Chapter Twenty-Six #2
“No, me neither. I’d love to pretend I knew he was just going to throw riddles at us or whatever it was he said on that bridge, but no, I really did think he was going to deflect my no-doubt pathetic blow and start peeling me like a carrot.
Maybe he chickened out, because it was you.
Hard to come back from dicing the king.”
“No.” Gabriel had given this some thought. “I think that was always his intention. Gwen said he wasn’t a bad guy, just a blacksmith having a midlife crisis.”
“Good for him.” There was a moment of quiet. “Why did you do it?”
Arthur was far too close for Gabriel to pretend he hadn’t heard, but he did it anyway.
“Hmm?”
“Why did you stand for me? It was a very bad idea.”
“Oh.” Gabriel thought of the bridge, the answers that had come rushing to him when asked this very question, none of which were fit for Arthur to hear. Because I still love you! Oops! “I thought I owed you.”
Arthur laughed without humor. “Owed me? For what?”
“Not for, um, anything that’s happened … recently,” Gabriel said falteringly. “You found me, when I fell on the field in battle. I imagine I’d be long dead by now if you hadn’t. And because you were … there, with my father. At the end.”
“Oh.” Arthur seemed genuinely taken aback. Gabriel looked at absolutely everything but his face; his own hand, the door handle, the window. “You don’t owe me anything, and certainly not for that. Happy to do it.”
This was Gabriel’s chance to ask about his father—to find out exactly how it had happened.
He didn’t want to know. Probably. But then …
how could he live without knowing? He felt cramping sickness at the very thought of it, the kind of grief that was more like a stomachache or a heart attack, far too physical.
He could let it lie, an unexploded incendiary in the cavity of his chest; never give it the chance to detonate and risk wounding himself mortally.
“Sir Florian said you…” Arthur didn’t prompt him, just let him trail off and gather his thoughts. “He said you talked to him about that day. And it made me think, ah, realize, that … you never told me how he died. I mean, I know how he died, but … how it was. There. With him.”
“Do you want me to … tell you?” Arthur asked gently. “Fair warning, I might cry, which will be uncomfortable for both of us.”
Gabriel felt like he was saying a rude farewell to some younger version of himself when he said, “I think I want to know.”
“All right.” Arthur leaned back slightly and closed his eyes.
“I saw him go down. I had to … I think I had to crawl to get to him, although I did a lot of crawling that day, so I might be getting it mixed up. But it didn’t take long.
And he was in my arms, and his head was in my lap, and …
I kept talking to him, telling him it would be all right.
It was raining. Storming, even, I remember the thunder, and the lightning, it felt like the world was ending.
I was very, very scared. Embarrassing, can’t be helped.
I told him you and Gwen would be so mad at me if I let anything happen to him, and that’s why …
that’s why he had to hold on. And then he said Gwen’s name, and he said your name. And then he … died.”
He was crying. Twin tears falling from under his lashes. Gabriel shifted toward him without thinking, and when his arm brushed against Arthur’s, Arthur—perhaps misinterpreting his intentions—reached for Gabriel’s hand.
He held it almost absentmindedly, brushing his thumb back and forth across Gabriel’s knuckles like he was worrying at a touchstone as he spoke.
Gabriel tried not to let it show on his face that his entire chest had seized with the kind of love that felt like choking, his throat tight, tears burning just behind his own eyes.
“It was fast. I swear I’m not just saying that.
He didn’t seem to be in lots of pain, he was more shocked than anything.
It was … quiet. He looked like himself. He was himself, right up until the very end.
Does that make sense? When my mother died …
she was gone long before she was actually gone, you know?
Wasted away. My father always thought I was too young to remember, but I did.
” He broke off suddenly, and then said, “Sorry. I’m not trying to … it’s not about me. Or my mother.”
“That’s all right,” Gabriel said. His voice was very hoarse.
It was out. He knew, and he hadn’t fallen apart. He’d survived hearing it, with Arthur holding his hand.
Gabriel cleared his throat, and Arthur sighed—and shifted his weight so that his head came to rest on Gabriel’s shoulder, a weight as familiar as it was startling.
It felt as if the slightest breath or movement might make him realize what he’d done and move away.
Gabriel held on tight to Arthur’s hand and breathed in that familiar Arthur smell of warm skin and spiced oranges, and felt his breath catch on his broken heart at the sharp end of every inhale.
“I think about it a lot,” Arthur said quietly. “Your father. You. All of it. When I can’t sleep, and sometimes even when I can.”
“Oh.” Gabriel was practically talking into Arthur’s hair. “I still have nightmares about it too.”