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You are familiar with a montage, surely.

Yes? Yes.

The mood will be best conveyed with some backing music—go on, take a moment, and put on something with a strong beat.

The

latest hit from your favorite bard, or perhaps an old classic often repeated by traveling minstrels.

Bonus points if it involves

themes of rising up to the top, not stopping believing, or even a final countdown to victory.

Go on. One of the best things about a book is that it’s always willing to wait until you return.

As the opening notes of your anthem roll out, picture a town utterly devastated by the worst kind of plague imaginable: absolute,

unstoppable Sir Gawain fandom.

The women want to give him their favors, and the men want to be in his shoes—well, let’s be

honest, quite a few of the men want to give him favors, too.

It’s mad enough that he bumped one of the local regulars completely out of the tournament in his qualifier, but then he sent

the tournament favorite to the physicians, and then knocked “Mountain Man Makarios” on his ass a few days later.

With that

kind of track record, the rumors that follow—ridiculous under any other circumstance—take on a life of their own.

Did you know, for example, that Sir Gawain fought a troll in Luxembourg?

That he singlehandedly routed an invading army from the north?

That that army was actually made of trolls?

That those trolls were actually twice the size of the trolls you’re thinking of, and that he did it with his bare hands, while hungover, without breaking a sweat?

Oh, and I heard he was once the model for a bodice ad in Paris, but the images were so inflammatory to the ladies and their

delicate passions that the modistes had to take the posters down for fear of causing mass hysteria, and a mass burning of

said bodices.

Whatever else may be true, by the time Sir Gawain rides into the arena for his third joust—fourth, if you include the qualifier—the

entire county knows his name.

The stands are so packed that it’s standing room only, on the benches and on the floor.

More

than a few people are toting blankets and pillows, having slept in the stands to reserve their places.

The noise is so deafening

that, were there any people left in the nearby villages instead of attending the joust, they’d be able to hear it in their

cottages.

When Sir Gawain lifts his sword to salute the crowd, one of the stands collapses under the double weight of spectators, spilling

a hundred shrieking, bruised, indignant fans onto the ground.

And when Sir Gawain handily knocks Sir Belmar off his horse in one try, without even shattering his lance, it takes the physicians

well over twenty minutes to fight through the crowds to get to the lists and help the downed knight limp away.

Half of them

never make it at all, too busy tending to the fans who, having succumbed to the intense weight of their adoration, fainted

before Gawain ever made it onto the field.

The weavers’ guild makes a fortune milling the cheapest garments they can manage with Sir Gawain’s pennant painted on the front.

They call them tournament shirts, though the fans tend to shorten the name to something quicker to say.

The local portrait artist is busier than he’s ever been, knocking out card-sized paintings of ladies with Sir Gawain in his

armor, their hands juuuuust about to lift his visor and reveal his face.

And a local blacksmith, emerging out of relative anonymity, displays a sudden talent for crafting tiny, beautifully detailed

figurines of this new star—his smithy is completely overrun.

Our principal players now find themselves stuck under a rather crushing weight of deception in the face of intense, unrelenting

scrutiny.

Sir Orson, cruising through his matches as well, was originally delighted to spread as many mad rumors about Sir Gawain as

he could imagine.

Now, however, he’s left to sit in stunned silence as his friends take turns sharing the wildest rumors they’ve

managed to overhear or invent.

He’s all: “Um, guys... I mean, it probably wasn’t the troll king , and he probably couldn’t shoot fire out of his eyes....” Or: “Well, no, I’ve never seen him levitate during his pregame

ritual, and I’m pretty sure he can’t control the other knights’ horses with his mind, either....”

Olivia, doing her level best to keep Gwen in one piece—largely through the expert application of tight bandages and lurid

green ointment—avoids the worst of the hubbub by lurking around the castle dungeons.

She can’t get access to the imprisoned

villagers yet, but she’s become quite the hit with the local lads employed as guards, because she always comes bearing snacks.

Thus far, they’ve all been perfectly harmless.

Who would drug a cupcake, after all?

Certainly not Olivia.

Certainly not yet,

anyway.

Sylvie’s suspicions of Céline only seem to deepen, her mistrust of the other half of the mystery—Sir Gawain himself—slightly mollified by the obvious, undeniable happiness of her friend Isobelle.

Jane modifies one of the T-shirts, sewing fluttering ribbons to the sleeves and tying the baggy hem into a knot around her midriff, showing a scandalous few inches of the curve of her stomach.

Hilde begs Isobelle endlessly for her latest account of her “alone time” with Sir Gawain.

Isobelle herself, unable to hide the change in her heart from her friends, has to censor herself every time she opens her

mouth.

She can’t confess that when she and Lady Céline went to visit Sir Gawain, they actually went and made out in Isobelle’s

hat cupboard.

Or that when they left to take a bracing ride around the castle grounds, they never made it out of the stables,

and had to spend a good twenty minutes picking straw out of each other’s hair.

Most of all, she can’t confess that underneath her undeniable happiness, worry seethes like a subterranean river eating away

at the foundations of a castle.

After Sir Belmar was Sir Lorenzo, who got in such a good hit before Gwen retaliated and unhorsed

him that Gwen couldn’t breathe for almost a full minute.

The skin on her chest was so black and blue that Olivia had had to

alter several dresses to include a high-necked collar.

The victory against Lorenzo secured Gwen’s place in the final round, to face Sir Orson for the ultimate victory, but Isobelle

can’t confess to her friends that she’d stop Sir Gawain riding in it if she could.

She can’t even confess it to Gwen.

And Gwen... well, even for Gwen, especially for Gwen, there’s no escaping Gawain Fever.

Even as Céline, she’s mobbed by people seeking her acquaintance now, hoping to learn more about her brother by cozying up to her.

Gifts show up at Isobelle’s suite multiple times a day, and Olivia occasionally has to serve as bouncer to prevent eager ladies from trying to infiltrate Isobelle’s inner circle.

The moments Gwen sneaks with Isobelle are the only moments of peace she gets.

If we’ve timed this right, we should be in the bridge of your anthem now.

Perhaps it strikes a minor key—perhaps the beat

fades out, a symbolic evocation of the dark night of the soul that looms over our heroes.

Each knight Gwen takes down is another step closer to victory, to saving Isobelle.

But... then what?

Gwen is now the most famous man in Darkhaven.

What would happen to all that fervor and fanaticism if they learned that Sir

Gawain was no knight, that he was not a noble, not even a man at all?

She sleeps at night by visualizing her next joust. The next opponent, the next strategy.

She looks ahead, but she stops herself

before she looks too far, because that hazy mist of uncertainty that follows victory in the upcoming final is too terrifying

to face.

The tiniest glimmer of something elusive and fragile and beautiful lurks there, a hope she can’t name even to herself

for fear of shattering it.

There comes a moment, in her imagination, after the victory: a blinding release as she pulls off

her helmet in front of the world.

But even she cannot see further than that instant, and she drags herself back to the parts of her path she knows.

The next

joust. The next opponent.

The next strategy. She stops herself from stepping beyond the borders of the map she can see, because

there.

.. well. There be dragons.

She knows, as Isobelle knows, as everyone in on the secret knows, that this run can’t last forever.

This is, after all, a story.

.. and what good is a story where the heroes can’t seem to stop winning?