Vera imagined cradling Arthur in her words, and his eyes fixed on her, held by her voice. “We’ll read the Lord of the Rings together at night, and we can run the Tor at sunrise if you want. Or walk.” Arthur’s lips turned up at the corners, and Vera managed a strangled laugh before her tears choked her. She’d painted the life she dreamed of because this one was ending, and she wanted to keep it from being a nightmare for him.

Arthur blinked his eyes clear and took great effort to lift his hand to Vera’s cheek. It shook. He couldn’t hold it up, so she held it there for him. The blood from his wound soaked all of his body, even his hands, running down his fingers in delicate rivers on the current of Vera’s tears.

“Vera,” he said, more a breath. “You have given me everything.” His fingertips trembled violently against her cheek. He smiled faintly and with extraordinary effort. Blood began to trickle from the corner of his mouth. Arthur was about to die. This couldn’t be real. “I wouldn’t trade the time with you for any long life. I love—”

His voice failed as blood gurgled in his throat.

“No,” Vera said forcefully.

Lancelot launched forward, trying to clear Arthur’s airway with his fingers.

Arthur was about to say he loved her. She somehow knew that meant it was done, and he would be gone. Yet Vera could hardly keep her eyes on him through the screaming pain in her skin. She was uninjured and unblemished, but she would have sworn that she was burning alive, about to explode from a pent-up force with nowhere to go.

Ishau mar domibaru.

It echoed within her from someplace untouchable.

And she knew.

Vera had a certainty that she didn’t understand, and it came through foreign words that her tongue craved to cry.

“You need to move,” she hurriedly said to Lancelot. Now that she knew the words, it took all her effort to keep from saying them.

“What?” He looked at her like she was insane. But she couldn’t explain, and they were running out of time.

“MOVE!” Vera bellowed with a voice that would carry for acres.

Lancelot scrambled to his feet and stumbled backward.

Vera rose to the full height of her knees, and the words tumbled off her tongue. “Ishau mar domibaru.”

There was power in her voice that she didn’t recognize. And she knew what to do next. A deep inhale and exhale, the name of the origin of all things, the breath of life itself. As the last wisp of breath parted from her lips, an unnatural silence filled her ears for microseconds. Then a surge of power rocked through Vera, up from her toes and down from the top of her head, meeting and exploding at her chest, down her arms and out her palms, too. It was a light so bright, radiating out from her with a blinding blast.

Instantly after, there was something alive inside Vera. She knew it like her oldest friend. Now that it was here, she understood that it always had been. She and Lancelot shared one wide-eyed look.

“Go,” he breathed.

Vera dropped back down and pressed her hands to Arthur’s wound. The effect was immediate. Please don’t let it be too late, she silently pleaded. Let it be enough.

His skin started to knit itself together at her touch. As the force flowed through her hands and into his body, Vera began to learn more. Closing the wound wasn’t enough. She could sense the blood loss and instinctively regenerated his blood supply. She knew the organs that had been pierced even though she didn’t know their names. Vera bound them shut.

He would not die on this patch of earth today. His life force intensified. The closer he came to wholeness, the weaker Vera became. Her fears of whether she could give him enough renewed. She kept at it, pushing the power from her, drawing from what felt like the bottom of the well of her gift until every wound in his body had been healed and his blood was restored. Vera was terrified to release the grip of her power, but there was nothing more she could do.

She fell back, panting and terrified.

His eyes were open, and the haze was gone. Arthur sat up and tore back his blood-soaked tunic, revealing a mess of blood on his skin.

But there was no wound.

“You’re still alive,” Vera said in disbelief.

“Yes I am.” Arthur’s voice was thick with awe. One of the burning tents collapsed in on itself with a crash, jolting them from their reverie. He blinked and surveyed the wreckage. From somewhere not far off, a horse’s whinny cut through the quiet.

“We can’t stay here.” He looked to Lancelot. “Are you all right?”

Lancelot nodded. He was, and he wasn’t.

Oh God. “Where’s Gawain?” Vera asked. She was afraid of the answer.

“He’s gone. There’s no sign of him.” Lancelot’s jaw jutted forward as he shook his head. “I’ll find the horses.”

“Can you stand?” Vera asked Arthur, offering her hand and helping him up. He was fine. He was healed.

But Vera’s vision swam in front of her. She grabbed Arthur’s arm to steady herself. “I don’t feel good,” she mumbled before promptly doubling over and vomiting.

She stood back up and swayed. Arthur held her upright. The world spun around her. “I think I’m about to lose consciousness,” she mused. It was her last waking thought.

As she faded, she felt Arthur’s arms around her. She heard his and Lancelot’s voices, but they sounded far off. Vera felt the bump of movement and vaguely recognized that she was on a horse with Arthur’s arms holding her fast, but she did not know where they were going.

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.