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Chapter Forty-Five .

..Or it’s tricky to put back together again

There were two guards on duty, and Jane dealt easily with the first.

Isobelle and Hilde had watched with fascination on the servants’ stairwell as their friend tightened her bodice to straining

point, pinched her cheeks until they were red, ran a hand through her hair, and then went racing down the stairs.

“Oh, quickly!” she cried.

“Oh, sir, please help me!”

Moments later she’d come hurrying up the stairs, towing a guard by the hand, straight past the alcove where Hilde and Isobelle

were hiding.

Sylvie had stayed behind at Olivia’s insistence, in case Sir Ralph came looking for her.

“That’s one down,” Isobelle murmured.

“I can’t imagine he’ll get a chance to ask where they’re going for quite some time.”

“The other is yours,” Hilde said softly.

“Go to her, Isobelle.”

But Isobelle—despite every part of her pulling toward Gwen—hesitated.

Her mouth was dry, and her stomach was attempting to

twist itself into impossible knots, and her feet weren’t sure they wanted to take a step.

“Hilde,” she whispered, reaching for the other girl’s hand.

“What if she tells me to go?”

I’m sorry , Gwen had mouthed.

But she’d had plenty of time to think since then, all of it in a cold, frightening jail cell.

“Isobelle.” Hilde—who looked like the most wholesome of milkmaids, with her crown of blond braids and her round cheeks—managed

to frown properly for once.

“I—”

“No,” Hilde said, raising a finger to silence her.

“Isobelle, no. Take it from me, you must go. I know what everyone thinks

of me... foolish Hilde. Look at her, waiting for Sir Arnau, a ghost to her for six years. Look at how she clings to this

romantic dream, the poor thing.”

“Hilde,” Isobelle protested immediately.

“I never—”

“I am not so foolish, Isobelle,” Hilde continued.

“I know he has forgotten me. But what other joy does a life like ours hold,

except to dream of romance? Look at Sylvie, whose choices have been stolen. One day, my turn will come. For now, I choose

to be happy with a dream, rather than empty without one.”

Isobelle simply stared at her, held by the force of Hilde’s eyes.

“I must be content with a dream,” Hilde whispered.

“But your knight is real. Go to her.”

Taking Isobelle by the shoulders, she turned her to face down the stairs, and with a gentle push, sent her on her way.

Isobelle still hadn’t collected herself when she reached the bottom of the staircase and found herself face-to-face with a

boy who was fourteen at most, and in possession of a worried expression and a too-large suit of armor.

“Halt?” he tried. “Who goes there.”

Isobelle let out a slow breath and invited her instincts to take over.

As if they’d been waiting for permission, they surged through her, straightening her spine, lifting her chin, and tugging up one corner of her mouth into a self-assured smile.

“What a silly question,” she replied, sweeping toward him.

“You know exactly who I am.”

“Lady Isobelle,” he replied, proving he was not entirely beyond redemption.

“Um, stop please.”

She took a few more steps to prove she could, and then halted to look him up and down.

“You are not the usual guard,” she

supposed.

“What’s your name?”

“Brian, my lady. Everyone else is in the war room.”

She tilted her head.

“We don’t have a war room.”

“Well, they’ve taken over the ballroom, so all the visiting knights and people can fit....”

She sighed, put upon.

The part of her that was still dreadfully worried about Gwen was watching the rest of her, and couldn’t

help admiring how calm she sounded.

“Then you stay here on guard, Brian, and I’ll just head through on my own.”

“My lady, you can’t...”

Isobelle exited the conversation by means of walking straight toward Brian, who—faced with the terrifying prospect of making

physical contact with her—jumped out of the way.

She paused to wrestle one of the torches out of a sconce with only a minor

loss of dignity, and then strode down the dank corridor to where she supposed Gwen would be.

Brian made no attempt to stop

her or to ask how she knew her way around so well, and contented himself with scuttling after her, making little chirps and

gurgles of protest.

Isobelle reached the end of the corridor and raised the torch high, her heart trying to force its way up into her throat,

preparing her for the sight of Gwen slumped on the floor, Gwen bleeding, Gwen white and cold.

What nothing had prepared her for was the total absence of Gwen in any form.

Isobelle and Brian stood side by side, staring at the empty cell with two very different kinds of horror, the silence broken

by the sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance.

“Shit,” Brian whispered.

“I’m so dead.”

“Where is she?” Isobelle demanded, calm evaporating as she whirled around to face him.

“What have you done with her?”

“I thought she was right here!” Brian squealed, backing away from her until he hit the wall.

“She’s supposed to be right here.

Maybe they brought her up to sentence her and didn’t tell me? I’m not even meant to be on duty here, I can’t—you have to tell

someone I didn’t—”

Isobelle didn’t hear anything else he said.

She was already gone.

The tapestries in the ballroom had been covered in war banners, the coats of arms of the great houses of the county of Darkhaven,

and those of all the visiting knights and nobles, strung up on display.

The center of the room was dominated by a table that

must have been brought through the doorway in pieces, and which was now covered in maps of the region.

The grand organ was

hidden behind a crowd of bodies; every knight, squire, and nobleman who could find a place had crammed into the room, craning

their necks to see what was under discussion.

Isobelle stormed past the man at the door, who belatedly shouted her name after her, though it was unclear whether he was

trying to stop her or announce her.

“Lady Isobelle of Avington!”

Lord Whimsitt looked up from the head of the table.

“Ah, Lady Isobelle,” he said genially, though there was a note of steel beneath his purr that she couldn’t miss.

“There you are. Excellent timing, we can cross another thing off our list.”

Isobelle ignored that, wasting only a moment to catch her breath.

“What has happened to Gwen?” she asked, once she knew her

voice wouldn’t shake.

“Gwen?”

“Sir Gawain.”

A sound traveled around the room when she said Sir Gawain .

A whisper of anger from those Gwen had unseated.

From those who felt she’d unseated them, just by existing.

“The girl is in jail,” said Whimsitt, with a flick of his fingers.

“She’s not,” Isobelle shot back.

“She’s escaped? Then she will be in the jail again, as soon as we have recaptured her,” he snapped.

It was at that moment—as though her brain had been waiting for the chance to present what it had noticed when she had first

scanned the room—that Isobelle’s gaze lifted from Lord Whimsitt’s red face to the wall behind him.

To the place where the dragonslayer’s spear had once been, and was no more.

Like snow slowly drifting down to settle on her, turning her skin cold and dousing that internal fire with a slow chill, the

knowledge came to Isobelle.

Gwen had not run away .

Gwen had run toward .

“She’s gone after the dragon,” she breathed.

This time, the sound rippling through the room wasn’t anger, but laughter.

Snickers, the low buzz of soft remarks the speakers

thought were witty.

“Why are you laughing?” Isobelle snapped.

“Why aren’t you chasing down the dragon yourselves?”

It was Sir Ralph who replied.

“Because there is no need. It has seen the castle, it has assessed the threat we pose, and it

will not likely return. This is not the same place it knew centuries ago, and it is old enough and wise enough to understand

that. It would not have come at all, save that the reopening of the mine awakened it.”

“Indeed,” Lord Whimsitt agreed.

“We will abandon the mine again, which has served its purpose, and the dragon may simply go

back to sleep.”

“Are you insane?” Isobelle felt like she was standing outside her own body, watching herself stare at them all in disbelief.

“All these knights, here for the Tournament of Dragonslayers , and there’s a girl you won’t even allow among you out there, heading for the dragon on her own, to stand between it and

your people?”

Sir Ralph rolled his eyes.

“She has saved us an execution, is all.”

Whimsitt nodded in agreement.

“We will declare the tourney in Sir Orson’s favor and try to forget any of this happened.” A

wave of his hand indicated Orson sitting a couple of spots along the table from Whimsitt himself.

Her friend gazed at the map in front of him and didn’t look up.

The tips of his ears were red, though, a sure sign she’d learned

to read when they were small.

Guilt.

“Sir Orson,” she repeated slowly.

Everything had happened so quickly after Sylvie had come to shake her into action that she

had not stopped to think about who else could have betrayed Gwen to Lord Whimsitt.

“He has conducted himself admirably,” Lord Whimsitt went on.

“And it is very much apparent that the sooner you are safely married and out of trouble, the better.”

Isobelle scarcely heard him, her eyes still on Orson, a flush of rage rising up her throat, across her cheeks, a burning fire

she could barely contain within her.

“You,” she said, her voice a thin, taut wire.

“It was you .”

Orson finally lifted his head, the chiseled jaw squared, the blond hair as charmingly tousled as ever, his eyes meeting hers.

“Yes.” His voice was soft, but there was no apology in it.

With a wordless sound of fury, Isobelle’s control broke and she lunged for him.

He caught her, gripping her arms tightly and bringing his mouth to her ear.

“Izzie, stop it. I had to. Last night at the ball,

what you said... if he found out in front of the whole county, he might’ve had her killed on the spot. I did it for you—I

did what was best for you .”

Isobelle went still, panting for breath.

“How convenient that deciding what was best for me earned you the money in my dowry.”

Orson’s hold slackened, and she staggered free of his grip.

There was a tale Isobelle once heard as a child.

It was about a great ruler who claimed to be dressed in the finest of clothes—silks

and furs that only the worthiest could see.

None of his subjects wanted to admit they couldn’t see them, so they all pretended

he wasn’t naked.

Until a child called out the truth, and nobody could pretend anymore.

She felt like she was living in that story now, looking around at the knights in their war room.

Suddenly she was seeing all

their finery and pageantry for what it really was, and she couldn’t unsee it.

“Little boys playing knights,” she murmured distantly, a memory overtaking her.

“Afraid to be undone...”

She was back in Ellsdale, upstairs at Gwen’s house on the night of the dragon bonfire.

Gwen’s fingers had worked the lacings on her dress free, and they’d talked softly, to keep from noticing how close they stood.

They’d been talking, joking—but also not joking—about the work that the world required of women so that men could ride out

into adventure and become heroes.

The more I think on it, the more questions I have about that system , Isobelle had said.

And then, as Gwen kept pulling on her lacings: Don’t bring it all the way undone, or it’s tricky to put back together again.

The system, or the laces?

Gwen had laughed.

Both , Isobelle had whispered.

But it was undone. Isobelle had tugged too hard at the laces, and now she knew she’d never be able to put the world back together the

same way.

Now, as Isobelle scanned the gathered men—Orson’s reddened but resolute face, Whimsitt’s darkly angry countenance, Ralph’s

predatory, possessive eyes—she realized one more thing: she didn’t want to put it back together.

Last night she had begged Gwen to run away with her, thinking it was the only way to escape their cage—that they had to bend

its bars and somehow slither out between them, flee beyond the reach of their jailers.

But the cage wasn’t the ballroom, or the castle, or even the county of Darkhaven—the cage was a part of her, something driven into her by every word and glance and deed of those around her, by every breath she took while accepting

she was theirs to keep.

“We live inside cages of your design.” Isobelle’s voice summoned every gaze in the room to fix on her face.

“Little boys with wooden swords, and cages that hold us as long as we think we belong inside them. Even when I tried to rebel, I did it within the confines of those bars. I went looking for a champion to keep your knights from claiming me, and in doing so, I agreed you had the right to give me away.”

“I have every right,” Whimsitt snarled.

“You think these swords at our belts are toys, girl? That your privilege protects you if you defy

your lord?”

“Why does that scare you so much?” Isobelle shot back.

“If one of us dares to test the bars of our prison, you threaten her— kill her —as you planned for the women of Aberfarthing, and for Gwen. Why? Why are you so frightened when we go searching for the edges

of the cage you put us in?”

The room was perfectly silent, filled with a tension as profound as the one that hushed the crowds when the guards ripped

Gwen’s helmet away.

“I’ll tell you why you’re so afraid,” Isobelle said slowly, gathering her dignity about her like a queen.

“Gwen was right.

Gwen realized long before I did, this truth you’re all so frightened we’ll uncover.”

Isobelle’s heart was pounding, her blood singing in her veins as she drew one more breath.

“The truth is, there is no cage .”

She turned on her heel, vibrating with both fury and a strange, ferocious joy as she stalked toward the door, half certain

she’d feel rough hands grab her at any moment.

But no one touched her. I’m coming, Gwen.