Some nights, the furs felt rougher. The stone halls of Camelot colder. Hands, too—especially the king’s—grew rough with every edge his fingers traced along the swords he sharpened, the treaties he signed, the promises he gave and carried like iron weights across his shoulders. The table may have been round, but a king’s heart? He only hoped it could be—smooth and sure, without edges like thorns. Arthur trusted the knights, enough to place one at your side. At his side.

Not just any knight. Not just any assignment.

They watched the queen. They watched the boy. The only heir—slight of frame, softer than the king who’d carved his legend with bare fists and grit, but alive, curious, and clever. Not war-born, not yet. The kind of boy more likely to chase geese than wield a blade. But he’d reach it. Arthur knew that.

“Just don’t be like Merlin,” he’d mutter now and then, rubbing the heel of his palm against his brow like he was pressing down a headache. “Gods know we don’t need another man with more riddles than blood in his veins.”

And he’d sigh.

That long, quiet kind of sigh men make when the dawn creeps over the stone, when the eye of morning slants through the towers and the world looks just that touch too bright for what waits in it.

But belief was difficult in a land where trees bled sap like the veins of sorceresses, where the Lady of the Lake whispered to men’s ears through fog that kissed the backs of swans and wandered up to church windows. Where breath and prayer felt the same—thin, fleeting things in the night.

His gaze lingered in council meetings, lingered longer when the servants passed you. When your boy sat at your feet and looked up with eyes too bright, too keen. When the knights stayed close, but not close enough to the bond forming under their very noses.

Noon came. The grass outside the walls grew tall and unruly, dotted with wildflowers like the stitched patterns of a child’s tunic. Arthur knew where to ride—you were always there. You, the queen once wedded for alliances, for peace, for banners stitched together like broken bones set straight. But time had peeled your titles from you. In the field, you were not royal.

There, in the tall grass, was your boy walking his pony, a knight nearby, watchful. And you—discarded of heavy gowns, your bare hands weaving flowers into a loop for the child’s head. Soft-eyed. Your wit disarmed him more than a sword ever could. That morning, he hadn’t called you my lady. He’d said your name.

When he reached you now, reins in hand, boots damp from the river path, the king looked tired and handsome in the same breath—coarse stubble on his chin, the rough wool of his riding cloak dark with travel.

He stopped, eyeing the scene like a man trying to find the edges of something too warm, too close. "Not hiding from the court again, are you? Because if you are—gods help me—I’ll join you. I’ve got half a mind to let the throne burn and raise sheep with you out here."

He dismounted with a grunt, walking like a man used to pain but willing to rest. For a moment. With you.

His son looked up from the pony’s mane. “Father,” he said.

Arthur ruffled the boy’s hair, the callouses on his hand grazing gently over the crown of his heir.