“That’s it,” he confirmed. “I’m not an especially gifted dancer, and even I think this one’s easy.”

Arthur undersold himself. He was a patient and pleasant teacher, calling out helpful reminders as they performed the movements. “Right hands together … Good. Switch to left, and—what was it you called this one? Fancy feet.” He chuckled. Vera had taken to naming moves. Names that got suspiciously sillier as the bottle of apple wine diminished.

“Oh fuck!” Vera stomped after she got the same move wrong for the third time in a row.

Arthur lay his hand on the lute strings and stopped the music. “It’s all right. Do you want to take a break?”

“Do we have most of it done?”

“We are so close,” he said.

“All right.” Vera nodded at the lute. “Let’s try again.”

But Arthur saw her smiling and paused. “What’s funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. It’s—nothing.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I’ve come up with some lyrics to the song,” said Vera.

Arthur beamed at her as he plucked the lute string to start the music. “I hope you’ll sing them.”

They began the dance: a coming together, palms meeting, a step back. His hand across her waist and hers across his for a spin. Arthur watched her with mirthful expectation. It was Vera’s turn to laugh. When the melody began its repeat, and they moved on to the next set of moves, she sang her words.

“Once upon a winter’s night, the wild queen was all a fright.

She was not so fair and graceful; she agreed to lead a dance disgraceful.”

Arthur laughed. “You aren’t at all disgraceful. You’re doing very well.”

He taught her another step in the dance, and they started over with the new move tacked on. Vera thought nothing of it as the music came to a close with her hand in Arthur’s. He held her fingers near his lips as she dipped into a curtsy.

He stared at her with the funniest expression.

“What?”

“That was the end of the dance. But I—didn’t teach you that last bit yet.”

He was right. He hadn’t. And it wasn’t just the curtsy. There had been two other parts before that, one when their right hands joined at chest height and left hands met overhead and another when Vera did a sort of promenade around Arthur. Neither were movements that might have happened by accident. She had remembered. Two signs of good in one day.

“Huh,” Vera said as she sat down on the foot of the bed. She didn’t consciously remember, but she knew the dance. She knew the steps. That much was certain. “I know I didn’t learn that in my time. My dancing is nothing like that.”

“What’s your dancing like?” he asked.

“My dancing, in particular, might be better characterized as flailing.” She said. “I … feel the music, you know?”

“No, I don’t,” Arthur said with a grin. “I think you need to show me.”

“Seriously?”

He shrugged and gestured to the open space on the floor near him.

Vera shook her head and took a swallow from her goblet before she stood and moved where he’d beckoned. “It’s sort of like—”

With the aid of being tipsy enough and with how much fun they’d already had together, Vera was surprised at the ease of her vulnerability as she broke out some of her silliest moves: hands above her head, a shoulder shimmy, jumping, and spinning. After a hopping spin, she found Arthur in mid-hearty laugh, a delightful and uninhibited sound. But it did not make Vera feel self-conscious or made fun of. His eyes were alight. For a breath, the flash of his face from the first night she had met him, expression hard and cold, jumped to her mind. She couldn’t believe this was the same person. In truth, he wasn’t. That man felt like a stranger, and Arthur felt … different.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh like that,” said Vera.

He smiled broadly. “I’ve seen a lot in the years since I met you, and that is certainly the first time I’ve ever seen you dance like that.”

It was also the first time Arthur referred to Vera as if she and Guinevere from before were the same person. Her smile hitched, wondering if he would realize his slip. It was also in this instant that Vera understood she’d made a terrible assumption this morning when she hadn’t given him time to answer about whether he’d loved Guinevere. If he had loved her, and now, he was gazing at a woman identical to her …

She couldn’t think about that and, selfishly, was afraid the bubble of this sweet moment might be abruptly popped.

“How do normal people dance with each other in your time?” Arthur asked, feigning innocence.

“Rude!” Vera dropped her jaw theatrically, though she couldn’t hold in a grin. “Well, it’s not usually choreographed, and it’s far simpler than what we’re doing tonight. Just … swaying, really. There’s not much to it.”

Arthur peered down at his feet. When he looked back up, he was still smiling, but his eyes bore into Vera’s. She wasn’t quite used to that, him looking her right in the eye.

“Will you show me?” he asked.

Now she was nervous. “It—it’s odd without music.” Her voice was unwieldy in her throat. “The song on the lute wouldn’t work. It’s slower than that.”

“What about the song with the bird in the Sycamore tree?” he asked.

Vera stared blankly at him. Then Arthur, the ancient king of Britain, began to hum the unmistakable tune of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” She couldn’t believe it. Hearing his regal voice hum the song she’d grown up hearing performed by the Mamas and the Papas delighted her.

“You singing that song has to be the strangest thing in all of history,” she said.

“Will that one work?”

Vera nodded and held out her hand to him. Her palms were clammy, and her heart was beating faster than it ought to. Arthur gazed down at her with a destabilizing intensity when his fingers touched hers.

“Here,” she said, guiding his right hand to her waist. His fingers slid beyond to the small of her back, holding her closer than he needed to. She hadn’t been expecting that, but it was also exactly what she wanted. Vera swallowed, self-conscious that he might feel her pulse quickening beneath his touch.

She began to softly sing the song, and they danced together. Vera couldn’t fathom looking Arthur in the eyes when they stood this close to one another, so she lay the side of her head on his chest. Almost instantly, she doubted the decision. Was it too close to a full embrace? But then he responded in kind, resting his cheek on her head.

She couldn’t say who backed away first—simply that the song ended, and they were not quite so close together anymore. He’d dropped his hand from her back and she from his shoulder, and though their other hands dropped too, Arthur delicately held her fingers in his at their sides.

“It’s sort of like that.” Vera could only manage a whisper as she tipped her head back to meet his gaze. “How did you know that song?”

“You used to sing it in the chapel,” Arthur said. “I didn’t … I wanted to be there for you without hurting you, and I didn’t know how to …” His voice trailed off. “I went to the chapel after you and would sit in the alcove so you wouldn’t be alone.”

Words failed her. She stared at the floor, no notion of how to hold this care. Care that belonged to someone else, but she had fallen into its glow, nevertheless.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was stupid and invasive—”

He stopped when Vera looked up at him. “It wasn’t,” she said.

He did not try to mask the pain in his expression. His lips parted, and he inhaled sharply. “I have to tell you something.”

Vera was nearly certain she knew what it was.

She’d found it suspicious that Merlin agreed to let the memory work wait without anything in its place. And the way Arthur’s behavior had changed toward her after that day in Merlin’s study … Merlin had convinced him to try to connect with Vera. As he’d noticed her affection for him bloom, she guessed he was feeling guilty for not being forthright. That had to be it.