Vera didn’t cry. She stared vacantly at the floor. She’d spent a lifetime learning how to steer her mind away from sadness, but now there was nothing else. So she stared at nothing as the weight of her transgressions pressed down on her. This was worse than being worthless.

When the door opened and the sound of footsteps followed, she tucked her head to her chest and closed her eyes. That would likely be Thomas. She wasn’t sure she could manage a conversation with him just now.

But it wasn’t him.

“Do you want me to get Lancelot?” Arthur’s voice, gentle and soft. He must have seen her come in this direction.

Vera’s eyes snapped open. She expected to find him angry or pitying her. But the stony mask was solidly in place. Anger sparked and pulled her from her stupor.

“No,” she said, “I need you”—she felt unbearable shame at the admission and hastily added—“to be able to be in the same room as me. Running to Lancelot is exactly how I’ve wrecked this so terribly.” Vera dropped her forehead into her arms. “I know you hate me—and at this point, you have every reason to. I am worse than an imposter. I have smeared Guinevere’s name and her memory. I’ve broken everything you made. I—I’m so sorry. I can’t do this. I can’t fix this.”

She waited for his voice to fill the silence long enough that she started to think she’d imagined him ever being there. She looked at him, utterly still except for his shoulders raising and lowering with his breath. His jaw shifted to the side, and he seemed to decide something.

“You’re right,” Arthur said, and dread flooded her, but he came over and sat on the floor next to Vera. “You cannot fix this. And you did not break it. There are some things that you need to understand. What you’ve heard—that Guinevere saved us in the final battle—is true. But a lot of people died because of it. It worked because it was so deadly, and no matter what I said, she bore the weight of it.

“I was meant to care for her. To protect her. I failed her so many times.” He swallowed and turned his head against the stone wall to look at Vera, and there was nothing cold or calculated there. Only anguish. “I thought if I stayed away from you that it would …” Arthur shook his head. “That it would be better for you, but I failed you, too. I need you to hear me. None of this is your fault. I have done everything wrong. All that’s happened these last few days, it’s because of my behavior. These are my failings.”

“But that baby,” Vera said, her throat instantly tight. “I held her, and now she’s dying. Maybe there is a curse—”

“That wasn’t you.”

“It was, though—”

“No,” he said firmly. “It was the fumes from the Venovum. The cursed object that man threw at you. That’s what made the baby sick. Gawain already had the potion ready from treating my hand. She’s going to be fine.”

“She is?” Her voice quivered. “You’re sure?”

“Look.” Arthur held his left hand up so Vera could examine it. The bandages were gone. It was only faintly pink in a few spots. “Gawain is good at what he does. The baby started improving immediately.”

“Oh. That’s good. That’s—” Her breath came in a lurch. Push it away. She tensed her muscles. Don’t think of it. Vera took three deliberate breaths and swallowed heavily.

She was about to say, “I’m fine,” when Arthur slid his left arm around the back of her shoulders and wrapped the right around the front of her shins, encircling her balled-up form in his arms. Perhaps it was the mere shock of encountering such tenderness from him, or perhaps the rickety barrier Vera had constructed to hold the horror at bay within her simply snapped, but a gasping sob ripped through her. She didn’t know where relief stopped, and fear and sadness began. They might have all been the same, and they crested out in her tears. She dropped her forehead onto his shoulder, heedless in that moment of what his care meant or why he’d given it, only knowing that it felt safe, and she wept. She wept every tear that she’d been swallowing since the day she left home—and some from before then, too.

There’d been no place for them. Vera had floated like the misty specter from the Tor, and Arthur’s arms had somehow caught her and given her a shape, a container she could collapse into. He didn’t utter a single word. It was only when her tears slowed that she began to question it. It was too intimate, especially with him. Vera sat up, and Arthur pulled his hands back to his lap.

“You don’t have to do this.” She swiped her fingers beneath her eyes, a fruitless effort to erase the evidence of her tears. “I’m grateful you’re talking to me, but I don’t want you to pretend to like me.”

“I’m not pretending. I’m—I’m quite fond of you.”

“No you aren’t,” Vera protested, though she wanted to believe him. “Maybe you were fond of her, but I’m not her.”

“You don’t need to be her. Be you.”

Vera glowered at him, which, for some reason, drew a fleeting half smile from Arthur. “I sort of tried that. It didn’t go well before.”

He nodded. “I was a colossal prat before.”

Vera nearly laughed at that. She hadn’t yet been able to hold his eyes like this nor see him so unguarded. “I don’t know how to do this,” she said.

“I don’t either.” His hand flinched, and she’d thought he might have been about to reach for her, but now he seemed hesitant to touch her. His face went rigid, and he dropped his eyes to her chin. “I’m sorry. I owe you many apologies. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I have to fix this. I don’t see any other way than, at least publicly, I’ll ask you to endure my affections … to spare you from poor treatment and for the good of the kingdom. And—” She was relieved when he met her eyes again, even though sadness marred his face. At least it was real. “And privately, I would offer you friendship if you’re willing to entertain it. I wouldn’t blame you if you’re not.”

“That’s all I’ve wanted from you. This whole time, that’s all I’ve wanted.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He rubbed his right hand where his knuckles were swollen and awfully red. Vera hadn’t realized the boils left such swelling. But it was his left hand that he’d caught the egg with. It bore only light pink spots where there’d once been blisters.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Oh. Erm …” He tried to hide it at his side, but Vera gingerly grabbed it.

His knuckles were so terribly swollen, especially by his index finger, that Vera could feel the bulge of it at a cursory touch. “What happened?” she asked again.

He pursed his lips. “Well. I, er, lost my temper. With your father.”

“How would that—” Oh. Her lips formed the word, though she didn’t say it. “You punched him?”

He slid his hand free and tucked it back by his side. “Er. Yes.”

“Hm.” She tried to suppress a grin, the same tingling sense that she’d felt at his protective affection with Wulfstan blooming in her chest before she remembered that it was about his rule. Not about caring for her.

He must have noticed the way her expression changed. “Does that upset you?”

She didn’t know how to answer. “That was the first time I ever met my biological father.” She wasn’t sure why she was telling him that, except it felt important that someone knew. “Is he always like that?”

“I’m afraid so. He’s …” Arthur shook his head. “He’s an ass. Guinevere told me that her childhood was not a happy one.”

“What did he say?” Vera asked.

“Hmm?”

“What did he say to make you take a swing at him?” She forced her voice to be light, but she craved to know.

“Oh.” Arthur’s eyes drifted up to the ceiling. “It was nothing.”

Vera scoffed. “Don’t spare my feelings. Tell me.”

Arthur sighed, and his cheeks went pink. “He said I should get you pregnant to tame you.”

The tingle flared in her chest. “That made you punch him?”

“Right in the mouth,” Arthur said. He looked at her lips, and Vera reflexively reached up to touch the cut that still stung. “It only seemed fair.”