it may work to dismantle the barrier. It’s likely our best option.”

He fished out a healing potion for her, but other than running hot, she already felt fine by the time she drank it.

“You’re busy. I don’t want to take any more of your time,” Vera said, thinking of whoever he’d thought he was scolding when she came in. Whether she acknowledged it or not, she was the queen, and Gawain had been beholden to drop what he was doing for her.

She was halfway to the door when he said, “Guinna?”

She turned as he carefully tucked his glass-bulbed instrument into a box beneath his desk.

“Would you like to walk with me to the festival grounds?” he asked.

She smiled as she nodded, and they left the tower in silence. Vera never felt a need to fill the quiet with Gawain.

Tables and chairs were already set for the welcome feast in the open space behind the training field. Workers rushed to and fro, stacking a buffet table with trays and plates. Five men were positioning a massive and ornate marble sculpture in the middle of it. The impressive piece had to be at least as tall as Vera, depicting a soldier with his sword raised. It was unwieldy to manage, taking all the men’s strength to keep it steady.

Gawain set to work right away, and Vera scanned the field until her eyes landed on Arthur. He stood next to Percival and Lancelot, who were seated at a table on the outskirts.

Arthur’s gaze was pulled up to her as if compelled by an unseeable force, and his face brightened, lips lifting at the corners. Butterflies exploded in her stomach. How had she ever been unsure if he was handsome?

The instant she was within reach of him, her hand was on his cheek. And when she could press her body close to his, she did. These were the yearned-for moments when she could let it all show. They were in public. Affection was good for the kingdom. Vera bowed to her adoration and kissed him, quivering with the bliss that he sank into it and slid his arm around her waist to hold her tightly.

It could have lasted for hours, and Vera would have been perfectly happy. But it should appear like any other kiss a married couple might share and decidedly not one of a desperately pining woman who thought of this man’s touch more than she’d ever care to admit. Her lips lingered on his for as long as she dared before pulling away.

He smiled at her, caressing her cheek with his thumb and laying another kiss on her forehead. “Is everything—”

“Oy!” Lancelot called. “Pardon my interruption, but we were in the middle of important business.” His effort at sounding scandalized was thwarted by the colossal grin on his face—like a kid who’d been hoping for ages that his estranged mum and dad would get back together. He gestured across the field. “Poor Merlin and Gawain are painstakingly hanging lights one by one—and you’re snogging.”

“By important business,” Arthur said conspiratorially to Vera, “he means planning the jousting tournament’s after-celebrations.”

“And,” Percival added, holding up a square of linen, “we’ve made a deal with Margaret. She’ll set aside some of her immaculate sweet cake for us if we fold napkins for her.”

“As I said,” Lancelot waved his own napkin and gestured to the pile of waiting linens on the table, “important business.”

Percival and Arthur laughed, but Vera’s smile was merely polite as she shifted to watch Gawain and Merlin raising orbs and positioning them. Both, remarkably, acted like nothing was the matter, that the one wasn’t angry and the other hadn’t plumbed the depths of her memory half an hour ago. They were good pretenders. They focused only on their task, each orb taking a few minutes to hang just right in the air.

“Why are they doing it like that?” Vera asked.

The three of them stared at her.

“What do you mean?” Lancelot asked.

“Can’t they just toss an orb, and it’ll hang where they want it to?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “No, they don’t do that.”

She turned to him. “Yours does that.”

Lancelot’s lips pressed into a line. “Mine’s a little different.”

Arthur tilted his head to the side.

“The council knights have arrived,” Lancelot said casually.

“All of them?” Arthur asked, his brow furrowed as Percival simultaneously said, “Is Elaine here?”

Lancelot laughed. “Yes. To both questions. I forgot that you carry a torch for—”

He didn’t have a chance to finish that thought as a commotion arose opposite them from the men setting the sculpture on the buffet table. The whole marble thing was wobbling dangerously, and then the enormous piece began to fall backward. There was nothing any of the workers could do about it except shout and scramble clear from where it would crash to the ground.

But the crash never came. The sculpture stopped mid-fall, dangling at a forty-five-degree angle like a dancer held low in a dip. Then, it was as if someone tossed a rope around it and began to pull it upright. It steadily rose to standing, where it wobbled back and forth on its base three times and came to a stop. Gawain stood, hand still aloft, toward the saved statue. Many spectators clapped.

But Percival’s face snapped to recognition. “That’s how it looked when magic saved me.” His voice was quiet, reverent. “That’s exactly how it looked.” He exhaled a laugh. “If Gawain had ever served with the soldiers, I’d think I’d solved the mystery of my miracle.”

Lancelot stopped folding his napkin. “He did serve with the soldiers.”

Percival snorted. “No he didn’t.”

“All the mages did,” Arthur said.

“But not with our brigade. I’d have seen him.”

Arthur and Lancelot shared a look.

“Perce,” Lancelot said, “we were four thousand in number with nearly a hundred mages. D’you honestly think you could have met all of them?”

Percival had stopped folding the napkin in his fingers. He stared at Gawain with an expression of disbelief until he suddenly rose from his seat.

“Mage Gawain!” he shouted as he strode toward him, drawing the attention of everyone who’d just finished celebrating the statue’s salvation. “Were you at the Battle of Kent?”

Gawain didn’t answer. He dropped his arm, and he shifted uncomfortably under the attention.

“Were you?” Percival pressed, his voice cracking beneath the force of his eagerness. The workers didn’t even pretend to carry on. They outright stopped to follow this exchange.

Gawain swallowed. “Yes.”

“Holy shit,” Lancelot breathed.

Percival staggered a step backward like he’d been struck. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Gawain didn’t have to say anything. He held Percival’s stare and did not feign ignorance, which was confirmation enough.

“You saved my life. And all this time, I thought you were an ass. I treated you like you’re an ass.” Percival shook his head, exasperated by Gawain even in this moment of reverence.

Gawain shrugged. “A good man was about to die, and you decided to give your life to save him. And from where I stood on the battlefield, you, another good man, were about to die for your king—and it cost me nothing to intervene.”

Percival let out a brief, amused breath and shook his head as he muttered, “Dammit, Gawain.” He glanced over at Arthur, asking an unspoken question with a raised eyebrow.

Vera and Lancelot looked at him, too. One side of his lips turned upward. His hand shifted to his sword’s pommel, and he nodded.

“How many witnesses do we need?” Percival asked.

“Two.” Arthur tipped his head toward Vera and Lancelot.

“Are you ready to be a part of something amazing?” Lancelot murmured as he rose. Vera scrambled to follow them.

Arthur stepped forward, drawing his sword. “Gawain, take a knee.”

Gawain’s eyes darted from Arthur to further across the field, where Merlin ran toward them. “What are you doing?” Merlin called, rather frantically.

“Making Gawain a knight.” Lancelot’s voice was thick with emotion. He cleared his throat and mastered himself with a proud smile.

Merlin cast a sharp frown of warning at Arthur. “Mages can’t be knights.”

“They haven’t been knights,” Arthur corrected. He turned back to Gawain as he continued. “There is no law stating they can’t. Gawain,” Arthur repeated.

Gawain hesitantly stepped forward and dropped to one knee.

Arthur held his sword at his waist. “Ready?” he asked them all.

Gawain looked like he was about to speak before clamping his mouth shut.

“What is it?” Arthur said.

“Does the sword need to be held by the king, or can it be done by any knight?”

Arthur smiled knowingly. “Any knight would suffice with my approval.”

“If it’s acceptable to you, I would be honored if Sir Percival performed the ceremony.” Gawain’s eyes flicked back to the ground.

Arthur beamed as he extended his sword to Percival, whose cheeks went a deep shade of crimson. He stepped forward, his expression that of a man who’d won an award he didn’t feel he deserved.

“Gawain,” Arthur said, “for your acts of selfless heroism on the battlefield, for your dedication to the betterment of magic in the kingdom, and for your valiant service with no expectation of reward or recognition, I, Arthur, King of the Britons, name you a knight of our great kingdom.”

Arthur nodded at Percival.

“I, Sir Percival, charge you to serve your king and your people justly, with honor and generosity.” Percival held the flat of Arthur’s blade on the tops of each of Gawain’s shoulders. “Arise, Sir Gawain.”

Vera blinked, and the first tear rolled down her cheek, which ached from how broadly she smiled, but there was no escaping the quiet nag at the back of her mind.

Sir Gawain.

Even for her, for someone who didn’t know a fraction of the nuances of Arthurian lore, there was no way that the stories should have gotten so many parts right. She reflexively looked to Merlin. He knew it, too. Beneath the veneer of his anger, she saw fear.