She remembered every second of her time in Merlin’s study and felt like she would melt into nothing. It was too much. She leaned her full body weight against the window’s bars, eyes open and unfocused. It would have been all right if the bars didn’t hold, and she fell. She knew she wouldn’t feel that way in the morning, but the pain of right now ravaged her.
When the door opened, Vera didn’t notice. The sound of conversation between friends, so out of place, brought her vision back into focus. She turned in time to watch the light dying in Arthur’s eyes as they locked on her. Matilda was with him, and her face fell next.
He stepped toward Vera and stopped, looking helplessly at Matilda. She nodded and set right into action.
“Let’s get you to bed,” she said. It was a different tone than Vera had grown used to, the one quick to a smile or a joke. She spoke with the purpose of someone who’d dealt with such a crisis before.
“I’m fine,” Vera mumbled.
“Yes, well, all the same.” Matilda took her hand with a frightened smile. Vera allowed Matilda to help her down and to the bed without objection, if nothing else, because it seemed to make her friend feel better.
“I’ve got her,” Matilda said over her shoulder. Vera turned her head, but it was more of a lolling roll of her neck. She didn’t quite have control over her body.
Arthur stood there, fists clenched at his sides, frozen between staying or going. He met Vera’s eyes and took one shaking breath before he turned and left, not to the side door but back into the corridor. She didn’t bother to guess where he went from there. She couldn’t focus. It still felt like shards were stabbing all through her brain.
As Matilda helped her change into her nightgown, her hand brushed Vera’s face. She gasped. “You’re burning up!”
Vera noticed a cold rag on her forehead as she drifted into unrestful oblivion.
She woke from what must have been a dozen nightmares before the sun rose, skin stinging like she had a sunburn, sick like she was hungover, but her mind was clearer, and she had an unbearable urge to move. She didn’t even care if Lancelot showed up today. They hadn’t confirmed their run, but Vera would go on her own if needed.
When she opened the door, she nearly tripped over him. Lancelot sat right outside her room, on the floor with his knees up.
“Hey,” he breathed with a mix of relief and worry. Vera wondered what medieval greeting was translating via magic to “hey” even as a twinge of annoyance rang through her at his concern.
“Ready?” she said stiffly.
She didn’t wait for an answer. She started toward the stairs and let him scramble to catch up. His eyes flitted to her every few steps. Vera ignored them.
“Is everything—”
“I don’t want to talk. I just want to run,” she said, even more frustrated because her voice shook, the words sounding like a plea.
Lancelot pressed his lips together. “All right. You set the pace. I’ll follow.”
It was the coldest winter day yet, but Vera was on fire. She ran harder than usual. They’d barely set out, and her shirt was drenched in sweat. She stopped at the clearing where they usually chatted after their runs, yanked her shirt over her head, and tossed it over a low tree branch.
Now clad in her sports bra and running trousers, Vera turned on Lancelot, daring him to say a word—to laugh or make a joke, but he didn’t. His even gaze met hers unflinchingly. “Better?” he asked.
She nodded bitterly, and they set off. Vera inwardly raged for the first few miles. Arthur must have run to tell Lancelot about the previous evening. Why else would he have been sitting there at her door, all fraught with worry? All along, Lancelot had known things about her life and kept them from her. Come to think of it, he’d probably been telling Arthur what she shared during their runs, too. The resentment pushed her pace.
She huffed angrily, wanting Lancelot to say anything so that she could have a reason to yell at him. He stayed silent, dutifully pounding the same pace as her, right at her side. As the miles wore on, endorphins began to dissolve Vera’s wrath. The fog of her brain lifted enough for her to realize that being angry at Lancelot was simply easier than facing the potion-sharpened experience of the day before.
She called out a peace offering in the last kilometer before their clearing. “Lancelot?”
“Yes?”
“Tree root,” she said, pointing down the trail.
His face broke into a half smile, and Vera gave a winded huff of a laugh. “There you are,” he said with relief.
They came to the clearing and flopped down on the ground. Vera sat closer to him than she would on most days. When she lay on her back, he followed her lead and lay next to her. The sun rose so late in the morning now that it stayed dark their whole time together. Mostly, it was an inky blanket of clouds above them, with brief glimpses of a star twinkling through the gaps. After a stretch of silence, Lancelot spoke.
“I can’t believe you aren’t freezing.”
She’d forgotten that she wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her sweat had barely dried, and the air had only just started to feel cool. “I think I might have had a fever.”
“Gods, Guinna. If that’s how fast you run with a fever—” He stopped speaking abruptly, his face contorting with pain as his hands snapped to his calf. “Oh fuck, that hurts.”
Vera sat up on her elbows, eyebrows raised. “Cramp?” she asked, totally unnecessarily. His calf muscle was visibly seizing into a tight ball under his skin.
He nodded, eyes clenched shut.
“Here.” She rolled onto her side and pressed her thumb firmly on the knot. “You need more potassium.”
“What the hell is that?” He strained to say through his writhing.
“It’s a nutrient in bananas and potatoes—of course, neither of which you have yet,” Vera said with a chuckle as she massaged the knot.
Lancelot moaned his pleasure as his muscle released under the pressure of Vera’s thumb, only making her laugh harder. “It’s a good thing there’s no one around or—”
The leaves over Vera’s shoulder rustled. She and Lancelot froze. They listened as something crashed through the trees, retreating away from them.
He was on his feet in a heartbeat. “Is someone there?” he shouted. The only answer was the whisper of the breeze, distinctly different from the other sound they’d heard. “Shit.” Lancelot palmed his orb, considering it briefly before he heaved it in the direction of the sound. It hung above the undergrowth, alighting a bubble of space around it. “If that were a person, we’d probably be able to see them running off.”
“Probably,” Vera said, more a wish than an agreement. She hadn’t moved from her place on the ground.
He nodded as he seemed to make a decision. “It must have been an animal—no doubt thinking my pathetic cramp noises were a dying rodent for an easy breakfast.” Still, Lancelot grabbed Vera’s shirt from the tree branch and tossed it over to her as he kept his eye on the light in the distance. He stretched his palm to the sky, and the orb zoomed back to him. Neither said aloud what else the noises might have sounded like to someone passing by.
Lancelot sighed, one hand on his hip and the other worrying at his brow. “We need to be more careful.”
“Ugh. That’s exactly what Merlin said.” A flare of annoyance shot through Vera as she hastily pulled her shirt over her head.