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Chapter Twenty-Eight You are not the first to ask whether a woman could hold a sword

Lord Whimsitt threw a grand feast that night, celebrating the eve of the first round of the tournament.

Gwen knew she should

have gone in her guise as Céline to sell the fiction of Sir Gawain before he made his big debut against Sir Ralph the next

day.

But Gwen could not bring herself to put on that mask.

Layers upon layers of deceit, her head spinning with what role she was

meant to be playing and when.

.. Her only consolation and refuge was that at least she hadn’t had to pick a persona to play

in front of Isobelle.

And now... now she did.

It had seemed so easy last night, under the moonlit canopy of trees, to give Isobelle as much time as she needed to understand

her own mind and heart.

But today, doused in the icy cold torrent of realization that their charade would be coming to an

end not at some hazy, undefined future moment, but tomorrow , Gwen had felt an unfamiliar panic reach up and grip her by the throat.

They didn’t have that time.

They would never have

that time.

Gwen couldn’t wear that mask again in front of Isobelle, not without shouting at her the way she’d done that afternoon.

Ever since she’d agreed to Isobelle’s plan, she’d been trying not to think about the stark reality of riding against seasoned knights and counting on her passion to mean more than their birthrights.

She’d been trying not to look at the likelihood that she’d end up in jail—or worse—if she were found out.

She’d been trying not to imagine Isobelle’s despair when Gwen failed her, as she would certainly do eventually, no matter how hard she tried.

Instead, every fear and worry Gwen had been ignoring, like some child covering her eyes against the monster-infested night,

had come spilling out in one searing, wrenching explosion.

Instead, she’d done exactly what she’d been trying so hard to avoid:

she’d crushed Isobelle.

Gwen had told Olivia to inform Isobelle that she was feeling poorly and needed to rest before the tournament.

Later, she’d

listened to Isobelle’s footsteps, unmistakable in their light, graceful patter, pause for a long, breathless moment outside

Gwen’s door—and then move away again, down to join the feast.

She ought to sleep.

But her whole body buzzed and ached for action, to fight this enemy that tormented her—her body didn’t

know that the enemy was time, and situation, and hopelessness, and longing.

Secure in the knowledge that anyone who would recognize “Céline” would be at the feast, Gwen donned her old riding dress,

slipped out to fetch her gear, and made her way to the ballroom where she’d first begun practicing her footwork at the castle.

The room was cavernous and still, illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the diaphanous, sheer curtains.

The ballroom’s golds and creams and peaches were muted, transformed into silvers and lilacs and deep, secretive rose.

The very air quivered with unfulfilled purpose, with the echoes of the thousands of dances and balls that had been held in this space—whispers of memory that made Gwen feel like an intruder, someone who had crept uninvited into someplace sacred.

Which, in fact, she had done.

She didn’t belong here.

Isobelle seemed content to ignore the insanity of her scheme, counting

on pure optimism to win the day and forcing Gwen to be the voice of reason.

In her mind’s eye, she saw Isobelle’s face again

as it had looked that afternoon, all beseeching eyes and quivering lips as she implored Gwen to remember how she longed to

prove herself among the other knights.

That’s why you were doing this, wasn’t it?

Isobelle had whispered.

Gwen had felt two paths open up in front of her.

To leap off the cliff, or turn away and walk back the way they’d come.

To

say, No, I was doing it for you , or.

.. or do as Gwen had done, and flee.

Gwen gave herself a shake and pulled her sword from its sheath, the scrape of steel echoing loudly in the expectant air.

After

a few experimental swings of the blade, she launched into one of Madame Dupont’s exercises, an unlikely combination of delicate

dancing footwork and deadly swings and blows from her sword.

She could almost hear Isobelle playing the organ in the background,

the remembered notes hanging ghostlike in the air; could almost see her form at the shadowed instrument.

She shook off that image and tried to focus instead on visualizing the man she’d be fighting tomorrow.

To visualize winning,

beating him, taking him by surprise.

Those piercing, hawklike eyes wide with shock, looking up at her from the ground.

The way those eyes had looked as they scanned over Isobelle at the castle bonfire, like he was an acquisitive collector inspecting

his latest purchase.

Gwen stumbled, dropped the sword, caught its hilt on the rebound, and swore as she staggered.

She whirled and kicked at the floor and let loose an absolute flurry of invective, using every word she’d been trying not to use in her guise as Céline.

A voice came from the shadows on the far side of the ballroom.

“I thought you would be here earlier than this, Mademoiselle

le Chevalier.”

Gwen let out a bleat of alarm and confusion, even as her brain identified the voice from its rasp and its French accent.

Her

eyes searched the other end of the room until she saw the dark form perched on a window seat, barely distinguishable from

the piles of cushions adorning the benches.

A lantern flared to life, illuminating Madame Dupont’s features and striking her silver hair to white gold.

“I knew you would not be so foolish as to try to sleep the night before battle,” the Frenchwoman continued, her eyes gleaming

with amusement.

Gwen, still trying to swallow her heart back down into her chest where it belonged, gulped for a breath.

“I’m beginning to

think you have a secret love of the dramatic.”

Dupont gave a light bark of laughter.

“Secret? Ma chérie, it is not a secret at all. You are here to practice, non? I will

light the fire so we can see.” She rose from the window seat and crossed toward the large fireplace at the end of the hall,

her stick tapping a decorous rhythm with her steps.

Gwen sighed and sliced her sword down and to one side with a muted hiss of wounded air.

“Practice? I’d settle for venting

some of this energy. I feel like crawling out of my skin.”

“Then we shall vent,” Dupont replied.

She knelt down before the hearth, where the beginnings of a fire had already been laid, and struck the flints together.

Sparks shot from her fingers like magic.

“Your lady is at the feast, I take it? Dazzling them all with her wit?”

Gwen forced herself to shrug, fighting the urge to rise to that bait and fire off a retort about how Isobelle wasn’t her anything.

“I think so. I decided I’d be better off resting, or at least not letting her get me wound up.”

“Isobelle is an enlivening presence,” Dupont agreed with a dry chuckle as the sparks settled against the kindling.

Gwen muttered an agreement.

“People think that she’s shallow,” she murmured.

“But really, she just... throws herself wholeheartedly

into whatever lies before her. Whether it’s choosing a dress or, you know, recruiting a village girl to ride in a tournament

for her.”

“Not all who meet her see enough to realize that.” Dupont leaned in to blow gently on the infant flame, encouraging it to

move across the kindling and onto the larger sticks behind it.

“Or the power she wields. After all, here we both find ourselves,

practicing for an adventure of her design.”

Gwen sheathed her sword and crouched beside Madame Dupont so she could help sort through the split logs.

Tearing at them for

kindling was a good vent for her turbulent thoughts, and as the silence stretched, she had the unsettling feeling that Dupont

had somehow read her mind—had somehow known that when Gwen had said she needed to vent her energy, what she really needed

was to speak.

The pile of ready kindling next to Dupont had grown to somewhat ridiculous proportions before a splinter jabbed its way into Gwen’s thumb.

She hissed an epithet and tore the offending shard of wood out and threw it into the flames.

Closing her eyes, she summoned her courage and blurted, “I’m not so sure I should do this thing tomorrow.”

Dupont drew a slow breath, though there was no break in the minute sounds of her tending the fledgling fire.

“I think if you

were not nervous, it would mean that you did not understand the magnitude of what you intend to do. But you must not mistake

nerves for knowledge of what is to come.”

“If I lose,” Gwen whispered, “then I’m consigning her to a fate I can’t prevent. I’m the one who lets her down. Who feeds her to the dragon.” She dropped her head, gazing down at the marble floor as it flickered

and glowed with reflected firelight.

“And even if I win, at best I’m only postponing her fate. Maybe she should just run,

get out of this castle, out of this county—maybe by offering her this hope, I’m putting her in harm’s way. Even if I win,

I can’t save her.”

“You can save her from this marriage, this moment,” Dupont replied.

“It is not for you to save her from all things that may come—that isn’t what she has asked you to

do.”

“But it’s what I want to do,” Gwen burst out, dropping her hands to the floor to keep from losing her balance.

Her gaze lifted to rest on the massive

dragonslaying spear hung over the fireplace, wishing for something so simple as a monster to fight.

She bit her lip against

the rest of what she desperately wished to say, certain that Madame Dupont, of all people, would chastise her for letting

her heart become tangled up in her mission.

But Madame Dupont only smiled a quick, dry smile, and shifted her gaze from the fire to Gwen.

“If you lose tomorrow, will

you care for her any less than you do now?”

Gwen blinked at her.

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you assume her feelings will change?”

Gwen could feel the heat of the fire building as it spread to the logs Dupont was painstakingly stacking atop the blaze.

“I...

I don’t know.”

The silence spread, punctuated by the little cracks and hisses and pops of the fire, creating an expectant space that pulled

at Gwen’s need to speak far more skillfully than any interrogator could have done.

Finally, unbuckling her sword belt and tossing it aside, Gwen sat down and braced herself, palms flat against the stone floor.

She kept her eyes on the reflection of the fire in the marble.

“I... I’m not so sure losing is what I’m afraid of.”

“Hmm.” Dupont’s voice lacked even the tiniest hint of surprise.

“Go on.”

Gwen swallowed, the slight sound nearly drowned out by the crackling fire.

“What happens if I don’t lose?” she whispered, finally raising her gaze to look at Madame Dupont, watching the image of her waver slightly as moisture

stung her eyes.

“If I prove I am just as good as any of them, as good as all of them... if I win, how do I go back to my old, obedient little life when it’s over? How do I close this door again and

go back to being who I was?”

The words crystallized in the air, surfacing a far deeper fear, one Gwen had not dared even to name.

Madame Dupont turned her head, looking away from the fire and inspecting Gwen’s features in the flickering light.

Then she

shifted her weight, easing down to sit cross-legged, gazing at the fire.

“I shall tell you a story, Gwen. I was older than

you, twenty-three years of age, and I was... well. You are not the first to ask whether a woman could hold a sword.”

Gwen felt herself moving, shifting to match Dupont’s body language.

Even Isobelle didn’t know much about Dupont’s life before she came to the castle as a dancing instructor.

“How I practiced,” Dupont murmured.

“Day and night, ignoring everything else. When the tournament came and I presented myself,

as I am, as a woman, I was ready to fight them all. But they did not arrest me, or forbid me to fight, or tell me a woman

may not enter. They did something far worse.” The older woman shifted her gaze from the fire and met Gwen’s eyes.

In them

Gwen could see a decades-old pain, as fresh and sharp as it must have been the day the wound was inflicted.

“They laughed

at me.”

Gwen felt a pain jolt her hands—she’d curled them into fists so tight her fingernails were digging into her palms. Somewhere

within her flickered that same fury that had swept through her the day she defeated Sir Evonwald and earned her way past the

qualifiers, the day she’d overheard the knights talking about Isobelle like she was nothing more than a thing they could own

and use as they wished.

“Did they stop laughing when they saw what you could do?”

“They never did.” Dupont’s words came quick and hard, like blows.

“I ran. I let them take my defiance and my joy and replace

it with shame, and when I ran away in the night, that shame is the only thing I took with me.”

Gwen could feel her eyes burning.

A day ago, she would have driven her sword through her own foot rather than let Madame Dupont see tears in her eyes.

But now, the moisture wetting her lashes and turning the firelight into a glittering kaleidoscope was all she had to offer in exchange for this story Dupont was giving her.

A part of her refused to imagine the invincible woman she’d come to know since arriving at the castle as a broken-hearted girl, running away in the dark of night.

Another, deeper part of her could feel the truth of the tale.

Could see how someone could have emerged from that crucible

as some harder, stronger substance.

“That was when I made my way here,” Madame Dupont went on, glancing out at the moonlit shadows beyond the ring of firelight

where they sat together.

“I work here to strengthen the wills and spines of these young women—not necessarily to carry a sword,

but to hold up under the blows and cuts the world wishes to inflict upon them.”

Her eyes swung back again to meet Gwen’s.

“But I still carry that shame they gave me, because once you accept a thing as yours,

it is difficult to cast off again. It is hard, once you have opened a door, to close it once more.”

Gwen found herself gulping for a breath, fighting to get the air past the tight knots in her chest. “You’re saying that I

have to fight,” she whispered.

“That it is already too late to turn back—whether I run or fight, I will be opening a door

and inviting something in.”

Dupont nodded, and then took one of Gwen’s hands in her own.

The gesture was so startling that Gwen looked down, staring at

the woman’s strong, callused fingers, the back of her hand marked with the same black-on-brown freckles that dotted her cheeks.

Her skin was dry and warm, her grip tight.

“Go on,” Dupont said.

“Say the words again.”

“I have to fight.” Gwen’s vision swam with tears, and she felt one spill down onto her cheek.

She could feel that fury in

her belly shifting, changing, like lead being transmuted by an alchemist into something far stronger and far more precious

than mere gold.

“I want to fight.”

She blinked away her tears and refocused, meeting Dupont’s gaze, finding in it a glimpse of that same alloy of anger and pain and courage and love and the wanting of something more.

The hand gripping hers squeezed.

“Whatever happens,” said Madame Dupont, “you will know that you chose to fight. You will know that Isobelle is watching, and

that so am I. Even if by no one else but us, you will be seen. You will remember who you are.”