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Chapter Forty-Eight Two wounded creatures, facing each other across the empty battlefield

The dragon had carved a ragged corridor through the strip of trees dividing the town from the fields on the other side, and

it was along this path of devastation that Gwen guided Achilles.

He was snorting with bloodlust, and she offered up a silent

thanks to her mother for bringing her horse with her when she ran away with Gwen’s father.

Any normal horse would have been

halfway back to Darkhaven Castle by now, but Achilles was ready for a fight.

She guided him in an arc, sticking to the edge of the trees.

She kept an eye on the dragon as it crouched, mantling its wings

and curving its long head around to inspect the wound she’d dealt it inside the mine.

The ancient dragonslaying spear was

heavier than the lances she’d jousted with, requiring a tight grip to keep it planted against the stirrup platform.

Somewhere out there, hidden in the darkness, was Isobelle.

Gwen could have cursed the dragon for coming back around before

she got the details of Isobelle’s plan, but Isobelle was so much smarter and cleverer than anyone in Darkhaven Castle knew,

and Gwen would not deny her her right to fight.

Even though Gwen’s body was icy cold with the knowledge that, should the dragon

get past her, Isobelle could be its next target.

Her mind tried to throw out reassurances.

Mounted on Achilles, she could move much faster out in the open than she could in the mines.

The spear had a much greater reach than her sword.

The dragon was wounded, and surely slower and clumsier now.

But as the massive head swung toward her, weaving back and forth low enough to part the long grasses in huge, whispering furrows,

Gwen knew the truth, deep in her heart.

Even wounded, the dragon was far more dangerous than a single girl on horseback.

She shifted her weight, and Achilles, utterly responsive in his heightened state, broke into a trot, and then a run, gathering

speed.

The dragon let out a sullen roar, sparks flying up against the stars, and began clawing its way across the ground toward

Gwen.

The joints of the elongated front legs thrust upward, ungainly but undeniably powerful, the sheer size of the creature

allowing it to eat up the distance between them in a few ground-shaking stomps.

The dragon lifted its head with a snarl, preparing to make a lunge for Gwen, and she leaned hard as she tugged at Achilles’s

reins—the horse veered to the right in a perfect arc as the dragon’s jaws slammed home on empty air.

Gwen lifted the spear and felt a stab of pain shoot through her bad shoulder, the one the guards had worsened with their blows

as they dragged her from the tournament grounds.

She banished that pain, locking it away in some remote corner of her mind,

and focused on leveling the spear and tucking it under her arm.

But before she could get the tip of the heavy weapon lowered toward a viable target—the neck, if it lifted its head again,

or the eye if she could manage it—the dragon threw one of its arms out, forcing Achilles to leap over an outflung wing tip

and land, snorting and staggering.

Together, they wheeled around.

Gwen saw a massive black shape swinging at her through the darkness and threw herself flat against Achilles’s neck.

The dragon’s tail whistled over her, so close she felt her hair billow in the disturbance of air that followed.

Achilles was already lining himself up for another pass, and Gwen let him, focusing this time on the spear’s tip rather than directing her horse.

They dodged another snap of the dragon’s jaws, and this time Gwen got the spear leveled at the dragon’s chest. The tip struck

with a screech that made Achilles’s gait falter, and slid until it stuck with an impact that nearly threw Gwen from her saddle.

Her knees held on with the instinct of long practice, but she had to let go of the spear or be torn from her horse’s back.

As she and Achilles galloped away again, Gwen looked back over her shoulder and saw the spear wedged between two of the dragon’s

armored plates.

There was no blood—she hadn’t so much as scratched it.

Gwen swore and turned Achilles again.

They paused there, each of them catching their breaths.

The dragon reared back, spreading

its wings and beating them down, turning the grasses beneath it into a surging, roiling storm—but it only lifted a few yards

off the ground before thudding down again with a snarl of rage, tucking its injured wing against its body.

Gwen felt an answering throb of pain in her own shoulder—it was the same arm as the one she’d injured on the dragon.

That much they had in common—two wounded creatures, facing each other across the empty battlefield.

For a moment, Gwen could almost feel a grim sympathy for it—until it swung its head in her direction, the cruel intensity of its gaze forcing her to wrench her eyes away before it could snuff out her life as it had done to so many of the villagers of Aberfarthing.

Achilles leapt into movement again, ending the brief respite.

Gwen thought, wildly, about drawing her sword—but it would be

of no use, for if she was close enough to use the blade, she would probably already be dead.

She needed the spear back.

Achilles charged directly at the dragon, which dropped its head low and began clawing its way across the field toward them,

snarling a challenge and gathering speed.

Again, Gwen tugged Achilles’s reins to the right—but then, abruptly, threw her weight

left.

Her horse responded instantly, with a whicker of effort, and dodged past the dragon’s snapping jaws close enough that

Gwen heard a drop of its saliva land wetly on the shoulder of her armor.

She leaned low as Achilles raced beneath the neck

of the monster, and stretched out her arm as they neared the spot where the spear was wedged.

The jolt through her arm, up into her shoulder, as she grabbed the shaft of the weapon and tore it loose ripped a ragged cry

of pain from Gwen’s throat—but she kept hold of the spear as, once again, Achilles raced away to a safe distance.

She was armed again.

They would turn in a moment, regroup, think of some new way to run at it that might allow a better thrust

of the spear between those armored plates.

...

A rush of air and a keening roar made Gwen look over her shoulder, confusion and dread sweeping in.

The dragon was gone.

But

where— How..

.?

The ground shook with a heavy impact, and Achilles reared with a shriek of effort and fear.

Gwen nearly dropped the spear, her view blocked by her horse—and then, as he regained his feet, she saw that the dragon had leapt into the air to land on their other side, cutting off Achilles’s charge.

Her horse had reared to a stop just a few feet away.

And there, so large she could see herself distorted in the curved, glittering arc, was the dragon’s eye.

Gwen and Achilles both froze in the same heartbeat.

She felt her horse’s body grow rigid beneath her, felt her own body stiffen,

the spear only half raised, the weight of it still an agony on the injured tissues of her shoulder—and she could not lower

it or drop it.

Isobelle , she thought frantically, reaching for the glimmer of light and hope that had saved her last time.

Think about Isobelle.

But the instant the thought crossed her mind, a cold and irrevocable dread swept through Gwen.

Something was wrong.

In the depths of the mine, she had been able to see the dragon’s eye through the slit in her visor, had watched as its pupil

searched in vain for her eyes in the darkness of her helmet.

She had been able to see the dragon’s eye clearly enough, enough

to be paralyzed by the horrid power of the monster.

But now, she had no helmet, nothing standing between her and it.

Now, it could see her .

The huge golden eye fixated on her, seeming to swell until it eclipsed all else, blocking out the moon and the sky and the

grasses all around, until all Gwen knew, all Gwen was or ever would be, was that eye.

Before, her body had gone still, but she had felt her mind thrashing wildly inside like a bird in a cage.

Now, even her soul was frozen.

She could feel the dragon’s thoughts, sliding into her like some ancient, unspeakable curse.

Its mind was vast and complex and alien, and filled with a cruelty as cold as iron in midwinter and as unyielding.

Its eye burned, and its mind froze.

She could feel it examining her, pulling apart her soul as easily as its teeth and claws would pull apart her body.

Crushing

each flicker of hope or rage as easily as it had crushed her helmet.

Devouring everything—everything except her fear.

She tried again to summon a thought of Isobelle—not to save herself, for she knew now that she was beyond saving, that the

dragon was right to rip her hope from her.

But Gwen just wanted to think of her, one more time.

The dragon gave that low, cruel growl from the mine, the one that had chuckled and gone through Gwen like the echo of everyone

who had ever laughed at the idea of a woman in armor—now, it laughed at her for thinking of love.

Then it ripped that away, too.

She felt as though she were dangling from a cliff over an infinite pit, and that to fall into it would consign her to an eternity

of madness—that if she fell, she would be abandoning all that was ever good and bright, abandoning even the memory of ever

having lived some other life.

The only thing she had left was a distant, wavering memory.

Isobelle’s face, her voice.

I’ll be there, when the moment comes.

Gwen gasped and wrenched her mind away.

She would not let the dragon take that from her too—and somewhere, in the last flickering

recesses of her thoughts, she knew that to think of that last hope now, to use it to cling one breath longer to the edge of

the cliff, might warn the dragon of whatever Isobelle meant to do.

So Gwen turned her mind away from hope with one last, wrenching effort, let go of the edge of the cliff, and fell.