Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Vera swam in and out of awareness so fluidly that reality became an obscured confusion. She thought she felt rain, but she opened her eyes to the bright sun and waving long-stemmed flowers in the breeze, like the ones from the dream she had in the memory procedure. Maybe she dreamt this, too. She saw a farmhouse with a thatched roof. At some point, she was off the horse, and perhaps Arthur had carried her inside. There was another voice, familiar and simultaneously a stranger.

There was a hand on her forehead, the stroke of loving fingers over her cheek in a dark room. Night had fallen.

When she woke, it was to the bright light of day shining through a window. She was in a bed, and as Vera sat up, two blankets fell from her shoulders. Her head throbbed like she had a horrible hangover. Her running clothes were gone, replaced by a clean, oversized tunic she recognized as Arthur’s. She glanced around. This wasn’t the castle at Camelot, that was for sure. Nor was it an inn.

This was a home. There was a fireplace in one corner. The chamber was simply but comfortably appointed, and just one chair sat near the bed. The book lying on it betrayed that Arthur had sat there beside her.

Arthur. Still alive. The joy that came was muted by the rising memory of the soldier’s lifeless stare, of Gawain missing, of all that was lost and ruined. Vera rubbed her face, trying to sweep together the mess of all that had happened.

She heard quiet voices and could not resist going to them. She didn’t want to be alone, but she couldn’t exactly walk out in the equivalent of an oversized T-shirt. Vera noticed a simple dark blue dress draped on the end of the bed and decided it must be for her.

She changed into it before she tiptoed barefoot to the door, opened it a crack, and listened.

“—not sure what you’re asking,” said the nearly familiar deep voice of a man.

“Do you know anything about the extent to which emotions can be manipulated by magic?” Vera closed her eyes, gratitude sweeping over her. That voice, she knew. Hearing Arthur speak easily, unencumbered by the strain of injury, lifted a weight she didn’t realize she carried. She slipped through the door and into the main room of a farmhouse.

There was a wooden table next to the hearth. Arthur sat nearest her, facing away. The man opposite him, facing her, was the stranger. His dark hair, streaked with grey, fell to his shoulders. He listened to Arthur with a furrowed brow, emphasizing natural lines of years and worry that wizened his face. But he saw Vera as she entered and smiled warmly. She recognized that smile. Arthur turned and had no sooner seen Vera than was out of his seat and rushing to her. He hugged her and then held her by both elbows, searching her face.

“I’m fine,” she said. And it was true, but the mystery of what happened in the space of an hour when she and Lancelot were on their run ate at her. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Arthur said. “I never quite fell back asleep when you left. Things went too quiet—no breeze nor crickets … nothing. I couldn’t even hear my own breathing, and I knew something wasn’t right.” He shook his head. “I should have gone out to check, but I thought I was just on edge. Then there was a blast that lit blue, and I knew it was magic. It was pitch dark and then so bright it was blinding. It was all focused on Gawain.

“I tried to help him, but when he saw me, he threw out a hand at the same time I was hit with a spike.” Arthur’s hand went to where the wound had been on his abdomen, touching the ghost of his fatal injury. “Gawain sent me flying backward with one hand, and he had his device in the other. I think he was trying to destroy it, but he was … bound right then. Wrapped up in a rope that looked like it was on fire. He yelled one word. Mordred.” Vera’s stomach churned. It was another chess piece sliding into play from the legend. How could this end well? “And the rope tightened of its own accord and—” Arthur grimaced. “God, he screamed like a tortured man.”

It ached to imagine their soft-souled Gawain in that sort of agony, and at the hands of a villain whose name would survive the next millennium. “Is Gawain dead?” she whispered.

“I don’t think so. They took him,” he said slowly. “Mordred and whoever helped him. No one came for me after that. They weren’t interested in me. It got very foggy for a while. And then you showed up.”

Arthur’s mouth lifted in a smile, his fingers rubbing the back of her neck. They hadn’t reckoned with the tenderness of what they thought would be his final moments, of the honest adoration that spilt from them before Vera … well, before Vera found her power.

But the way she’d pushed it so hard until there was nothing left to give … she suspected she’d scraped her depths and given it all to him, and that would have been fine. But as soon as the fear rose, she knew the gift was there, humming in her blood. Vera wouldn’t be able to use it right now, not on an injury like Arthur’s. She felt like she’d carried a heavy weight as far as she could before being forced to drop it. Her strength was sapped. She’d need more rest before she could use the gift again.

The sound of a chair’s leg scraping against the stone floor reminded Vera that there was someone else in the room, blocked by Arthur. She peeked around his shoulder at the man who was politely absorbed in whittling a palm-sized block of wood with a short knife.

Arthur turned to open the conversation with the man. “This is my father.”

“Otto,” the man supplied, rising to join them with that same warm smile. Of course, she’d recognized it. He’d passed that expression on to his son, a perfect match of effusiveness. Otto was a full head shorter than Arthur.

“I’m so glad to meet you. I’m …” She paused, unsure how to introduce herself. Should she say Vera or Guinevere?

“Vera, love, it’s my pleasure,” he said. Her eyes flashed to Arthur, who looked down as he smiled.

Vera defaulted to greeting Otto as she would have in the twenty-first century. She shook his hand and was already releasing it before she realized the gesture would be eccentric to him. But he wasn’t fazed. He smiled with crinkling eyes that reminded Vera of Martin.

“He knew Guinevere. He knew you before,” Arthur corrected himself. “I told him everything.”

“I owe you the world, Vera. You brought my son back to me.” She blushed at his kindness. “I was mighty worried when you lot showed up drenched in blood yesterday afternoon and you sleeping as soundly as the dead.”

That had all happened yesterday. “What time is it?” Vera asked.

“Midafternoon,” Arthur said. “You’ve been out for more than a day.”

As if on cue, her stomach growled.

“Let’s get you something to eat.” Otto turned back and pulled a seat out for her at the table. “You must be starving.”

She was. Arthur and Otto sat with her while she ate. She was on her second bowl of soup when Lancelot charged in, loudly complaining before his foot crossed the threshold.

“Do you know your barn door is half off its hinges?” He was sweaty enough that his shirt clung to him, and dirt streaked his arms and down his cheek. He knocked the dirt from his boots, completely at home here, and started to pull them off his feet. His eyes finally fell on Vera with a shoe half off. Lancelot forgot the bawdy show he’d been putting on as he was swept with relief.

“Oh, Guinna,” he said. He stumbled over and fell into the chair next to her, wrapping her in a sweaty hug that was much more than relief. She could feel the pain that he was barely keeping at bay. Her darling friend who was terrified, who was enraged, whose heart was shattered because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to help the one he loved.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. They clutched one another, his face tucked into her neck. When he pulled away, he’d wrangled his expression to one of wonder. “You’ve got quite a power.”

It had been nagging at Vera, too. She could feel now that it wasn’t a new part of her, but had Guinevere known about it before? And …

“Do you think Viviane knew about my power?” She asked it aloud.

A drawn hesitance came over Lancelot’s expression.

“I think,” Arthur said, staring intently at Lancelot, “that we should ask her.”

“What?” Vera reeled back in her seat.

Lancelot nodded grimly. “How long have you known?”

“Since last week,” Arthur said. “When they were hanging lights for the festival, and Vera asked about yours. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. Have you known all the while?” There was an edge in his voice, a hint of accusation.

Lancelot didn’t directly answer. He pulled his orb from his pocket and lit it in his hand. “I kept waiting for it to go out. She was so powerful, though. If anyone’s magic could sustain beyond the grave, it would have been hers. But, for about a month now, it’s been getting brighter. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t know what to make of it.”

Vera gawped at the both of them. She spared a glance at Otto, too, who seemed keenly interested but not at all confused.

“But you said your mother made your light,” she said.

“Yes.” Lancelot looked at her. Understanding crashed down on Vera, and it must have shown on her face. He nodded as he said, “Viviane’s my mother.”

“What?” she cried. “That’s a massive fucking thing to not tell me!”

Otto casually wiped at his mouth, though Vera saw the mirth in his eyes and knew he was trying to conceal a laugh at her outburst. Lancelot looked guilty, but Arthur didn’t, and it incensed Vera.

“Who all knows?” she demanded.

“Only the people in this room,” Arthur said. “That’s it.”

She turned to Lancelot. “So, you were in Camelot together, and no one knew? You—”

“Pretended to be strangers,” Lancelot said. “No one could know. It’s the same sort of secretive mage bullshit we’re reckoning with now.” He rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers irritably against the wooden tabletop.

“To protect you and her both,” Otto said pointedly, inclining his head toward Lancelot, whose expression softened at the reminder. Otto turned to Vera. “That’s how Viviane found Arthur. She and Lancelot lived down the road, and these two grew up wreaking havoc together. Viviane was the one who recognized Arthur’s call to the throne—at far too young an age, I might add. I was none too pleased with that.” Though his words hinted at annoyance, Otto’s eyes glimmered as he remembered.

Vera’s fire faded as the whole truth of it hit her. “Your mother is alive,” she said, turning to Lancelot.

He smiled sadly. “Yes. My mother, the mage who tried to kill you, is alive.” He turned to Arthur. “Even though she was supposedly executed by the mages. That’s clearly not the case. We’ve got more than a bit of a problem with our mages, sire. And now there’s this Mordred. He has Gawain’s instrument, and he has Gawain. That damn fool will never give them the power to use it. Do you know the kind of torture Mordred will put him through?”

He looked at Vera, lost for a moment in his turmoil. She reached for his hand beneath the table. “We’ll find him,” she said. “You’ll find him.”

“How?” Lancelot asked. Hopelessness mired his face.

“There must be something we can do! We have to tell Merlin,” Vera said, her voice rising. “He’ll think you’re dead, Arthur. And he has to know that Mordred has Gawain.”

She stopped. It was all wrong. “But … how could Mordred know about Gawain’s instrument? Gawain only told the council of mages and—”

Oh no. A mage on the council working with Mordred. It was the only explanation. Could the betrayal really run that deep? It was what Merlin had tried to warn her of, wasn’t it?

“Who performed Viviane’s execution?” Otto asked. “Do you know?”

“Merlin,” Arthur said darkly. “It was his duty as her closest collaborator.”

“He would have had a witness with him. Another mage,” Lancelot added. “Which means there is one more of our mages who know the truth of it.”

“And—and they’re the one working with Mordred?” Vera asked.

“I don’t know.” Arthur shook his head. “We have to get back to Camelot. There are refugees there, and if Mordred figures out how to use that instrument against our people, I can’t be sitting by in the countryside.”

Lancelot heaved a sigh. “I knew you were going to say that. We can’t, Arthur.”

“Convince me why we shouldn’t,” Arthur growled.

“Because I know you think Merlin’s not in on this, and you might just be wrong.” Arthur started to protest, but Lancelot raised his voice and spoke over him. “We can conjecture about it all we want, but he lied to you and not about something insignificant. It’s treason, Arthur. Even if you’re not wrong, even if there is some noble secret bullshit reason for sparing my mother, we can’t trust him. I don’t know why I’m saying it. You already know this. Plus, there’s another matter.” Lancelot looked at Vera and squeezed her hand. “By all rights, you should be dead. When you’re not, we’re going to have to explain how. I’ve never seen a gift like Guinna’s. They will want it. Our mages. Mordred. All of them.”

Arthur nodded grimly. “I never should have relied so heavily on the mages. I thought I was building a better world, not positioning myself as a high-stakes puppet.”

If Merlin and his witness kept Viviane alive, there must be a reason for it. They all agreed on one action they could take: they needed to find Viviane, to get answers and reclaim some power in the game. The kingdom was not fine, and they didn’t know who they could trust outside of one another.

“What now?” Vera asked. “How do we find her?”

It left them at a dead end. Lancelot angrily flung his orb on the table. He glared at it as it rolled to a stop, wobbling in place before changing direction. It spun one-half turn to the left and was still again. Lancelot dropped his forehead onto the table. They sat in defeated silence for a few moments before Lancelot jolted upright with wide eyes and snatched his orb in both hands.

Vera put a hand on his arm. “What are you—”

“Shut up,” Lancelot snapped as he jerked away. “Sorry. But shut up a second.” He closed his eyes. He spun the light in his hands, stopped, and held it in the new position. He repeated the action two more times.

He laughed. “Holy shit,” Lancelot said as he opened his eyes. “There’s more energy on one side of the orb. No matter how I spin it, it … hums on my left hand. Westward.”

“Do you think it will take us to her?” Arthur asked.

“I think it will do exactly that,” Lancelot said with a smug rap on the table.

Vera was ready to leave then and there. It wasn’t much of a plan, but doing something felt right. After Arthur, Lancelot, and even Otto insisted that she should rest for the remainder of the day, she grudgingly agreed. They’d leave in the morning.

Lancelot hassled Otto into heading to the barn with him so he could fix the door. Arthur tried to get Vera to lie back down but, seeing that she was stubbornly refusing, offered to go for a walk with her and show her around. She was eager to know more about his life.

“Your mother?” she asked as they walked out the back door.

“Died when I was young,” Arthur said. He offered Vera his hand to help her step over the knee-high garden wall behind the house. “That’s actually one of her dresses you’re wearing. I can tell it makes my dad happy to see you wearing it.”

He led her to a fenced pen with half a dozen goats grazing inside. She laughed at the smallest kid as it hopped around like a wind-up toy. They also watched Lancelot in the distance, jovially laughing with Otto as he clapped him on the back.

“He’s not okay, you know,” Vera said.

Arthur nodded. “Your passing out was the only thing that kept him from riding off in search of Gawain that very moment.” He was silent for a long stretch, his eyes still on Lancelot. “You know about him and Gawain.” It was a statement, not a question, and Vera held her breath to keep from reacting. “Did Lancelot tell you?”

“Oh. Erm, no. I …” She looked at her feet, Lancelot’s worry about what Arthur would think springing to the front of her mind. “I saw them together, but I didn’t think you knew—”

“Vera,” Arthur said sharply, “I need to be clear before you say anything else. I’m not sure how you feel about Lancelot’s proclivity or if that changes your opinion of him. I realized this about him when we were young and decided that it did not matter. You may feel how you want, and I won’t try to change you, but I will not hear a word against Lancelot on this matter.” His confidence fell as soon as he finished speaking. He glanced at her worriedly from the corner of his eye.

She’d thought she couldn’t possibly adore Arthur more, and there he’d gone and proven her wrong.

“What did you want to say?” he asked more gently.

Vera stared at him. As long as they were being boldly honest, there was only one thing left to say. She shook her head. “I love you,” she said. “I’m in love with you.”

He hadn’t been expecting that. His smile lit every part of his face as he moved his mouth soundlessly, looking like a man drunk on goodness itself. He bent his head and rested his forehead on hers. He was happy and also … relieved.

“I love you, Vera,” he managed to say through the obstacle of his joy.

When his lips found hers, they moved deliberately. There was no rush to their embrace, no sense that it could be stolen away. They said nothing else to mar this perfect bliss for quite a while.

“I heard you asking your father about how magic might manipulate emotions,” she finally said, hearing her voice quiver and willing it to be strong. “The way Merlin transferred my feelings for Vincent onto you frightens me. And I knew the potions have had a hand in desiring one another, but I’ve been wondering about how deep it’s taken us.” He gazed at her with so much yearning that she could hardly breathe. “Because,” and this part was difficult to say, “it’s also more than what it was with Vincent. I haven’t felt anything like what I feel for you in my whole life.”

He nodded. “I feel that, too. And what if it comes from magic?”

What if. Vera let all the questions hang there: what if it was puppetry? What if nothing they felt was real?

Arthur took her hand.

“Even if it’s all magic,” he said, “knowing right now that you feel the same is more than I could hope for.” Goosebumps raised all over Vera’s body. He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers.

There was no telling what tomorrow might bring. For all that they’d lost—for Gawain, who was likely enduring horrors, for their dear friend, the protector who could not protect his beloved, for a kingdom which teetered on the edge of disaster—and for a love that might fall apart and betray them both as pawns in the mages’ game. It all hung in a horrible balance.

But today, tiny dots of yellow flowers waved in the tall grass under a clear sky. The sun shone. The three of them were safe. Arthur and Vera loved one another.

They were alive.

And for now, that was enough.

Meeting Vera

A B

ONUS

S

CENE FROM

A

RTHUR

’

S

POV

When Guinevere left for her respite in the countryside, Arthur had been relieved—accompanied by a wash of guilt. He was used to being able to fix things. If he showed up to a task with integrity, with humility, with the inevitable power that once only came from his gift and was now magnified by his throne, he could find a way to win the unwinnable.

Except with Guinevere.

It all started so well. She arrived in Camelot (with her awful father) and right away it was clear that she and Arthur were a well-suited pair. She every bit the poised and noble queen to help establish their new kingdom, he with his raw gift for the leading of a nation—and both sharing the vision to build something new, something better than what had been.

It was all but decided before she’d arrived, and it solidified with Guinevere and Arthur’s meeting: they’d be married. But the wars were not all won yet. They didn’t know it, but there was a year yet to go of battle—and the fiercest they’d face. On the precipice of losing it all, when all truly seemed hopeless, Guinevere had been the one to find a way to win.

And then she stood on the smoldering battlefield and saw the wreckage of her designs.

And slowly (so slowly at first that Arthur could convince himself it was her ordinary poise), she grew sad. It was the beginning of the melancholy. If he’d not ignored it then … if he’d stopped everything then to care for her, he still wondered: would it have made a difference?

She was the one to finally tell him. On a rainy morning when Arthur had been awake since before sunrise preparing for audiences with lords and then having the audiences with said lords, he returned to their quarters for a treaty draft he’d left lying on his desk and hardly noticed her sitting there.

He’d done a double take when he realized she was there—perched on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor and eyes cast down between them. It was only when she looked up that he could see her eyes were red-rimmed from a good long while of crying. She insisted there was no direct cause of her sadness, that it was just a general feeling, though he knew the devastation she’d wrought to end the wars had ignited it—and it took off like a wildfire within her, sadness devouring everything it could reach.

For a while, Arthur dropped many of his duties. Delegated tasks and audiences and kingdom responsibilities to others so he could try to help Guinevere—with the full expectation that he could help her. That care would be enough.

It was not, no matter what Arthur did, said, or offered. She assured him she just needed time. Slowly, he slipped back to the things he could make better, back to the kingdom building.

And then her sadness changed. She stopped sharing it with him, instead becoming hyper critical and angry about … about everything. That was harder. Like the sadness, he couldn’t fix it. Unlike the sadness, she seemed to come to abhor his very presence.

Then it changed again. She retreated into herself. He’d thought (hoped, really) that it was the beginning of her getting better, but it was worse. She stayed in bed for days at a time. Merlin was able to cheer her some … she’d rouse herself for regular sessions with him. But he travelled often, especially in those early days. So it was back to bed for Guinevere.

The alarms screamed within Arthur, a very correct instinct that something terrible was on the horizon (though he never in a million years would have guessed what was coming). He cared for Guinevere very much. He loved her—not in any sort of nonsense way, but grounded and real care.

And it went far deeper than any sense of possession. Arthur knew that she’d loved someone before … in all the ways. Grounded and real—and the stunning nonsense of great stories. He’d taken her from Tristan. Of course, she’d come willingly. But maybe that was it. Maybe she was sinking into sorrow for the love she’d lost.

She could have him.

Arthur would turn a blind eye to an affair at this point. Hell, he sent for the man across the far reaches of the damn nation, put Tristan in his room with his wife, offered the plea, “Help her. However you can, please help her,” and left. That wasn’t turning a blind eye, that was facilitating an affair. It didn’t matter if it would work to help her.

It didn’t, though. And Tristan went back to the north.

Arthur couldn’t remember how the plan came about that Guinevere should spend some time in the countryside, only that he learned of it and immediately felt like a weight was lifting. She could go, be away, get whatever it was she needed—and he, without seeing her daily deepening despair, would feel like less of a failure. And he could do the thing he was actually decent at. He could work.

God, what sort of a man had he become?

So, yes. He was relieved when she was gone to the country, and he could believe it would all be well soon.

She was gone for nearly a month before she returned. Arthur hadn’t even known that Guinevere was back in Camelot until it all went wrong. He hadn’t so much heard the scream as he … felt something. Like a shockwave blasting through his blood.

He began running without direction, just a guttural pull. Down the stairs from his chamber—their chamber—through the room with the enormous fireplace, out into the back courtyard that they hardly used, and there was Guinevere, decimated on the flag-stoned ground at the center.

Decimated.

Hers wasn’t the only body there. Viviane lay nearby with her hands in front of her, cuffed with beams of glowing cord, eyes open and frozen—magically still—on her side facing the horror. There was no time. No time to wonder at what the fuck was happening.

The only movement came from Merlin, who knelt at Guinevere’s side, his hands working feverishly around her body, centered at her chest where her blood was spurting—where the wound must have been.

Guinevere was hardly recognizable, but in the same way Arthur had been pulled here, he was certain it was her. And he had caught sight of the light blue and gold of her dress’s hem—the same one she’d worn on the very day they met. He thought it might be her favorite and realized now that he’d never asked her. Now … now, most of the gown was ruined by her blood, drenching the entirety of the bodice and midway down the skirt. And she lay in a pool of it. More blood lost than could possibly be survivable. And her face—oh God.

It was like her features were … were melting away, blurring before Arthur’s eyes. But that couldn’t be. It was all wrong, and surely his mind just couldn’t handle what he was seeing. He must have cried out though he didn’t hear any sound, just a heavy thrumming in his own ears. But Merlin jolted and turned toward Arthur barely long enough to see him there.

“Stay back, Your Majesty!” he shouted with an edge to his voice that Arthur had never heard before.

The words had no sooner cleared his lips than Guinevere’s body began to change beneath Merlin’s hands. She gave a shiver, and Arthur gasped, lapping up the tiniest drop of hope into his lungs. She was moving. She could be all right. She might—

And then it happened.

In the snap of an instant, her body lost all shape as it melted entirely into dark pink goo, a perfect mixture of the color of flesh and bone and blood. Arthur had seen so much in years of war, but not this. Never this.

He dropped to his knees, all emotion fleeing from him because how—how could a human possibly feel the entirety of what he was witnessing happening to the single person in this world he’d vowed to protect with his very soul? Arthur was left with a dull, encompassing sickness in his gut and a hearty sense of denial as he watched Merlin continue his feverish movement.

She wasn’t even a human body anymore. He couldn’t imagine what the mage possibly hoped to accomplish. Arthur’s eyes stayed transfixed on the gruesome scene as the goo that was once Guinevere started separating into parts, forming into three clumps. There was a strangled yell—it took Arthur a moment to realize it had come from Viviane who, evidently, couldn’t quite wrangle a scream from her captive state.

Merlin explained it all to Arthur. Viviane had attacked Guinevere. He was restarting Guinevere. She was going to live. She’d be a baby. She’d regrow to herself in—in another time. It was insanity. It was nonsense, but it was nonsense that he clung to.

Guinevere was still goo, though slightly, disgustingly, strangely more solid (like soft lumps of unshaped clay), when Merlin left with her pieces.

So.

When Merlin returned one week later with Guinevere—alive. Walking. Breathing. Real. It was a miracle.

This time, Arthur would love her well. Everything he’d done wrong before, he would do right.

It started well. Her memories were returning. Merlin’s work was effective, and affection was blossoming between she and Arthur– before it promptly fell off a cliff. And then she was dead by Lancelot’s hand as Arthur watched and Merlin carted the body away before Arthur even touched her.

The day directly following that disaster, Merlin arrived with yet another alive and fully formed Guinevere. This time, Arthur led with fear, though a sense of hope had taken him. And Merlin. And Lancelot. He could tell they all felt like maybe they’d made it through the worst of it. Guinevere’s daily sessions with Merlin had been progressing well, with her memory steadily returning. Arthur and Guinevere had been … progressing well. It made him a little bit sick. There was a lot of duty tied up in all of this. But there had been tenderness too. They could be dutiful and tender.

Ugh. She’d been … eager, even, when they eventually were intimate. That had actually been their best day. She insisted on skipping her session with Merlin, and Arthur cleared his morning to be with her. The time together made Arthur believe that it might all be all right.

But overnight, it shifted. She came back from her next session with a headache. Around midday, it made a subtle turn. It hadn’t been so bad, just a little melancholy.

By night, the creeping sadness was so swollen it filled the room.

“Talk to me,” Arthur had pleaded. It was all too familiar. And, like before, she’d not given him anything. She’d rolled onto her side, and he listened to her sob as he stared at the ceiling.

Merlin reassured him. He could help. She’d gone to her session with him the next day, like she always did. Arthur came back to their chamber, feeling hopeful, Matilda at his side.

And they opened the door in time to see her standing in the window.

Her eyes were closed as a ray of sun split through the clouds and bathed her face in its glow. There was probably a rainbow out there. Arthur would always remember the way the sun hit her face that morning. She looked beautiful, mostly from the relief he saw in her features as tears rolled down her cheeks. She turned at the noise of their entrance, and the relief fell.

Arthur saw the danger and moved toward her, his hand raised. “Guinevere—”

Without ceremony, she looked away and stepped out the open window. Matilda screamed and fell to the floor. Arthur ran to the window, hearing the crushing thwunk of her body hitting the ground as he mounted the three stairs up to it in one bound. He barely glanced down at her body below the tower, left leg at a strange angle, before he turned and tore out of the room, down the tower stairs, sensation gone from his fingers.