While descending the Tor, Vera tells Arthur about her vision. At the market, Arthur buys hot apple pastries. Maria approaches and asks if they will perform the Yule Carola to open the festival. Vera agrees without knowing that it’s a dance.

Back at the inn, Arthur arrives with a lute enchanted by Gawain. They practice the Carola, with Vera inventing silly lyrics. During practice, she unconsciously performs the final steps without being taught—a sign of her memories returning.

Arthur asks to see how people dance in her time. She demonstrates modern moves, making him laugh. They dance closely while he hums “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” a song he heard her sing in the chapel. Arthur reveals that he used to sit hidden in the chapel alcove while she sang so that she wouldn’t be alone. As he begins to tell her something important, Maria interrupts to prepare Vera for the festival.

Maria oversees Vera’s preparations. A makeup artist paints Vera’s face, and she dons the white-and-gold gown that Randall made. At the festival, she and Arthur perform the Yule Carola successfully. Children present them with crystal Yule crowns. While Arthur greets guests, Vera joins Lancelot, Matilda, Percival, and Gawain. The others interrogate Gawain about magic. When Vera brings up the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend, Percival and Lancelot seem confused, making it clear that they haven’t heard of the object. Gawain explains the rumored significance of the Grail but asserts that the story around it is a myth born from fear of death.

The group plays rock-paper-scissors as a drinking game. Vera has a wonderful time, dancing several times with Arthur. She spots Lancelot emerging from the darkness with a disheveled young woman. A tipsy Arthur puts his arm around Vera as they leave.

In their room, Arthur helps Vera untie her dress, and she helps with his tunic toggles. The moment becomes intimate. They kiss passionately, but Vera has the thought that Arthur is seeing her as Guinevere. Arthur senses her hesitation, apologizes, and abruptly leaves.

The next morning, Arthur is emotionally distant and apologizes for his drunken behavior. The journey to Camelot is subdued.

Gawain enters the royal chambers to speak to Arthur. He unwittingly mentions that Merlin has been giving Vera and Arthur a potion intended to foster attraction between them. Arthur’s silence confirms his complicity. Furious, Vera storms out to confront Merlin.

In Merlin’s study, Vera smashes a potion bottle and accuses him of drugging her. When she demands the full truth, Merlin reveals that under Viviane’s influence, Guinevere betrayed Arthur by passing military intelligence to a Saxon leader allied with Viviane. Guinevere ultimately changed her mind and confessed, prompting Viviane’s attack. Arthur knows everything.

Feeling responsible for the decline of magic in Camelot, Vera agrees to an invasive procedure of memory retrieval. She drinks a new sensitivity potion that heightens her senses and increases her attraction to Arthur. Merlin places his hands on her head.

The procedure makes Vera feel as if she’s walking through her own mind, along with Merlin. Merlin browses her memories, finds her memory of meeting Vincent, and painfully inserts his memory of Guinevere and Arthur’s first meeting alongside it. He then finds Vera’s intimate memory of her last night with Vincent and attempts to merge it with his memory of Guinevere desperately kissing Arthur on the castle wall.

The memories are not parallel, causing Vera excruciating pain. She screams for Merlin to stop, but he persists. The force shatters Vera’s memory of Vincent. She breaks free, knocking Merlin to the floor. Vincent’s face is erased from all her memories, replaced by a vague description. Merlin’s silence confirms that he knew this was a risk.

Devastated that she can barely remember her beloved Vincent, Vera accuses Merlin of giving her a life just so that he could torture her. She tells him that he should have let Viviane kill her and storms out.

Vera emerges from Merlin’s study and encounters Thomas, who is concerned by her state. She angrily rebuffs him. In her room, she collapses from pain and fever. Arthur and Matilda tend to her.

The next morning, Vera, fueled by her fever, runs harder than usual with Lancelot. After their run, Lancelot gets a leg cramp, and Vera massages it. They hear rustling in the woods, but Lancelot dismisses it as an animal.

Vera accidentally reveals that Merlin has seen her memories. He presses her, and she tells him about the procedure and the shattered memory. Horrified that Merlin is performing such risky procedures on her, Lancelot insists that she tell Arthur. They argue—Lancelot accuses her of not truly communicating with Arthur. She fires back that he and Arthur keep secrets from her and walks off.

A narrative aside notes that this will be the second-worst day of Vera’s life.

On Christmas Eve, Vera feels the artificial attraction to Arthur intensifying, but when she approaches him at the banquet, he violently pulls away from her in front of guests. Humiliated, Vera retreats. Matilda helps her slip away.

In a corridor, Vera overhears Lancelot confront Arthur, shoving him against a wall and warning him that his coldness will cause them to lose Vera again.

Vera goes to the chapel to embroider. Thomas enters, drunk. He reveals that he was in the woods that morning and saw her with Lancelot. He accuses her of being a “temptress.” A shocked Vera accidentally stabs her palm with her needle. Thomas grabs her hand and sucks the blood. Vera fights Thomas, but he overpowers her, slamming her head on the floor and toppling the statue of Mary. He stabs her in the thigh and shoulder and attempts to sexually assault her.

Vera hears an inner voice telling her that she’s more than a vessel. Energy surges through her, and she gropes for Thomas’s knife. Arthur bursts in and throws Thomas off. Thomas appears to be dying. Seeing Arthur’s clean sword, Vera looks down and finds Thomas’s bloody knife in her own hand. Thomas clutches a fatal throat wound, and Vera realizes that she has killed him.

Vera has a panic attack. Arthur holds her and calms her breathing, calling her by her modern name to ground her. He carries her through a private door to avoid being seen. In their chamber, he sends Matilda for supplies and tends to Vera’s wounds himself.

When Vera forces herself to empty her mind entirely, Arthur tells her to stop. She demands the full truth behind Arthur’s odd treatment of her. Arthur confesses that Merlin split Guinevere’s essence into three parts and brought back two other versions before Vera. The first became homicidal and was killed. The second fell into despair and jumped from a window, dying by suicide. Because the second Guinevere’s death was public, Merlin created the story that she was badly injured and healing in a monastery. Both prior Guineveres worsened after becoming intimate with Arthur, which is why he has kept his distance from Vera. Merlin brought Vera back against Arthur’s wishes.

Arthur promises to find another way home for Vera. Since the portal won’t open until late spring, he will send Merlin away unless he finds a non-torturous alternative. When Vera asks how he knew her name, he admits that he overheard her tell a child.

Vera forgives Arthur. She admits that she’s not sorry for their kiss, but Arthur maintains that they cannot cross that line due to the potion’s influence. He washes the blood from her hair. When Matilda returns, Vera begs Arthur not to leave her again. He promises that he won’t.