Then she noticed the base of the totem in the center. It was surrounded by a collection of offerings, a makeshift shrine on the ground. There were candles, palm-sized paintings weighted down with rocks, tied cords and ribbons, Celtic knots made of thin, bendy branches, and a smattering of handmade clay statuettes.

Arthur crested the top of the Tor and joined her in the circle. He’d never seen any of this, either. “Is this here in your time?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He knelt to upright a miniature statue that had fallen over before he began looking at the other paintings and notes. Vera turned in place. The Tor was empty of any other people, and there wasn’t a single direction in which the view did not stun. And there was her spot; the place she’d liked to sit (or, she supposed, the place she would someday sit in the distant future). She removed her shoes, left Arthur in the circle, and let her bare feet draw her to that place of comfort.

The mists gathered around the Tor’s base. That part had always made it look like an island. Now, there actually was water and marshland underneath the gathered fog. Isle of Avalon. The words came to Vera as Arthur sat down next to her.

His face was set on the surrounding terrain, too, with the look of someone who had stumbled onto a wonder of the world, drunk with the splendor of it. “You can see for miles from here,” he said, facing Camelot. “I’ve traveled all over this kingdom. I’ve passed this hill dozens of times. But I’ve never actually seen it before.”

His careful mask was gone in favor of abject reverence, his eyes roving the horizon left to right as if it were scripture to be read. But even in his reverie, he looked so tired. And not the kind from waking up early to run. There were bags under those awestruck eyes and an almost permanent furrow to his brow. He was weary and stretched. It was something he didn’t let show often but that he always carried. There was a lot he didn’t let show.

“How often did you run up here?” he asked.

“A few times a week, at least.” Vera shrugged, a casual gesture that didn’t match the memory’s importance. “Nearly every day since I moved back home after—” Her voice hitched in her throat. “After—” She desperately wanted to tell him. She couldn’t keep doing this half-truth, half-living existence, but she didn’t know how to unwind it.

Arthur let the emptiness hang there between them. “What would it be like if you finished that sentence?”

His invitation shrunk the gap between what had been and what could be.

“I’d like to know what you didn’t say,” he said.

She wouldn’t allow herself to overthink this. If she hesitated, she’d wheedle a way out of the refuge (and the terror) of telling the truth.

“After Vincent died,” she said. It didn’t explain anything to him. Still, he waited. “I loved him.” She was shaking, but she didn’t stop. “He was the one who took that photo of me and my parents. It was less than two weeks later when he died.”

“What happened?”

“Car accident,” Vera said, and realized that was nonsense to him. “Erm … I don’t really know how to explain that. It’s a carriage without any horses—”

“I know about automobiles,” Arthur said. She turned to him in confusion, and he clarified. “From some of the books Merlin brought you.”

She was curious about what that discovery had been like for him but set it aside for now. His knowledge simplified things for this story. She swallowed and continued. “I got word that he’d been in a car wreck and was rushed to hospital. I knew it was bad, but they didn’t say how bad it was. I got there in time to see them taking him back for care. It was horrible. He was … mangled. I should have known he was dying, but I was naively hopeful. He died alone. Then his parents arrived, and I told them their son was dead. It was worse than a nightmare.”

Her words were yeast to the memory as she retold the story. It all swelled to life again: the frantic sounds, the florescent light shining overhead, casting everything in its putrid aura, and Vincent’s mother … how it took extra seconds for her to comprehend the words after she’d heard them, and the way horror physically rocketed through her.

“I’ve never told anyone about that night.”

He took her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It made it easier to come here,” Vera said, “which also makes me feel rather terrible.”

“What do you mean? That’s perfectly understandable.”

Was she really going to tell him all of it?

“My father—my real father, the one who raised me, is very sick. He’s undergoing treatment and he could survive, but it’s—” she stopped. She’d meant to say unlikely but couldn’t. “It’s not good,” she said instead, still needing to grit her teeth and stare at the horizon before she trusted her voice. “If I can help you fix things here, I’ll go back and be with him and my mum until he’s … better.” She finished with the awkward lie of a smile.

At this point, they all might have wished she’d stayed put in the first place. Vera gave a scornful laugh. “Though I’m a hell of a lot closer to bringing your kingdom to ruin than I am to helping. Maybe if I can stop losing my shit every time I …” Her thoughts stumbled over the memory of Joseph and the moment he became an empty body. “A man was killed because he hurled an insult at me, and I couldn’t hold my tongue.”

But Arthur’s face shifted to something like disbelief as his gaze bore into Vera. “That’s not what happened. I was two feet from you. And I spoke with all the witnesses from that day.”

He had? And she’d known he was that close, but she didn’t think he’d been listening.

“You thought he was insulting Helene.” Arthur rubbed his thumb across the back of Vera’s hand, and a rush fluttered through her stomach. “That’s not what happened with Wulfstan either. That’s never been what’s happened.”

“How would you know that?” It sounded more accusatory than she’d meant it to. Vera let go of Arthur’s hand in the guise of repositioning herself, regretting that she had before the warmth of his fingers had faded from her skin.

“Because you don’t do that on your own behalf,” he said. “I’ve given you a hundred reasons to lay out your wrath on me, and you haven’t.”

She didn’t have any answer to that, but a glow was blooming on the horizon.

“The sun’s about to come up.” Vera nodded toward it. “You don’t want to miss this part.”

It effectively pierced the bubble of tension as he averted his expectant gaze from her. When the first petal of sunlight appeared, Arthur gasped.

“I’ve never watched the sun rise before,” he said. They sat in silence until the sun broke the horizon’s plane entirely, a coin of gold hovering low in the sky, bathing the land in its glow.

“It wouldn’t have been wrong if you had spoken up in your own defense,” he said, his eyes on the horizon. “I wish you would.”

“I’d just as soon you not give me any more reasons to.” She’d meant it as a joke, but his response didn’t match her smile. It was like a weight was dropped on top of him.

The weight of his loss, perhaps? She wasn’t the only one grieving. Vera wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. “Is that what Guinevere would have done? Shouted at you?”

His breath came out a hard laugh. “I’m not sure. There were certainly many things she needed to say that died with her.” He clenched his jaw. The tension was gone before Vera had time to decide what it meant. “You’re like her in many ways. I like those things about you,” he added when she bristled. “And you’re different in as many ways.”

“Did you love her?” she asked it quickly.

His response was nearly a grimace. Guilt? She thought of Matilda. If Vera and Arthur were being honest, she may as well lay it out. “Are you in love with Matilda?”

His grimace fell. Arthur looked as though ice-cold water had been dumped over his head. He actually laughed. “Is that what you think?”