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Let’s pause for a moment here.

Lift your head and flip through the pages—there are still eighty to go.

We’re still ten chapters from the end, and yet this

is the eve of the great battle, isn’t it?

This, right here, is the grand showdown that will determine whether likeable but

not-for-her Sir Orson will take Isobelle as his prize, or whether Gwen will save Isobelle from a fate worse than.

.. well,

worse than a lot of things, anyway.

Surely there are only two ways the story could proceed from here: Gwen wins and Isobelle is saved.

Or Gwen loses, Sir Orson

sweeps the tournament, and both Gwen’s and Isobelle’s dreams are shattered.

There is, perhaps, a third option, where Gwen and Isobelle both swallow their pride and somehow flee together before the tournament

even begins, but that feels a little unrealistic given the style with which they both just imploded.

Anyone who has ever loved a good story knows to be wary when it seems like the climax is approaching but the storyteller is

just getting settled in.

It suggests that the storyteller is about to pull the metaphorical rug out from under your metaphorical

feet—a terrible, unfair manipulation by all accounts.

Unforgiveable, really, what said storyteller’s about to do.

For all

intents and purposes: she is about to lie to you.

So, as the sun peeps over the forest bordering Darkhaven town and dawn begins to trickle across the hills and dales and picturesque thatched roofs, down to the tournament grounds already beginning to fill with fans, let us ponder a single question:

Given a choice between winning, losing, or running away.

.. what could possibly happen that would be worse than all three

of those fates?