“They’ll be fine,” Olivia said firmly, correctly interpreting Isobelle’s lip-nibble. “Just slide them in when the herald is busy, so he hasn’t time to wonder why it’s Céline doing it.”
Gwen closed her hands around the packet Archer had prepared and pulled it in against her chest like a shield. “Best get it over with.”
“You mean best get on with the next step of our glorious plan,” Isobelle replied. She could feel Gwen’s nerves, but the world was new, and they were invincible, and Isobelle didn’t have the slightest doubt their forged papers would be accepted without a second glance. “I don’t suppose you have any snacks we can eat on the hoof, Olivia?”
The bonfires of the night before seemed to have signaled the turning of the season—there was a new crispness to the midmorning air as they made their way down to the tourney grounds, nibbling on croissants.
The crowd was moving slowly, and there were plenty of pale faces and quite a few fairgoers attempting to treat last night’shangovers with a scale of the dragon that singed them, tankards already in hand. The minor competitions—foot races, archery, wrestling—were underway, but none of them were holding much of anyone’s attention.
The tent for Lord Whimsitt’s steward stood at the edge of the lists, and with so many bleary-eyed people milling about, Gwen simply slipped Sir Gawain’s patents of nobility into the pile that had formed. After they’d sidled away again, Isobelle whispered, “Huzzah! Easy as can be.”
“That wasn’t the part I was worried about.” Gwen had found a loose thread at her sleeve and kept worrying the thread back and forth between her fingers, tugging it further undone every time. “When will we know if they’ve been accepted as authentic?”
“When the herald pins up the opening draw,” Isobelle replied. “If all’s gone well, Sir Gawain will be on it. It’ll be okay, Gwen, I can feel it.”
Gwen cast her a sidelong glance, her brow furrowed. “I just—I can’t help but feel like something’s about to go wrong.” Her eyes lingered on Isobelle’s face, then fell, a faint flush rising to her freckled cheeks.
Isobelle’s throat tightened, realization dawning. Gwen was so used to responding to happiness with a sense of dread. Isobelle had to suppress the urge to go find that Fiora girl and give her a stern lecture about only kissing blacksmith’s daughters if she was serious about it.
Instead, she reached for Gwen’s hand and squeezed it. “Come on. The herald will take his sweet time. Let’s take a turn and kill an hour or so.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Gwen muttered. Under herfreckles, she was white with nerves, but she did crack a tiny smile as her fingers curled around Isobelle’s in response.
“I believe that ditch over there is the traditional spot,” Isobelle replied, marveling at the way she chirped, despite her own churning stomach. “Though that’s mostly for hangovers.”
They took a turn around the grounds, and Isobelle listened to herself with no small admiration as she managed to point out far too many sights, produce opinions on the archery she had never known she held, and generally fill the air with chatter. Given the hurricane underway inside her own head, everything she had been sure of tossed hither and yon, she really thought she was doing quite well.
Neither of them spoke about that moment under the moonlit trees, when either one of them could have leaned forward and changed the nature of their friendship forever. Not yet.
It wasn’t until well after noon that the head herald, dressed in tournament livery, emerged from the steward’s tent with a scroll in his hands. A ripple passed through the milling crowds, the air of bored idleness instantly sharpening to breathless anticipation.
Like a pack of wolves waiting for the kill, rows of squires—and even a few knights, judging by their clothes—were standing in a barely restrained semicircle around the herald, who walked to the list barricade and began nailing his parchment to the post.
Some unspoken agreement seemed to hold them all back, but when the man stepped away, all bets were off. The mass of bodies descended on where he had been, presenting the girls with a solid wall of backs.
“Stay here,” murmured Gwen, turning and squaring her jaw. Then, after a pause, she added, “Though if I’m not out in five minutes, send help.”
Isobelle was so busy watching Gwen disappear into the seething crowd that she startled when a voice came from behind her.
“So keen, my lady, to find out who your new husband will be?”
She whirled around and found Sir Ralph, well—she didn’t like to use the word, even in her head, but there was no avoiding it: he wasleeringdown at her. She took a step back before she could stop herself.
“I suppose it’s natural for you to speculate,” he continued. “But daydreaming won’t hurry the day along. You must be patient.”
The silence that followed as Isobelle searched in vain for a reply was disrupted by a familiar, but most unladylike, shout from near the pillar itself, and a ripple went through the group of men. Then the mass of bodies spat out Gwen.
She emerged between a pair of squires and nearly ricocheted off the barrier erected to keep the crowd of spectators away from the joust. But where she ought to have lifted her head to search for her companion, instead she just gripped the fence with both hands, head bowed as she tried to catch her breath. Or recover from some deeply damaging blow.
Isobelle simply turned her back on Sir Ralph, hurrying over to push her way in beside Gwen, ducking her head to get a look at the other girl’s face. Every line of Gwen had become familiar to her these last days, but she had never seen her look like this before. There was a blankness to her expression, as though she weren’t Gwen at all, but a statue of her, the spark of life simply gone from her face.
“It’s over,” Gwen said softly. “It’s over, before I’ve ever had a chance to try. We’re done, Isobelle.”
Ice slithered down Isobelle’s spine. Archer’s papers had lookedperfect; how could this be? Olivia had said they would work, and Olivia was never wrong.
How much danger was Gwen in? Were they looking for Sir Gawain even now?
Her body took over. She took Gwen’s arm and led her, unresisting, away from the scrum around the newly announced tournament brackets. This was clearly a conversation best had without witnesses, and given she was the prize these men were fighting for, the odds of someone blundering up for another obnoxious chat in the next minute or two were high.
