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Flowers seemed to follow her wherever she would go.
While her work as a maid kept her in the castle most of the time, Gwen was somehow always surrounded by flowers. If she stood anywhere for a long period of time, a vase of flowers would sit beside her, straining to reach her as if they thrived off of her presence rather than the sun, air, or water. If someone stole a glance at her in the hallway, she would be framed by the flowers that were depicted on the tapestries in the stone corridors. If someone caught a glimpse of her emerging from the forest, the meadow looked as if it was blooming because of her.
Of course, it couldn’t be true. How can a person control the flowers in such a magical way? But Arthur couldn’t help but wonder. And he couldn’t ignore the truth of the matter when he saw nothing but flowers in her wake.
He brought it up to Morgana once, asking her if she was requesting an abnormal amount of flowers to be kept around the castle. She only laughed at him asking if he needed to get his eyes checked by Gaius before concluding that there wasn’t a cure for idiocy. As Morgana walked away, Arthur couldn’t help but note that there wasn’t a single flower down her path.
He also brought up the idea once to Merlin, wondering if Gaius had been requesting flowers, making sure to dismiss any interest in it by asking if there were any known plagues on their way to the kingdom. Merlin gave him a confused look before asking if he was feeling okay. He didn’t notice the flowers either.
Arthur was ready to banish the idea from his head all together. He was probably reading too deeply into things. With a sigh, he opened the doors to his chambers before coming to a halt, one hand still pressed against the cool, wooden door.
There she was, standing in the middle of his room, arranging a bouquet of wildflowers in the vase on his dining table. He blinked once, twice, and a third time for good measure after hearing Morgana’s laughter echo in his head.
No, his eyes were most definitely not playing tricks on him. There she was, as clear as day, sunlight streaming through the window and diffusing around Gwen’s backlit silhouette and across the pile of flowers that sat on the table waiting to be housed. Flowers. And her.
Turning at the noise, Gwen looked up from her work and bowed in greeting to the future king of Camelot. “Welcome back, Arthur. I was hoping to be done before you came back. I’ll finish up soon,” she said, smiling as she looked at him before returning to her work.
Normally, Gwen didn’t pay much attention to the wildflowers that poked out here and there in the marketplace or out in the meadows. Every once in a while, she would weave flowers into her braids if she wanted to do something nice with her hair, but that was a rare occasion since it took too much time in the mornings when she had to deal with her already busy schedule. But today, she and Morgana had a free day and spent the morning picking flowers for the castle. They spent more time laughing in the meadow and running away from the bees that had come out to help usher the spring season along rather than actually picking flowers. They managed to make a few bouquets with the stems they found before giving up and going to the florist in the market. But all Arthur knew was that his heart was beating faster and the flowers and Guinevere in his room were very much real and not a trick of the eye.
His hand still rested against the door, growing sweaty with nerves as he realized that he had been standing still for far too long and Gwen’s gaze was back on him. Her deep brown eyes were laced with concern as her hands stilled against the stems she had been arranging. She must have been saying something to him, but all Arthur could focus on was the stray bluebell in her hair that threatened to fall to the ground.
“Arthur? Is something on your mind?” she asked, placing the flowers she had set on the table back into her basket.
With a shaky breath, cloaked by the years of training to mask his emotions for the easy viewing of both his friends and enemies, he crossed the distance between the two of them. Gwen slowly turned to face him, a smile spreading across her face. Her eyes danced across Arthur’s features, trying to read the emotions and thoughts that ran through him from his set jaw and the eyes that seemed trained on the side of her head.
Arthur could feel her curious gaze, but his eyes remained fixated on the tiny blue flower. “May I?” he asked, unable to vocalize much more than that with his dry throat. Why was he so nervous around her these days? How did she unnerve him and reduce his brilliantly burning courage to nothing but a smoldering pile of ash? He felt helpless under her gaze, but he also wanted nothing but her eyes on him for the rest of his life.
With a confused look on her face and a tentative nod, Gwen watched as Arthur’s fingers reached for her hair. Her eyes widened in surprise, breath hitching in her throat as Arthur gently plucked the blue flower from her brown curls and brought it into her line of sight.
“This was…” he started before trailing off, eyes moving from the flower in between his fingertips to Gwen’s face, wanting to know her reaction— wanting to know if she knew about the flowers around her.
“Oh,” Gwen started, moving a hand to self-consciously smooth out her hair. “I didn’t know. It must be from the meadow.” She looked up at Arthur with a polite smile. “Thank you.”
As he looked at her smile, realization finally entered into his mind. He liked her. He cared for her. He felt something deeper for her that he was not ready to admit to himself or anyone else, and it terrified him. Caring about someone so much, especially as a future king, just meant that he had someone to lose. He had a weakness, something that could be used against him in a battle, someone that he’d give anything to and give up everything for. His mind raced with what his father would say, what diplomats and enemies waiting for him to slip up would do to him— would do to her. He had always grown up knowing he would one day marry someone for some political strategy or treaty, but he had never factored something remotely related to the idea of love into that plan— mutual respect and affection at most, but love? Never. Caring about someone so much could only bring about devastation. And yet…
“Do you know?” Arthur asked abruptly. The words tumbled out of him before his brain could catch up to what he had said. He scrunched up his face in embarrassment before returning back to her eyes.
“Do I know what, my lord?” Gwen said, confusion evident on her face before studying the flower resting between his fingertips. “I think it’s a bluebell if that is what you’re asking?”
“No, I…” he started, lowering the flower so he could really look at her for a moment. The smell of flowers perfumed the air. He took in her eyes, her hair, her smooth skin and high cheekbones, her lips, her nose, and everything he allowed himself to steal a glance at, wanting to etch it to his memory. Just in case this was the last moment before everything between them changed forever.
It was too overwhelming the longer he allowed himself to look, and yet some part of him knew it would never be enough to truly know every inch and aspect of her. His voice and expression softened as he finally allowed himself to say what was on his mind. “Do you know that the flowers seem to follow you?" he blurted out, unable to stop the words that came tumbling out of his mouth. "Everywhere you go, they appear. As if they’re blooming just for you. As if they could survive just with your presence alone.”
Gwen’s eyes widened as her lips parted, flicking back and forth between both of Arthur’s eyes as she processed his words.
“No. You know what? Never mind. It was a stupid question. I’ll be on my way.” He turned around, already planning to spend the rest of the evening training with some poor knight who would have to bear the brunt of him channeling his embarrassment and anger with himself out on the training field.
“Arthur! Wait.”
He stopped in his tracks, schooling his features before turning back to look at the person he now knew he would do anything for.
Gwen plucked a single, purple flower from the vase, rearranging the rest of them to fill in the missing spot. “Here,” she said, walking up to Arthur and offering him the flower. He couldn’t help but notice that it matched the color of her dress. His ears turned red.
“What is this for?”
“For when you want to think of me,” she replied easily with a smile.
Arthur stared at her in shock for a moment before a smile broke across his own face. A single laugh escaped him as he reached out towards the flower. “Thank you, Guinevere,” he responded, feeling a little lighter than before. As he took the flower from her, his hand brushed against hers, and Arthur realized that his feelings were not a weakness. He realize that his feelings for her, however deep they may run, made him feel like the day, the world, had become a little more bearable just because she was in it.
“I’ll do that,” he said, waving the flower in his hand in her direction before walking out of his chambers. As he strolled down the hallway, a smile still spread across his face, he looked down at the flowers that rested in each of his hands: the purple stem, and the single bluebell that he’ll always remember to be framed by a head of brown curls.