His eyes were unreadable and trained on the door as Arthur entered and joined the others by the fire. Tristan picked up the palm-sized box and shook a hefty stack of rectangular sheets free from it, turning them in his hands.

“Do you know what these are?” he asked.

“No,” Vera said with a quick glance. But then she did a double take, and her brow furrowed. Tristan had five thin plates in hand, and he fanned them out so that they overlapped one another. She cocked her head to the side.

“May I—?” She reached toward them, and Tristan passed them to her. They had little pictures on them. One was a sketchy painting of a person’s face, and the others had delicate flowers. One with two blooms, one with four, another with eight. She flipped them over. They all had the same intricate geometric pattern covering the reverse side. Her mouth dropped open.

“It can’t be.” With the five cards in one hand, she began to flip through the rest, confirming her theory. Vera laughed. “I think … I think they’re playing cards.”

Tristan scooted halfway behind her to stand close with his chin over her shoulder, his cheek nearly brushing her skin. His history with Guinevere was readily apparent. He was clearly comfortable with her. “What are playing cards?”

“Well, I don’t exactly recognize these symbols, but that’s an easy fix,” Vera said, an idea taking shape. “You can play loads of games with them.”

“How do you know all this?” Tristan asked in wonder. He reached to touch the cards, but his pinky also grazed the side of Vera’s hand. Her fingers twitched, but she didn’t pull away as she should have. She looked at Tristan out of the corner of her eyes.

He was behaving normally except for how he gazed at her with tenderness.

“Guinna stayed at an interesting monastery during her recovery.”

Vera jumped at Lancelot’s voice, foolishly feeling like she’d been caught doing something wrong. He stood a few steps away, his stare fixed on Tristan.

“Did you?” Tristan asked, nonchalantly stepping back.

“Yes.” She cleared her throat in an effort to break the tension that probably only existed in her mind. Vera spread the cards out on the table, flipping them so their unique sides with the blossoms or faces pointed upward. There were well over a hundred, with enough repeats among the patterns and the pictures. She organized them into piles and looked up at Lancelot as the idea solidified. “Will you get a quill?”

Setting aside the sacrilege of graffiti-ing an artifact that would be priceless in her time, Vera added notations to the cards. She made two fifty-two-card decks, with some left over and laid aside as spares. Lancelot watched while she worked. After a while, Tristan wandered to join the others.

“What’s this game?” Lancelot stood just as close to her as Tristan had. His arm brushed hers, and he even rested his chin on her shoulder. The knot in Vera’s stomach eased. See? Friends, especially dear friends, could be affectionate. Vera conveniently chose to ignore the whole arranged betrothal bit.

“I think we should play poker,” she said. “Texas hold’em.”

“Excellent.” Lancelot pulled over a chair and sat down. She loved that he didn’t question it. “Teach me.”

They spent the better part of the next twenty minutes going over the game: what the hands meant, how to understand them, and the finer points of how to play. She made a cheat sheet of which hands beat what. Lancelot was excellent with games, so he caught on quickly.

“This is grand. Let’s do it.” He wheeled around to the others. “Who wants to learn a game?” Lancelot said, clapping his hands together.

Matilda yawned pointedly. “I’m exhausted. Next time.”

“I’ll turn in, too,” Randall said, looking anywhere but at Matilda.

Vera contained her suspicions about what the two leaving together meant to a short, clipped giggle as Matilda bid her goodnight, sighing in mock annoyance as her cheeks flushed.

Everyone else wanted to play except Marian, who adamantly said she’d rather observe.

“Too competitive,” Elaine murmured. “Afraid she’s going to lose and show us she isn’t graceful every second of every day.”

“That is absolutely correct,” Marian said as she sank into a seat, lounging back with each hand draped over an armrest. She looked like a pristine painting in motion.

Edwin scoffed as he scooted his chair closer to the table. “No sense in that. We’ve seen her piss on the front lines, same as the rest of us.”

“Yes,” Marian said, “but that wasn’t a contest. And if it had been, I’d have won. This will be more fun for all of you if I spectate.”

Vera pulled a chair next to the empty one Arthur had occupied only minutes ago. But when he sat back down, it was across the table from her. Tristan slid into the chair by her side. They all scooted in close together for the ten of them to fit at the table. Vera and Lancelot gave the instructions, collected enough varied coins to use as chips, and, after a few questions and practice rounds, they were ready to begin.

It wasn’t without bumps. After winning the first hand, Wyatt was a self-deemed savant and spent the rest of the game telling everyone what to do—in what turned out to be terrible advice. Twice, Tristan tried to play a flush using two different suits. Vera laughed so hard, correcting him the second time, that she could barely sit up straight.

They started to get the hang of it after a while, and it was a brilliant way to thaw the ice between her and the visiting knights. Vera liked Elaine very much. She was wickedly funny and had the most unreadable bluff of anyone at the table.

Unlike Wyatt, Marian roved around and offered sound advice until Lancelot called her out. “Oy! You can’t peek at all our hands and then meddle in the game.”

One corner of her mouth quirked up. That was exactly what she’d been doing. She settled into a seat at Arthur’s shoulder, becoming an advisor solely to him, often leaning forward to murmur in his ear. He inclined his head toward her when she spoke, and Vera tried not to bristle. She realized with a jolt that she’d been staring at them for the entirety of this hand and determinedly pulled her attention back to Tristan.

He was great fun, excited like a puppy when he won a hand, but he didn’t care enough about the game to be upset when he lost. It drove the more competitive players mad as he carelessly called when he shouldn’t have or raised on a pair of threes that turned into a four-of-a-kind on the flop. He felt familiar to her, similar to how Lancelot had, and he didn’t find it suspicious that she loved hearing him recollect their childhood adventures. Percival was on Tristan’s other side and encouraged him to tell the most embarrassing ones. This packed table was the happiest family Vera could imagine.

Tristan and Percival’s laughter dimmed in her ears as Vera’s eyes found Arthur. He’d pulled them all together. The kingdom was practically a paradise, more peaceful and prosperous even than the life of comforts from the future that Vera grew up with. It didn’t seem possible—but here they were.

Arthur’s eyes flicked up from his cards and met hers. Butterflies thrummed through her as he smiled at her. She returned it, embarrassed because she knew her adoration glowed plainly on her face.

Lancelot shouted and pulled her from her reverie.

“Dammit, Gawain!” He slammed his cards down on the table. “That’s so stupid. How did you know I didn’t have the ace?” Gawain had successfully called out Lancelot’s attempts at a bluff every time. The last one cleaned out his paltry stack of chips, and he was the first to be eliminated from the game.

“Nicely played, Sir Gawain,” Vera said, keeping her eyes locked on Lancelot as she high-fived Gawain.

Lancelot scowled and pointed at each of them. “Fuck you both,” he said.

The table burst into laughter, any notion that Vera might be offended by their language long forgotten.