Page 29 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“Your Majesty, I wanted to write—” Florian said quickly, at the same time. They both paused, embarrassed. “Oh. Go ahead.”

“No, no. Please. And I’d rather not beYour Majesty, if you don’t mind. Just your cousin.”

Florian took a deep breath, shuffling his papers. “I wanted to write to you after the battle, but… it felt pointless, in the end. What could I have possibly said? It wasn’t as if you and I had ever met. And anything I wrote would have been met with suspicion.”

“Yes. You’re probably right.”

“Not that I would blame you of course, with the way it… anyway.” Florian actually seemed to be grasping for his words now, which was comforting to Gabriel, who always felt like he was the one grubbing in the dirt for morsels of conversation. “Your friend Arthur said that I was lucky I wasn’t thrown into a dungeon somewhere.”

“Yes, well, there was a bit of a misunderstanding between us last year about his allegiances, and I think he’s still quite upset.”

“Mmm.” Florian nodded and ducked his head, and Gabriel wondered how much Arthur had already told him, freely, with no thought to the consequences. Then he checked himself, the self-loathing kicking in right on time—assuming the worst about Arthur was a bad habit he should have broken by now, with all the evidence he had to the contrary.

“We weren’t very fair to him,” Gabriel said. “I… haven’t been very fair to him.”

“Well, he speaks very highly of you.” Gabriel glanced sharply at Florian’s expression, and found it entirely earnest. This only made things worse. Arthur ensconced with Gabriel’s handsome cousin laughing it up at Gabriel’s expense was a painful thought; the reality that he’d been unfailingly kind was much worse. “I’ve been talking to him this past fortnight about last year actually, trying to fill in the gaps. This quest is only part of the story. Hard to tell it without everything that came before.”

“What has he told you?” Gabriel asked quickly. Too quickly.

Arthur might not be malicious, but if he had actually been flirting with Gabriel’s cousin, the very fact of his interest might imply all sorts of things about the events of the previous year that Gabriel didn’t want to come to light. Even now that it was explicitly legal for men to consort with men, the right of a consenting adult to love any other enshrined in three separate laws, Gabriel wasn’t quite ready to make it clear to the world that hewasone of those men, despite ongoing and very invasive speculation. Lady Oakley shielded him from most of it, but he knew it was out there. It would make the endless internal conversations they’d been having about heirs a matter of public debate, and nothing said destabilization likesuccession crisis.

“He hasn’t said much,” said Florian. “Only that he was with your father when he died, and a bit about what that was like for him.”

Grief closed Gabriel’s throat like a garotte, and it was a moment before he could breathe again. He knew Arthur had been there. He’d asked him about it once, early on, and had received the gentlest of replies, the exact sort of story Florian might write about a king’s noble end. It hadn’t felt entirely real, but that had been a relief, because Gabriel hadn’t really wanted to know.

He was often haunted by an image in his head, a dramatic tableau of Arthur cradling the king’s broken body—and it occurred to him now, for the first time, that Arthur might be grieving him too. It had been Gwen and Gabriel’s father who’d died, their grief that had mattered. But Arthur had been the one actually there as the king took his last breath, and he’d borne the weight of that moment alone.

He’d cried a lot at the funeral. Gabriel had been so overwhelmed that this had barely registered. He and Gwen had been preoccupied with their mother, keeping her upright between them, accepting platitudes from nobles who seemed laughably unimportant in the moment but were, in fact, crucial. But Gabriel remembered Arthur standing apart as the procession moved on, heading for the feast. One last silent farewell.

“Could I read it?” Gabriel asked. “His account?”

Florian looked pained, his elegant fingers moving to span a page on top of one of the piles. “I think you ought to ask him.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, nodding, feeling his cheeks get hot. “Of course.”

Obviously he’d be doing no such thing. He’d think about it, alot, and refuse to act. Like a normal person.

“But if you want to talk to me about any of it,” Florian broached gently, “to… fill in the gaps. I think that would help the narrative enormously.”

“Thank you,” Gabriel said, suddenly the kind of tired that horrible tea couldn’t touch. “I’ll think about it.”

He’d add it to the list.

Fourteen

Then the King came to Batstoke with his mighty host of Knights of the Round Table, and a great multitude of people marveled at his coming, and they lined the streets to call out to him in greeting and make gifts of flowers and fine goods.

All manner of townsfolk came to make presentations to him, to show him the way of life in Batstoke, and journeyed with him so he might witness the school of his devising, and leave the children there wiser than he found them.

—FROM AN EARLY DRAFT OFTHE QUESTS OF KING GABRIEL AND HIS ROUND TABLEBY SIR FLORIAN ARDEN

“So we’re just lying then,” Bridget said, handing the piece of parchment back to Gwen, who sighed.

The school visit had in fact been an unmitigated disaster. Gabriel had treated the children like they were incendiary chamber pots primed to explode; when one of the rowdier boys had touched him, he’d flinched so hard he’d knocked over a brazier. He had seemed too overwhelmed to talk to them about their education, which had been the whole point of going in the first place.

It might have been all right, except that their parents were there, and witness to him behaving like their spawn were king-eating rodents, which probably wasn’t doing much for public relations.

“They were just so loud,” he’d said as they walked out, looking as drained as if they’d tapped him for his sap. “Whywere they so loud? Were they hungry?”