He took another deep breath, but Vera kept struggling. Darkness tugged at the corners of her vision. When Martin and Allison never heard from her again, she hoped they would assume she had found happiness. She prayed they’d never know what happened to her, couldn’t bear the thought that—

“Breathe with me, Vera,” Arthur said, his mouth a thumb’s length from her ear.

Something snapped in place. The next time Arthur’s chest rose, Vera’s joined with it. One full breath of life to soothe her stinging lungs. Her exhale shuddered from her body. Soon, more of her breaths matched Arthur’s rhythm than the discord of hyperventilation. Once she’d calmed to near quiet, Arthur let go of her.

She crawled forward on her hands and knees. Why, she did not know. Maybe the surge of grief and anger and confusion and relief was too much; she needed an island unto herself to release it. Her vision cleared, and the wreckage before her unearthed a guttural and inhuman scream, perhaps from her very soul. Vera curled into a ball on the floor and sobbed. The sounds she heard coming from her body were utterly foreign to her.

And then, she quieted.

“You’re injured,” she heard Arthur say. When Vera shifted to look up at him, the side of her head still against the nightmarishly wet stone floor, he was pulling his bloody fingertips away from the place on his shoulder where the back of her head had rested. He scooted along the floor next to her and tenderly touched the wound on her head. Although she didn’t wince, he withdrew his hand quickly as if aware it hurt her.

“He stabbed me.” Vera’s voice sounded small in her ears.

Arthur shifted to cut off her view of the horrid corpse. He was so out of place here, despite his being the only body in the room dressed for battle. Vera and Thomas were the casualties of war, whereas Arthur’s golden crown shone on his head. The smell of his pristine, unblemished leather armor was as good as potpourri amongst the rusty odor of blood and death.

“I need to get you to your room so we can dress your wounds,” Arthur said.

“I can stand. I’d like to try to walk.” She didn’t want to be helpless, and he did not question her.

After the madness of what happened, she feared she’d find him awash with pity. But in his face, she found only the soldier. He was focused on what needed to be done next, on surviving the right now, and there was no room in his expression for extraneous things like pity. But it wasn’t mechanical.

Arthur inadvertently pressed his fingers against the stab wound at her shoulder as he tried to help her stand, eliciting a pained cry from Vera. He pulled back, and she saw through the clenched squint of her eyes that his hands trembled. If she hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have known that he was afraid, too. Arthur rubbed the heels of his hands against his forehead as he took a slow breath before helping her to her feet with restored steadiness.

She leaned her uninjured shoulder into him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. But Vera’s good shoulder and leg were both on her left side, which made for poor hobbling. She didn’t question Arthur as he led her away from the chapel’s main doors and toward the altar. They turned left into an alcove, and there was a door there, different from the distinguished main entry, simple and small. A monk’s door. She would have remarked on it another day. All that mattered now was that it got her out of here faster.

It led to a path right in the shadow of the castle wall. Arthur tried to quicken their pace once they were in the open air. Vera’s breath hissed through her teeth as the pressure of every step pushed a fresh surge of blood from her thigh. Each footfall on her right side throbbed more than the last. Arthur stopped, casting a sidelong glance at her. She hadn’t realized how much the wound was bleeding. The fabric of her dress was so soaked in blood that it was black. And the slit in her skirt that Thomas carved blew open to her waist in the night breeze. Her whole exposed leg down to the slipper on her foot was a scene from a horror movie.

“Can I carry you?” Arthur asked, his face tense with effort to keep his expression flat.

Vera nodded.

He bent to scoop his free arm beneath her knees. It was silly that she’d even tried to walk. The effort had only weakened her. Now, Vera was cradled in his arms, her blood soaking both of them, and his pace doubled. She tucked her chin, wedging her head in the crook of his neck. Despite the pain all through her body, despite her whole heart being wrecked at what she’d had to do to survive, despite now feeling on the edge of vomiting from the nausea of blood loss, a distracted satisfaction rumbled through Vera at being held by him, curled against his chest. She sobbed anew at it, cursing whatever Merlin had done to her.

Nothing … nothing about this should have felt good.

“I want to go home,” she whispered between sobs.

“I know,” he said.

Vera kept her eyes shut most of the way back as if doing so could shield them from anyone out on the grounds witnessing their passage. Neither she nor Arthur had said it, but instinct imparted a clear warning: they needed to remain unseen.

Matilda nearly always met Vera at her chamber in the evenings to help her get ready for bed, so it was no surprise to hear her shocked cry at Vera and Arthur’s gruesome appearance. “Oh my God! What happened? Is she alive?” she asked, sounding as if she expected the answer to be no.

“Yes,” Arthur said as he lowered Vera and lay her on something soft, presumably her bed, and she opened her eyes. Much of what had been making her feel so sick was the motion. She already felt better from lying still, or perhaps from being in a room with no stench of death.

“Should you call for Merlin?” Vera asked. She didn’t mean to whisper. She intended to speak at a normal volume, but her voice was weak. Even so, Matilda’s hand flew to her chest as if Vera speaking at all was a miracle.

Arthur did not answer. He gathered clean cloths, filled a pitcher with cool water from the sink, and knelt beside her, pressing one cloth to her shoulder.

“Can you hold this here?” he asked her. Vera nodded, invigorated by having something to do. “Matilda, I need you to get medical supplies.” He peered down at her mess of a leg. “Where’s the wound?”

Vera pointed at the precise spot on her upper thigh. Though it was actively bleeding, the blood was so thick across her whole thigh that it was hard to tell the origin.

He made to press the other cloth there but stopped, his hand hanging in the air between them. “Would you rather Matilda help you?”

“Arthur, it’s not at all my expertise. I’m not—” Matilda silenced as he looked at her. One look, and she clamped her lips shut. Whatever unspoken language had passed between them flowed fluently.

Tears blurred Vera’s eyes anew as she shook her head. Merlin’s curse or not, she wanted Arthur there and dreaded the thought of anyone’s hands near her but his. Matilda hurried out the door.

“All right,” he said. His voice hadn’t always been so tender, but then again, she hadn’t always been bleeding from two different stab wounds and a head injury.

One hand on the wound at her thigh, his other worked quickly to clean the blood from the rest of her leg with a wet cloth. It looked more like a leg than a massacre by the time Matilda returned with supplies.

Arthur stepped away with her. Vera could hear tense whispers before Matilda left again. When he returned to Vera’s side, he squatted nearer her head by the top of the bed. “Can you sit up so we can get your gown off?”

She nodded. Arthur gently helped her rise into a seated position. She hadn’t realized he had a knife ready until he cut the laces at the back of her gown and helped her wiggle the dress over her head. Vera winced, especially as she pulled her shoulder free from the sleeve. The pain was remarkable. She had to remind herself to keep breathing.