The clouds continued to rumble above their heads as a scrawny girl emerged from the chaos and began to spin the tale. She was the lone survivor in a village massacred by a young mage gone mad.

As she told the story, the actors performed around her, bringing the sad tale to life with striking beauty. The entire audience was captivated, more than one with tears on their cheeks as the young girl was hidden by her brothers in their animal feed trough before watching them be slain by the mage through cracks in the boards. It was a fairytale trope, one with a moral lesson pasted on at the end, lauding how Arthur’s rule brought unity and an end to violence against the people. They held their final poses in perfect stillness. The clouds above sank toward the audience’s heads.

Since they were seated higher than everyone else, the blanket of clouds first reached the royal table. Vera glanced at Arthur, who was grinning as he reached up and touched them with his fingers. Like he’d sensed her gaze, he turned to her. His eyes didn’t have time to darken, and Vera knew her expression mirrored his amazement. Her skin prickled. It was almost intimate—and gone in a flash as the descending clouds reached their foreheads and obscured Vera’s vision entirely.

A murmur rose around the hall with surprised oohs and ohs, and a scant few who sounded genuinely frightened. After the clouds reached the floor and faded, leaving only the faint smell of rain, Vera noticed that the acting troupe had risen and arranged themselves together under the cover of the descending storm clouds. They bowed, and the court followed Arthur in his enthusiastic applause.

“That was most impressive,” Arthur said when the applause dwindled. “I’m honored by your telling of my part in this. Forgive me for my memory, but the massacre of Dorchester was twenty years ago, was it not?”

The ensemble looked at one another and nodded.

“I was a boy of ten and, humbling though it is to admit, probably convincing my father I was more likely to create havoc than ever unite any kingdom,” said Arthur modestly.

The actors’ eyes flitted back and forth among one another until the troupe’s leader, the woman in grey who could make the sound of wind with her body, stepped forward with a flourish and bow. “My liege, we believe the spirit of the crown moved among us before it found you. But it was you all along.”

The gathered court applauded once more.

“That’s lovely,” Lancelot said graciously to the performers. Then, leaning forward so Vera and Arthur could see him, he spoke much more quietly. “What the bloody hell does that mean?”

Arthur was more equipped to absorb his friend’s humor. His lips merely curled up further on one side, and he inclined his head in a bow to the departing performers. Vera, on the other hand, snorted with laughter. The nobleman to her right glared at her. She quickly turned away from him to find Arthur watching this exchange, the glint of a laugh in his eye. No sooner had Vera caught his gaze than his eyes flitted downward, and he was rising from his seat.

“Pardon me,” he said. Without a nod or bow or another word, he abruptly walked away. She was left staring at Lancelot, his eyes wide and the corners of his mouth dipped into a frown.

“I take it that’s not normal,” Vera said.

“Er.” His eyes followed Arthur as he exited the hall. “No,” he said.

Vera let out a single, ridiculing laugh.

After a long moment, during which Lancelot twiddled his fingers and scrunched one eye shut with his mouth in a nearly comical grimace, he looked up at her brightly. “So,” he said, “Do you want to run tomorrow?”

Now fully outfitted, rising before the sun to run was the one constant between Vera’s life before and her life as Guinevere now. This time, though, she had company. Like tonight, Lancelot would confirm at dinner whether they’d run the following morning, and most days they did. They met at Vera’s door, ran for the better part of an hour, flopped onto the grassy hillside by the castle’s back wall, and talked until the sun rose.

Routine took its course in many aspects of Vera’s life in the early days of her new normal. Run with Lancelot. Household duties with Matilda. Dinner. It was the ample amount of idle time in between that prodded Vera’s anxiety awake. Merlin was scarcely around the castle. He was almost constantly in a neighboring village, fixing their magical problems. Vera was eager to begin the work of recovering Guinevere’s memories. She couldn’t possibly pull off this ruse for long—a nobody draped in the body of a queen. But when Merlin summoned her to his study after nearly two weeks, her relief was short-lived.

“What are you—?” Vera started, but it was obvious. Merlin already wore his traveling cloak as he carefully tucked potions into his saddle bag. “Why are you packing?”

He sighed as he glanced up at her. “There is trouble in Exeter.” At Vera’s blank stare, he explained further. “It’s a two-day ride from here. Larger towns have mages. In places like Exeter, however, they rely on the gifts of the many, pooling the collective resources of all born with a gift in that area. Exeter supplies grain to Camelot and the next four towns. But the reason they could claim that role was down to the gift of a woman who crafted a rather ingenious irrigation system.

“The complex turbine system that rerouted the water came from her magic. She died shortly after its construction, and, for the most part, the town’s folk have been able to maintain it and repair it when it broke. But now the whole system has stopped. There’s no water flowing, no one with a suitable gift nearby that can fix it, and the late harvest is in imminent peril without intervention. So …” He shook his head as he continued shoving tomes and bottles into his bag.

Crestfallen, Vera dropped into the same chair she’d sat in during their first conversation. “Why did it stop working?”

“When a person has made something with their gift, they obviously can’t sustain it once they’re gone.”

“The magic dies with them?”

Merlin rushed to the baskets of scrolls and began rifling through them. “Not exactly,” he said as he plucked two rolls of parchment from the bundles. “The work of the magic will fade from what they touched without that individual’s force sustaining it, but the gift itself returns to circulation. In theory, babies are born all over the world with gifts every day. It should stand to reason that somewhere, a child was born with her gift the day she died. As long as we’ve studied it, magic functioned like air, a resource we use that recycles itself.”

She nodded. “But not since Viviane?”

Merlin stopped packing and looked at Vera in earnest. He seemed older than she remembered. “Not since Viviane,” he confirmed. “I’ve spoken with Arthur, but …” He shook his head. “I’m sorry that this is on your shoulders, but he needs to hear it from you. If you tell him you need him, I don’t believe he will refuse you.”

“I hardly see him. I don’t know how to even get a word in—”

Merlin dropped to his knee in front of Vera, his eyes rent with desperation. “Please,” he said. “Please try. The situation is being gravely underestimated.”

Vera swallowed, alarmed that the plea was as evident in his face as it was in his words. “I will. But what if he says no?”

Merlin sighed as he rose and resumed gathering his things. “We’ll consider magical intervention when I return.”

Under different circumstances, the lengths to which Arthur went to avoid speaking with Vera might have been amusing. She’d thought dinners might be her best option to corner him now that he attended them. After all, they were in the same room and right next to each other for at least the length of a meal. But the performance from the acting troupe hadn’t been a one-time visit. Every subsequent evening brought yet another performance, which would have been infuriating if each wasn’t as wonderful as the last, some with magical elements and some without.