“Yes,” Gawain said to the air between Vera and Arthur rather than facing Lancelot. Nonetheless, Lancelot’s hand flinched as if to reach out in comfort. He balled it into a fist on his own thigh instead.
“I was born there,” Gawain continued. “My family was killed in the attack. Merlin was the first mage to respond after the massacre. He offered me a place at the Magesary. He’s the closest person to family that I have.”
Vera hadn’t realized. It brought a surge of affection for Merlin, complicated by his actions of late. “Do you trust him?” she asked.
Gawain hesitated before saying, “I do. I always have.”
“Then why are we having a secret meeting?” she said.
“Because of the real reason that we must see the mages.” Gawain took a deep breath. “I believe they can help with the Saxon, but there is another aspect to magic’s dwindling that needs to be addressed with the mages. Merlin would stop me if he knew.”
“Why would he do that?” Arthur asked.
“Because it has to do with how the mages expand our powers.”
Vera sat up straighter. She’d long wondered about that. It had been lodged in the back of her mind since the day Gawain told her that most mages start with only one power. “How do mages amass more gifts?”
Lancelot answered automatically, “Study and innovation.”
Arthur nodded along with him.
Gawain held Vera’s stare.
She leaned toward him and asked again. “How?”
He licked his top lip and swallowed heavily.
“You can’t say,” she breathed.
“Now you are asking the right question.” Gawain said, smiling weakly at her. He turned to Arthur. “Mages can speak freely only at the Magesary during a convened council gathering. After you have asked the mages for help, you must stay in the room. They will ask you to leave. They will pressure you to leave. As the ruler of this kingdom and thus of the mages, it is your right to stay. Tell them that. Do not leave that room.” His voice was stern. He rubbed anxiously at his temple with his thumb, his hand trembling. Whatever he meant for Arthur to understand, it frightened him.
“I won’t,” Arthur said.
“What did the mage in Dorchester look like?” Lancelot asked.
“He was obscured by magic like a shadow made flesh. Horrible and somehow unseeable.”
Vera shivered. Something … there was something else. It flitted around the edges of her thoughts, evading her. She kept coming back to the stories of Arthurian legend from her future. Vera tried to swat it out of her thoughts, but she could not stop its buzz.
Le Morte d’Arthur.
The tome’s name rose up in her mind, and she froze. The Death of Arthur.
She remembered a character from the legends that she had yet to meet. He had to be fiction. And yet … so many other pieces had come to fruition. A jolt of fear seared through her.
“Did the mage have a name?” she asked, hopeful that the truth would free her from her dread.
It did not.
Gawain nodded. “He called himself Mordred.”
Arthur and Lancelot had no reaction to hearing the name Mordred. Arthur asked another question, but Vera couldn’t hear it. She heard only a muted ringing inside her head.
Gawain didn’t answer Arthur’s question and kept his gaze steadily on Vera. “You’re familiar with that name,” he said. It was not a question.
There were names from the legend of King Arthur that she recognized, but she wasn’t sure of their role in the story. Not Mordred. She knew that name, and in any snippet of the myth Vera had heard, Mordred was the one who killed Arthur.
“He’s—a villain in our stories,” she said.
She had no more words. She couldn’t even follow the conversation that continued in murmurs around her. Her thoughts were dominated by fear and, above all, the determination to make sure that version of events never came to fruition. She went back and forth at war with herself over what to do with this information until she landed on a decision: she would tell Arthur when they got to their room. There would be no secrets between them. She had to tell him everything—including about Tristan.
By the time they went their separate ways from the chapel, Vera was itching to say it. She launched in as soon as the door closed behind them.
“Arthur, something happened earlier.” She anxiously twisted her fingers as she sat on the foot of the bed. “I looked across the throne room and saw Tristan, and then I—”
Arthur came and sat next to her, stilling her fingers by covering them with the comfort of his own. Vera’s heart raced, but this time, trepidation and not attraction drove it.
“I remembered him,” she blurted. “A whole childhood of friendship and, erm, growing up together.” She wouldn’t breathe aloud the feelings that came with those memories, but they weren’t the point anyway. “They were my memories. My childhood, even though it feels like they’re from so long ago. I—I am Guinevere. I’m sure of it.”
His face remained determinedly passive. “Do you remember what happened with Viviane?” he asked in a quiet way that raised goosebumps on Vera’s neck.
“No.”
He nodded, and she saw the muscle in his jaw begin its flex-relax cycle.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. This was what she needed to say most, the part that had her stomach in knots. “This means that I am the one who betrayed you. That was me. I did it.”
“It’s all right,” Arthur said half a moment too quickly. “I don’t blame you for any of it.” His face was the mask again, and it made her want to cry.
“Do you mean that?” she managed to ask without her voice quaking.
“Yes.” He gave her hand a squeeze before he stood and crossed to his bag. “And we both need sleep.”
They were fine. She decided to trust his word because soon, mere minutes from now, she could crawl into bed with him and rest in the solace of his arms for a blessed few hours.
But Arthur wasn’t fishing in his bag for a change of clothes. He’d picked up his saddle bag and slung it over his shoulder.
“Are you going somewhere?” she asked.
“There’s an open room at the end of the corridor. I’m going to sleep there.”
Her heart plummeted. “Arthur—”
“Gawain told me about the potion we’ve both been receiving. I think …” He pushed his jaw forward and addressed Vera’s shoulder, not meeting her eye. “We’ve been fooling ourselves into wanting what’s between us to be more than magic, but it wasn’t like this before she was—you were—gone.”
Vera gaped at him, the only expression she could manage that didn’t involve yielding to the prickling ache of tears and the rising lump in her throat.
“Tristan can stay with you if you want,” Arthur said. “I’m fairly certain he’s still in love with you.”
At first, his words landed as gibberish. “What?”
“You like him. I can tell.” Arthur shrugged. How was he saying this so casually, as if talking to her about the weather? “Those feelings are untouched by magic. You haven’t remembered with me—”
“I remembered the dance steps,” Vera interrupted, knowing she was grasping at straws. “And during the procedure—”
“The procedure was magical intervention,” he said. “And the other was body memory. Not conscious. You remember Tristan. Real memories.”
His determined, even voice incensed her. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want me to feel cornered with you. But it’s all right for me to be cornered into having sex with Tristan?”