The knight went sprawling, landing inches from where Gwen and Isobelle stood. With a start, Gwen realized that the body wearing the knight’s armor was quite obviously female, and not even a young, boyish female at that—the dancer moved with such overt masculinity that Gwen would never have known had the woman not landed literally right before her eyes.
With a scream of rage to match the roar of the dragon, the knight lurched to his feet and drew his sword. Without his lance, he seemed tiny, one man facing down dozens—one man facing the most massive creature ever to walk these lands.
The fight was quick and brutal. Without his lance the knight was doomed. The dragon closed in, swarming around the knight so thickly his gleaming silver armor became invisible. The knight leapt back, but then lost his balance—for a horrible moment he stood there, as if on the edge of a cliff, about to fall. At Gwen’s side, Isobelle cried a wordless shout of warning, as wrapped up in the spectacle as Gwen was.
The dragon saw its chance and charged.
The knight moved with deliberate grace. He had never been off-balance at all. Before the dragon could stop its charge, the knight had raised his sword and driven it deep into the eye of the beast.
The dozen-throated dragon howled in rage and pain, and flames spilled out of its mouth to lie, smoldering, against the hillside. Its wings flapped futilely—its arms tried to grab for the knight, who held on grimly to the sword long enough to twist it once—and the beast collapsed into a hundred pieces, scattered on the grass.
Dimly, Gwen was aware of the crowd screaming, thundering applause, but she could not take her eyes off the dancer who hadbeen a knight. The silver-clad figure was still gazing down at her sword, embedded between arm and rib cage of the dancer whose costume had born the eye of the dragon. She pulled the sword out, very much the way someone would pull a blade from a beast they had killed. Gwen half expected her to clean it of the creature’s blood. The dancer gave a shake, stepped back, and replaced the sword in the sheath at her belt. Slowly, slowly, she became herself again.
It was Isobelle pulling her hand from Gwen’s arm that shook her from her trance. The dancers who had been the dragonsfire were skipping around the perimeter of the clearing and weaving through the throngs of watchers, holding open jingling velvet bags that were beginning to sag under the weight of the coins the viewers tossed in. Isobelle had let go of Gwen in order to fumble in the pocket of her skirt, pulling out a fistful of coins and shoving them into the nearest bag.
Gwen swallowed and forced herself to take a deeper breath. She felt almost as though she had been that knight, as though she had not simply witnessed the epic battle, but fought it herself. The fire that had coursed through her veins and held her riveted to the spectacle was beginning to recede, and as Isobelle turned to her, face shining with excitement and pleasure, Gwen had to bury her hands in the folds of her skirt to hide how they were beginning to shake.
Isobelle’s gaze followed the movement, and a fraction of her joy dimmed. She folded her own arms across her chest rather than reach for Gwen’s arm again. Still, she was smiling as she tilted her head. “Come on. There’s one more thing I want to show you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Drop-your-cheesecake-on-a-stick-and-not-even-carespectacular
When Isobelle had seen Gwen arrive for the bonfire, her first thought had beenoh no.
Gwen looked spectacular—dizzyingly, heart-stoppingly,?drop-your-cheesecake-on-a-stick-and-not-even-carespectacular—and it was only luck that she hadn’t seen Isobelle gawking. What was going to happen come the tournament ball, when she finally saw Gwen in full finery? Would she simply pass out?Whycouldn’t she stop staring?
She had been forced to be quite stern as she reminded herself that this was not a sensible time to start asking herself questions about why she couldn’t take her eyes off Gwen.
Or perhaps, said the small part of her mind that sometimes led to her doing things like climbing down from her balcony and recruiting herself a new champion,this isexactlythe time.There was a kind of pressure building inside her, and she knew she couldn’t hold it at bay forever.
She’d pulled herself firmly together and had been doing quite well. Up until now, at any rate, when Gwen had hidden her hands swiftly in her skirts before Isobelle could take her arm again.
The two of them wove through the crowd, Isobelle leading and Gwen following in her wake, until they could duck behind the tents to which the dancers had retreated. There, Isobelle paused tofish down her cleavage—the frills really could hide a multitude—producing the small packet she had stowed there.
Before Gwen could ask, for she did not wish to spoil her surprise, she continued on until she found the member of the company who was standing guard at the tent flap.
“Dobry wieczór!” she chirped, with a curtsy that made him grin. “We have come with a gift for your lady knight.”
He bowed in return, pulling aside the tent flap and indicating with a tilt of his head that they should continue on to the right. The dancers inside were laughing and talking and jostling for space, the air hot and their good mood infectious. As Isobelle ducked under a wildly gesturing arm and pushed through to the next section of the tent, she was grinning herself.
“Astreta!” she squealed, and the dancer—still shedding her shimmering silver knight’s costume—turned to greet her with a laugh and seized her to plant a kiss on each cheek, then returned for a third where she’d begun.
“Isobelle, moja droga!”
Isobelle turned to see Gwen’s expression melting from one of wariness to a shy pleasure at seeing their reunion. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat of the tent, a smile slowly curving her lips.
“Gwen, this is my friend Astreta—her troupe just arrived from Poland. I thought you’d like to meet a woman who can do a man’s job as well as he can. Astreta, this is Gwen, who is a blacksmith of great skill.”
“As well as he can?” Astreta asked with mock outrage and a strong Polish accent. “Please, no man can leap as I do.”
“Of course not,” Isobelle agreed, some part of her mind concentrating on Gwen, who’d gone quiet. “We have brought you sweets.”
She handed over the little bag, and Astreta held up a hand in agesture that informed them they would have her attention again very soon, then pulled it open to inspect what was inside.
“They’re from a place in Paris she likes,” Isobelle told Gwen as Astreta nibbled on one and made extremely happy noises in the background.
“How do you know each other?” There was a carefulness in the way Gwen asked the question, setting the words out like she was laying a table with particularly fine porcelain and didn’t want to break anything.
