Chapter 22
That night marked the start of their careful friendship and an immediate shift in Vera’s life in Camelot.
“It’s probably best to display some affection,” Arthur had said the next day as they headed into town. “May I hold your hand?”
Her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. “That would be fine,” she said.
But by the week’s end, he inclined his head toward her to share private jokes at dinner.
She would lay a hand on his arm as she laughed.
It was a convincing act partly because there was no pretense in it for Vera.
She liked him. His nearness felt like breathing fresh air after being too long in a cellar.
And the people of Camelot began to notice.
It wouldn’t all be fixed in a snap, but the change had already begun to undulate out from them.
Most of it was surprisingly due to Gawain, who Vera was convinced absolutely loathed her.
Lancelot had insisted she was imagining it, but she would swear his scowl darkened with suspicion when he looked at her.
She didn’t have much cause to encounter him, though. Gawain was regularly dispatched to repair magical deficits through Camelot and the neighboring towns. It was a charge he apparently performed well, for the magic complaints in court significantly dropped the next week.
On the loveliest winter morning, Vera and Arthur watched Lancelot and Percival playing a game at the pit as the castle’s cooks prepared ingredients nearby.
Yule was two days away with Christmas on its heels, and Vera and Arthur would travel with a small party (as she delightedly learned was customary) to Glastonbury for the Yule festivities the following morning.
All seemed right in Camelot. The celebratory boar hunt was underway outside the town walls, and a great horn blasted in the distance, signaling that the party was closing in on the boar.
The gates should soon be opened so they could parade the carcass back to the cook site.
Margaret, the head chef at the castle who was sweet and grandmotherly about all things except for the business of running the kitchen, paused her onion chopping at the sound.
“They’ll be back with the beast soon,” she said, gazing off in the general direction.
“I thought we’d have a bit longer.” She wiped her hands on her apron and left her chopping post, calling out as she went.
“Oy! Call up the butcher’s boy to magic up the meat.
Let’s get the fire stoked for the spit!” She gave one final shout over her shoulder, “And for the love of God, someone finish chopping that veg!”
Vera looked to her left and right. All the other castle staff were already occupied. She wasn’t sure anyone else had heard Margaret’s orders.
She left the wall of the pit without a word to Arthur, stepped up to the vacant spot at the table, and took up the knife. She’d not chopped even a turnip in months, but years of kitchen work at the George were not so easily forgotten.
“Should I be alarmed at your proficiency with a blade?”
She broke her focus only momentarily to find that Arthur had left his spectator spot and was watching her instead.
Vera laughed. “I was trained by the best.”
He tilted his head and raised his eyebrow.
“My mum,” she explained, surprising herself by sharing so readily.
She’d mostly avoided any conversation about her parents and certainly hadn’t willingly brought them up before now.
“She had me chopping veg before it was wise to put a knife in my hands. I take it your mother didn’t recruit you in the kitchen? ”
The moment the question cleared her lips, she wanted to pull it back in. His smile hadn’t fallen, nor his shoulders tensed, but there was something inscrutable that shifted in him and made Vera feel sure she’d touched a tender place.
“No,” he said, and he dropped his gaze to the table as he rolled a bulbous white onion beneath his palm. Just like that, the shadow fell from his features. “Care to teach me?”
“Don’t you want to watch the game?” She nodded at the pit, trying to give him a kind excuse to walk away. But he didn’t budge.
“We can see from here.” His eyes glimmered a little as his lips tipped to a smile. She found she couldn’t look away from them. She was struck by the realization that Arthur knew very well what it was like to kiss her. He knew the taste of her lips when she had no idea the taste of his.
She shoved the thought away as she found an extra knife for him and began showing the proper chopping technique as Allison had once taught her.
He wasn’t accustomed to being so close to onion fumes and tears streamed down his cheeks in seconds, reducing them both to fits of laughter before Vera swapped his onion out for a cabbage.
People had begun watching them, pointing at the king and queen preparing vegetables for the town’s dinner.
Grady waved to her as he passed by with one of the newly broken horses.
She smiled and inclined her head, grateful for the friendly face.
Chopping veg for dinner wasn’t exactly a proper royal activity, which nearly gave Vera pause, but Arthur was with her.
Anyone watching saw that they were having fun, that he was being so warm—ah.
It hit her with a pang. The flirtation was an effective show.
It wouldn’t have bothered her if she stupidly hadn’t been swept up in it. He was far too charming.
When the sound of a horn cut through the air again, she was lucky her knife didn’t slip. It sounded again, only this time, it stopped mid-blast.
What happened next all went very quickly.
Vera wouldn’t have seen anything amiss except that her eyes were already on Lancelot in the pit when his expression hardened.
He stopped playing and, trancelike, climbed onto the pit’s wall, holding a post as he balanced on the slim ledge.
No one reacted much at first save for askance glances at him.
“Two blasts means the hunt’s over,” Arthur said, but he also stared up at Lancelot. “They’ll open the gates over there.” He gestured in the direction Lancelot was looking, where there was an expansive field between Camelot’s wall and the forest. “So the party can parade into town with their prize.”
But Lancelot was shaking his head. Arthur set his knife down and went to Lancelot’s side. Vera followed.
“That blast didn’t sound right,” he murmured.
“What do you mean?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know … just … Arthur, I think you should have them close the gates.”
Arthur didn’t hesitate to ask questions. He flagged Percival down and sent him running for the town’s wall. It wasn’t far, only down the lane and around the corner.
But they were already too late.
“Shit!” Lancelot jumped down from the ledge as a cacophony of shouting rose from where Percival had disappeared. “The hunt’s not over. The bloody boar’s gotten loose. It’s within the wall.”
All at once, everything was in motion.
“Get inside!” Arthur bellowed.
He and Lancelot shouted repeated warnings as Arthur scooped up a fallen child and passed him to a frantic mother, and Lancelot sprinted to where they had left their swords, but they were out of time.
He had barely lain a finger on the hilt of his weapon when the furious beast rounded the corner and pummeled through the square.
Vera gasped. She couldn’t have guessed how fast and ferocious a boar would be.
It was no pig. It was closer to the size of a bull, and its eyes were so wide in rage that they were more whites than pupils.
It trampled past her, near enough that she could see that its black hair was coarse and oily, that it had worked up a lather around its mouth, and that its short tusks were wickedly sharp.
Arthur jumped down next to her, able to do nothing more than take hold of her arm as the boar thundered by them.
The panicked shouts mostly came from inside houses as, mercifully, most people in the square had gotten to safety.
Percival rounded the corner, sword drawn, shield ready.
Lancelot was already sprinting toward the boar when it skidded to a halt.
Even if he’d had a spear in hand, ready to throw, he was too far to get enough power to pierce its hide.
And anyway, he didn’t have one. None of the armed warriors running after the beast did.
Lancelot’s gait stuttered to an unexpected stop.
Vera heard the horse’s whinny before she followed the boar’s grunting stare to see it.
Grady had one arm around the newly broken stallion’s neck, the other clutching its lead with all his might, but the barely trained horse’s terror was far more powerful than a fourteen-year-old boy’s grip.
The horse reared up on its hind legs, sending Grady tumbling backward onto his bottom with a grunt.
Freed from his grasp, the horse galloped away at full speed, leaving Grady alone and dazed on the ground, stuck in a corner between two buildings on either side and a frothing monster in front of him.
“Grady!” Arthur shouted. The boy looked up at once, eyes searching for Arthur but first finding the boar and widening. Arthur, armed with absolutely nothing, tore toward him, but there was no way he would get to Grady in time. Lancelot was closest. He wouldn’t get there either.
The boar snorted. And again. And again—in a quickening rhythm like a battle drum before it charged. Grady scrambled backward until he could scramble no further when his back hit the wall behind him. He raised his arms helplessly in front of his face.
Oh God. She couldn’t watch, but she couldn’t turn away.
Vera dropped to her knees with a cry, not feeling the sting of rocks digging into them, only a rush of burning sensation over her skin that did not come from the winter air.
Even if Grady didn’t know she was there, even if it was horrendous, Vera would not look away.
She would not abandon him to die without someone who cared for him at least bearing witness.
A distant part of her noted what a dismal thought this was, but the heat raging through her scorched it to ash.
When the boar was about to slam into him, when Grady should have been taking his last breaths, there was something else.
It started at Grady’s chest and exploded out from there—a blue-white disk of light that burst from him with a colossal exhale of wind, so powerful that the boar was tossed in the air like a rag doll, thrown onto its back.
The explosion sent a shockwave like a string threaded through them all, stretched tight and thrummed.
If the beast hadn’t been stunned by the impossibility of what had happened, it still would have struggled to find Grady.
Every loose piece of wood, be it the handle of a tool, a spare board, or even a wagon for hay, zipped toward Grady and formed a wall in front of him. It gave Lancelot and Percival time to get to the dazed boar and swiftly end it.
Vera ran to catch up with Arthur. They were all left staring at an unharmed Grady behind his makeshift fortress. He stared at it in shock.
“Looks like somebody used their gift for you,” Percival called over as he tied the dead hog’s feet together. Vera caught Arthur’s eyes and knew he’d seen it all, too.
“I—I did it,” Grady said in awe. To confirm it, he swiped his hand, and all the gathered wall clumsily disassembled into a pile in the dirt. “I felt like something in my body exploded and then …” He shook his head, and his jaw hung slack. “I knew I could do it. I knew I could, and I knew how.”
“That’s not possible,” Percival said. His eyes searched the gathered men for answers. “That—powers don’t just show up. You have to be born with them.”
No one present had ever seen someone exhibit a new gift after infancy, but there was no denying it. Impossible or not, Grady now had magic, a gift that had saved his life.