Chapter 47 #2
Her mind demanded precious seconds to determine that the face didn’t belong to Arthur, nor Merlin or Gawain. It was one of the soldiers, the younger of the two. His vacant and unseeing eyes stared back at her.
She was ashamed that relief flooded her first—that it wasn’t one of her friends. She’d never even learned his name. And now, he was gone. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
This was a nightmare.
Oh God. Where was Lancelot? At the thought of him, her adrenaline surged. And where was Arthur?
The other soldier (why had she never even learned their names?) was dead in the grass not ten feet away.
She didn’t see Lancelot or Gawain, but there was Merlin, standing and surveying the wreckage, blood up to his elbows on both arms, smeared across his cheek, dripping from a gash on his forehead, and splashed across the bottom half of his robe.
A sword hung limply from one shaking hand as his mortified gaze fell on Vera.
“Where’s Arthur?” she demanded.
“Guinevere.” Merlin stumbled toward her. His hand shook as he bent to touch the soldier’s head, swallowing heavily. “I—he—”
“Where is he?” She screamed it.
Then she heard Lancelot. “Guinna!”
She spun around. Across what remained of their camp, Lancelot knelt on the ground next to another lump, another body. But it couldn’t be. It could not be Arthur. She tore toward him, forgetting to be frightened if enemies were among them because the impossible was materializing before her eyes.
Arthur, on his back on the ground. Lancelot pressed a cloth against his abdomen. Next to him, there was a pile of red fabric—Vera realized in horror that those hadn’t started red. They were used compresses. So many. So much blood.
Arthur’s eyes were only half-open.
“He’s—he’s asking for you,” Lancelot said, his face pale and shell-shocked.
Vera dropped to her knees. They flanked Arthur now, Lancelot on one side, Vera on his other.
“I’m here, I’m here,” she said, smoothing his hair back from his face. For the briefest moment, she was relieved to touch him and feel the force of his life humming through him. But it was short-lived, because this was very bad.
Arthur revived some at her touch and her voice, blinking up at her.
“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’m here.”
He turned his face into her hand, and she thought he tried to kiss her palm, but he only had the energy to press his lips to her skin. Vera wept quietly. “It’s—it’s fine. It’s going to be fine.”
She looked up at Lancelot. He held the compress in place, but his face was awash with defeat. He met Vera’s hopeful, pleading gaze and shook his head minutely. Uneven trails streaked through the dirt and ash covering his face. He was crying, too, and Vera crumbled.
She heard Merlin approach from behind, frantically explaining. “It had to be—it couldn’t have been anyone else. It had to be a mage. I can’t believe they would—”
“Where’s Gawain?” Vera demanded, not a question. He could help. His healing could help.
“I—I don’t know.” Merlin’s eyes were wild. He was terrified.
Vera’s heart jumped. Merlin could fix Arthur. He’d fixed her, hadn’t he? “Save him,” she cried.
He stared at her blankly. “I can’t.”
Why didn’t he understand? “Do what you did to me.” She scrambled to her feet, grabbing at Merlin’s arms. “Save his essence. Do whatever you have to do!”
Merlin stumbled as if struck. “Guinevere!” He grabbed her wrists. “I cannot do it.”
“What do you mean? You did it to me. You saved me!”
“I didn’t!” he said. “It is not my power!”
Vera reeled back. What the fuck? He meant it. She wailed wordlessly, ripping her hands free and slamming her fists against his chest. “What are you good for!” she screamed. “Go back to the mages. Get someone who can help.” Her voice faltered into desperation. “Please!” she begged through a sob.
Merlin reached out a hand to comfort her, but she saw the pity in his eyes and wrenched away. “Go!” she screamed.
Vera didn’t watch to make sure he’d gone, but she heard the thunder of hooves fading as she spun back to Arthur and dropped down at his side. She was dizzy, nauseous, and in such physical agony from the pulsing fire on her skin.
Lancelot clutched Arthur’s hand and knelt with his face close to his.
“Get Vera to safety,” Arthur said in a strangled voice. “If you can get her home, do it. If you can’t—just …” He sucked in shallow breaths from the effort.
“I will,” Lancelot assured him through tears. “You know I will.”
Lancelot gripped Vera’s arm over Arthur’s chest, binding himself to her. She clung to him, too. Vera cupped Arthur’s face with her other hand like if she held it just right, his life wouldn’t slip away … water between her fingers.
She wanted to beg him not to die and let all the pain and burning and fear explode from her in desperate screams, but those could not be the last sounds Arthur heard.
Vera wondered if he was afraid as he struggled to breathe and fought against the pain, his beautiful face drawn and clenching when the waves of it hit.
She wanted him to know he was surrounded and loved.
It was all she could give him.
“You’re going to be okay,” Vera said. A lie and a prayer.
She didn’t know what she was going to say until it was already out of her mouth.
“We’ll go back to my Glastonbury together.
I want you to meet my parents. My dad will love you.
” Lancelot let out a strangled sob. She squeezed his arm more tightly. Tears streamed down her face.
Vera imagined cradling Arthur in her words, and his eyes fixed on her, held by her voice.
“We’ll read the Lord of the Rings together at night, and we can run the Tor at sunrise if you want.
Or walk.” Arthur’s lips turned up at the corners, and Vera managed a strangled laugh before her tears choked her.
She’d painted the life she dreamed of because this one was ending, and she wanted to keep it from being a nightmare for him.
Arthur blinked his eyes clear and took great effort to lift his hand to Vera’s cheek. It shook. He couldn’t hold it up, so she held it there for him. The blood from his wound soaked all of his body, even his hands, running down his fingers in delicate rivers on the current of Vera’s tears.
“Vera,” he said, more a breath. “You have given me everything.” His fingertips trembled violently against her cheek.
He smiled faintly and with extraordinary effort.
Blood began to trickle from the corner of his mouth.
Arthur was about to die. This couldn’t be real.
“I wouldn’t trade the time with you for any long life. I love—”
His voice failed as blood gurgled in his throat.
“No,” Vera said forcefully.
Lancelot launched forward, trying to clear Arthur’s airway with his fingers.
Arthur was about to say he loved her. She somehow knew that meant it was done, and he would be gone.
Yet Vera could hardly keep her eyes on him through the screaming pain in her skin.
She was uninjured and unblemished, but she would have sworn that she was burning alive, about to explode from a pent-up force with nowhere to go.
Ishau mar domibaru.
It echoed within her from someplace untouchable.
And she knew.
Vera had a certainty that she didn’t understand, and it came through foreign words that her tongue craved to cry.
“You need to move,” she hurriedly said to Lancelot. Now that she knew the words, it took all her effort to keep from saying them.
“What?” He looked at her like she was insane. But she couldn’t explain, and they were running out of time.
“MOVE!” Vera bellowed with a voice that would carry for acres.
Lancelot scrambled to his feet and stumbled backward.
Vera rose to the full height of her knees, and the words tumbled off her tongue. “Ishau mar domibaru.”
There was power in her voice that she didn’t recognize.
And she knew what to do next. A deep inhale and exhale, the name of the origin of all things, the breath of life itself.
As the last wisp of breath parted from her lips, an unnatural silence filled her ears for microseconds.
Then a surge of power rocked through Vera, up from her toes and down from the top of her head, meeting and exploding at her chest, down her arms and out her palms, too.
It was a light so bright, radiating out from her with a blinding blast.
Instantly after, there was something alive inside Vera. She knew it like her oldest friend. Now that it was here, she understood that it always had been. She and Lancelot shared one wide-eyed look.
“Go,” he breathed.
Vera dropped back down and pressed her hands to Arthur’s wound. The effect was immediate. Please don’t let it be too late, she silently pleaded. Let it be enough.
His skin started to knit itself together at her touch.
As the force flowed through her hands and into his body, Vera began to learn more.
Closing the wound wasn’t enough. She could sense the blood loss and instinctively regenerated his blood supply.
She knew the organs that had been pierced even though she didn’t know their names. Vera bound them shut.
He would not die on this patch of earth today.
His life force intensified. The closer he came to wholeness, the weaker Vera became.
Her fears of whether she could give him enough renewed.
She kept at it, pushing the power from her, drawing from what felt like the bottom of the well of her gift until every wound in his body had been healed and his blood was restored.
Vera was terrified to release the grip of her power, but there was nothing more she could do.
She fell back, panting and terrified.
His eyes were open, and the haze was gone. Arthur sat up and tore back his blood-soaked tunic, revealing a mess of blood on his skin.
But there was no wound.
“You’re still alive,” Vera said in disbelief.
“Yes I am.” Arthur’s voice was thick with awe. One of the burning tents collapsed in on itself with a crash, jolting them from their reverie. He blinked and surveyed the wreckage. From somewhere not far off, a horse’s whinny cut through the quiet.
“We can’t stay here.” He looked to Lancelot. “Are you all right?”
Lancelot nodded. He was, and he wasn’t.
Oh God. “Where’s Gawain?” Vera asked. She was afraid of the answer.
“He’s gone. There’s no sign of him.” Lancelot’s jaw jutted forward as he shook his head. “I’ll find the horses.”
“Can you stand?” Vera asked Arthur, offering her hand and helping him up. He was fine. He was healed.
But Vera’s vision swam in front of her. She grabbed Arthur’s arm to steady herself. “I don’t feel good,” she mumbled before promptly doubling over and vomiting.
She stood back up and swayed. Arthur held her upright. The world spun around her. “I think I’m about to lose consciousness,” she mused. It was her last waking thought.
As she faded, she felt Arthur’s arms around her. She heard his and Lancelot’s voices, but they sounded far off. Vera felt the bump of movement and vaguely recognized that she was on a horse with Arthur’s arms holding her fast, but she did not know where they were going.