The cool night air greeted her, the rowdy noise of the ball muted by the thick curtains, and she gripped the railing of the balcony, leaning out over it as far as she could. She dragged in a slow breath, making herself focus on the moonlit land below. The dark outlines of the grandstands around the lists were visible, and beyond them the hills extending all the way to the woods.
“Isobelle?”
Isobelle squawked and nearly fell over the balcony railing—then Gwen’s arms were around her, pulling her back. She turned into that warm embrace, and she let herself sob all over Gwen’s beautiful dress, clinging to the other girl as though she might still fall at any moment.
“Isobelle,” Gwen repeated, more softly. Comfort, now—no longer a question.
“I can’t do it,” Isobelle finally let herself whisper. “I can’t do it tomorrow.”
“Time won’t stop because we want it to,” Gwen murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple.
Isobelle leaned back enough to look up at her, and she couldn’t stop the words spilling out. “We can’t stop time. But we could get more of it.”
“What?” Gwen frowned. “You mean reschedule the joust? I don’t think...”
“No!” Wild hope was flickering to life inside Isobelle, jumping from one part of her brain to another, like a fire coming to life and sending sparks to each new piece of kindling. “Wecanget more time, Gwen. All we have to do is take it. We could go. We could run. Olivia could make it happen, you know she could. We could go tonight.”
“What?” Gwen drew back to stare at her. “Run? Where?”
“Anywhere! I don’t care where it is, as long as we’re both there.”
But Gwen was shaking her head, and icy rain was starting to patter down on Isobelle’s wild flame of hope. “Isobelle, I... I can’t justrun away.”
“Yes, you can!” She found Gwen’s hands, took hold of them, squeezed them to try to make her see. “Why would you stay here?”
“To fight!” Gwen shot back. “To win. To earn your freedom, and prove myself. That was always the plan, that was why we did all of this. I can do it, Isobelle—I can win this thing.”
“I don’t doubt it. But then what?” Isobelle pressed. “Afteryou win?”
“We’ll deal with that when we get there,” Gwen said quietly. “I can’t keep pretending I’m something other than who I am. Once they see me win, once they see who I am—”
“You’re dreaming, Gwen,” Isobelle snapped. “You must know that. When you win, they’ll force you to show your face. And when they see you’re not a man, they’ll kill you for it.That’swhat will happen.”
“But maybe not!” Gwen protested. “They’ll have seen what I can do—whatwecan do, working together. Maybe...maybe...” Gwen faltered, reaching for something impossible and failing to find it. Frustrated, she blurted, “Why bring me here, do all this, only to give up? This isn’t just your dream, Isobelle—it’s mine now, too. And I think it alwayswasmine, you just showed me how to let myself want it.”
“I was wrong.” And though she tried to stop them, Isobelle’s tears began to fall all over again as despair washed over her. “If I taught you to dream, then I was wrong.”
Chapter Forty
No better than they are
Gwen stared at Isobelle’s tear-streaked face, part of her mind screaming at her to reach out, pull her close, wipe those tears away. But the rest of her felt so frozen that she found she could not move.
Ever since the night Isobelle had appeared under Gwen’s window in the village, calling for her to waltz off into an adventure, Isobelle’s sheer force of will had pushed Gwen through her own hesitations. Practical matters like “who could possibly be willing to train me?” and “but someone’s going to notice I’m not a man” melted away under that intense blue stare.
Gwen would never have ridden out as Sir Gawain again after that first joust if not for Isobelle. She’d come to rely on Isobelle’s nearly magical ability to imagine the world different, and simplymake itso. Somehow, Gwen had started to believe, in her heart of hearts, that there was no limit to what Isobelle could make happen.
So how had she not noticed the point when Isobelle had stopped being the one pushing her forward?
Gwen’s breath felt shallow and harsh, her footing unsteady with fear at finding herself out on a precipice without Isobelle’s unconditional belief firming the ground beneath her. Isobelle had never raised her voice that way to her, and she battled the instinct to shout back. “We can’t stop now,” she said finally. “We have no otherchoice but to see this through.”
“Wedohave a choice,” Isobelle retorted. “I told you, we can run—”
“Run where?” Gwen swallowed. “Live where? On what funds, with what support? No one would welcome a woman blacksmith into their village—we couldn’t stay at mine, your people would find us there. We’d have nothing—no money, no titles, no safety net. Do you know what it’s like to live that way, Isobelle?”
Isobelle’s lips tightened, but she leaned forward, shaking her head. “I don’t care. If I were with you, I wouldn’t care.”
“You would.” Gwen felt her own eyes stinging, unable to stop the helpless tears prickling them. “You think you wouldn’t, but you would.”
