“You exist because of my actions,” Merlin said, all softness gone. “The things that you carry within you are the entire reason you matter—”

“I am more than a vessel,” Vera said with such force that it silenced him. She’d voiced Merlin’s exact sentiment countless times, but the conviction of it as falsehood now reverberated in her bones.

And it wasn’t because Lancelot or Arthur said so, nor Matilda, or Gawain, or even her parents. Vera had breath in her body, a heart slamming against the inside of her chest, and a mind that, yes, might contain secrets, but that was hers, and she would not forfeit it. She’d spent her life wanting to matter to the people around her, to fill their empty spaces, expecting that would make her whole.

But it wasn’t about being whole. She was broken and messy and utterly, wondrously human, and the weight of that mattered. She mattered.

“I will do the procedure,” she said, breath heaving like she’d just finished running a marathon. Still, Vera’s voice was steady as she held Merlin’s stunned gaze. “But only after we go to the mages. And Gawain will perform it, not you.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” he said, stepping toward her. He foolishly believed the argument wasn’t over. “Gawain can’t see all of that. And he only thinks the procedure would destroy you because he’s probably not capable of safely performing it—”

“He already has.” She relished the way the revelation made Merlin gasp and stumble a step backward. “Gawain has been in my mind. He knows all about me.”

Fear flashed across his face. “That wasn’t yours to tell,” he said.

“Right. Because it’s only my choice when it benefits you?” She knew he wouldn’t answer, but she let the silence hang between them before she continued. “Go out and get the rest of our party. We’ll leave for the Magesary as soon as they’re back. You can tell Arthur what happened here, or you can wait and let me. I’ll leave that up to you.”

Merlin looked at her like she was mad. “I’m not leaving you here—”

“I am your queen,” Vera said, “and I command you to go.”

Merlin took a long, rattling inhale. He touched his fingers to his forehead, his eyes wrought with disbelief. “You will doom us all.”

He left without so much as a glance back.

Vera watched the closed door for a long moment before she looked at Lancelot. “Have I made a terrible mistake?”

“No,” he said adamantly. He swept her tightly to his chest and held her, kissing the top of her head. “I’m so proud of you.” She felt his body trembling.

Vera pulled back, really seeing him, taking in the depth of his panic, and hearing Merlin’s words echo in her mind. I was not responsible the last time he found his wife dead. At that moment, she understood, and her heart ached. “When Merlin brought Guinevere back, and she went mad, you were the one who killed her, weren’t you?”

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply before he quietly said, “Yes. A version of you died at my hands. I won’t let you die again.”

She took his hand and kissed his knuckles. “We’re all going to die someday.”

Lancelot opened his eyes and fixed her with a stern look. “You are not allowed to die.”

Vera laughed, and he smiled, too. “I promise not to die if you promise not to,” she said.

“Deal. No dying allowed.”

The rest of the travel party wouldn’t be gone much longer, but Vera buzzed with adrenaline. She felt … different. There was dread about her decision’s gravity, but there was elation, too.

“Do we have time to run?” she asked as she paced the room.

Lancelot had been nearly as eager for it as her, though he insisted that Vera wear her armor and sword. “We should have been doing this more. It’s good training.”

Vera groaned. She’d only run with her armor and the sword Randall made her once before. It was cumbersome how the sword, strapped to her back, clanged about and threatened to trip her every step when she didn’t actively think about its presence.

“All the more reason to do it now and get used to it,” Lancelot said. “Sort of the whole point of training, Guinna.”

She argued for no helmets or leg guards, just a chainmail shirt over her running clothes with her sword and shield strapped on her back. Lancelot, presumably softened from his close brush with losing her, rolled his eyes and relented.

Vera took the back stairs down past the kitchen, where she nearly ran head-on into a tank of a man hefting giant sacks of grain from the back of a cart into the inn’s kitchen.

“Morning!” she squeaked as she darted past him. His eyes landed on her, and they didn’t leave. She thought he might have recognized her, but then his expression went vacant and unreadable. It unnerved Vera, but she quickly forgot about it when she rounded the corner and found Lancelot waiting for her in his chainmail shirt with his much heavier sword strapped in a sheath on his back.

Lancelot reached into his pocket and pulled out what, at first glance, she thought was a rodent. She jumped back from the fuzzy grey ball dancing in his palm. But it wasn’t fur. Vera stepped closer. The baseball-sized lump was made of swirling grey smoke that whirled contentedly in his hand. It had no face nor any kind of features, yet somehow, it felt happy.

“I wanted you to know about this in case I bump my head on a branch and get knocked out or otherwise incapacitated. It’s another Gawain invention,” he said, his mouth lifting in a crooked smile. “He has one, and I have one. If shit goes sideways for them, his will come flying and find us—and then it can lead us back to his location. Likewise, if one of us gives this a good chuck, it’ll find Gawain.”

Vera poked the wisp and had the distinct sense that it giggled, though she heard no sound. “How is it … cute?”

Lancelot laughed. “I don’t know. Gawain is the most extraordinary weirdo,” he said fondly.

It only took ten minutes of running for days of mounting stress to feel lighter. Vera and Lancelot slid back into their usual banter. She teased him about how many times he’d told her to “shut up” earlier before they moved on to gossiping about whether Randall and Matilda had taken up together.

It was never to be more than a few miles out into the woods next to town before they turned around. They’d looped around a tree to head back and had run past a burly man with an axe just off the lane. After a few minutes, Lancelot went quiet. He only responded to Vera with one or two-word responses. Then his smile dropped, and his features went taut.

Vera’s skin prickled as she said, “What’s going—”

“Keep running.” Lancelot dove his hand into his pocket without breaking his stride and pulled out the friendly wisp, giving it a toss. It darted away from them through the trees at an impossible speed.

“We need to get out of the woods,” he whispered. Vera matched his faster gait. They didn’t have far to go until they cleared the trees into the expansive open field. She sighed and slowed when the morning sun hit her full-on in the face, but her sense of safety was short-lived. Lancelot grabbed her arm.

“Keep going.”

They were at least twenty minutes out from the inn or any building, for that matter. The road stretched before them, and when Vera followed it with her gaze, she saw it. Three figures—coming toward them.

“Shit,” Lancelot hissed. He glanced over his shoulder. Vera chanced a look, too. There were yet two more men behind them, slower under the bulk of sheer body size, but they were running. The shorter made up for his height in width—and the Viking axe in his hand. It was the man Vera had seen in the woods. Assuming he was a woodcutter, she hadn’t thought anything of him, but that was a battle axe. She didn’t know where the man at his side came from. He was taller, with an impressive beard and wild hair, and he ran with an unsheathed sword. The blade was so large Vera would have hardly been able to swing it once. He wielded it as easily as a plastic toy.