Gwen was still staring at his features, so perfectly sculpted, his blond hair stirring in the breeze, his blue eyes straight out of every ballad of perfect knighthood she’d ever heard, when a shadow passed over the sun.
She shivered, grateful to the shifting clouds for breaking the tableau.
But then the sun blinked back in again, faster than any cloud could move.
A cry of confusion rippled through the crowd as something swept past them, above them, impossibly huge.
Gwen looked up in time to see a sinuous forked tail vanish across the sky.
For a long, long moment, no one moved. No one so much as glanced at their neighbors to see if they’d imagined the sight—no one wanted to know if what they’d seen was real.
And then, with a roar that shook the very ground beneath Gwen’s feet, the creature swept up the hill, behind the stands, and launched itself into the sky with a ribbon of searing, spraying flames that engulfed the tents at the far end of the lists.
A single voice, high and piercing with terror, screamed: “DRAGON!”
The crowd erupted into screams, turning from a quiet, meek pool of humanity into a seething, vicious, storming sea. Everyone tried to flee, and with the stands at twice their normal capacity, there was nowhere for anyone to go. Screams of fear turned toscreams of agony as many were trampled, and people spilled out over the barriers onto the lists in an attempt to find escape and shelter.
Whimsitt vanished immediately, though his voice was still shouting orders, demanding the guards do something. “It’s after the gold in the prize pot!” he screamed from a crowd of other nobles also fleeing the scene. “Stop it!”
A few halfhearted crossbow bolts went whizzing up into the sky, nowhere near the dragon, which was half a league away, gleefully setting fire to the town encircling the base of the hill where the castle sat. Only when every one of the thatch-roofed buildings was surging with flames did the great beast, its scales gleaming a burnished bronze in the sun, turn back toward the tournament grounds.
The guards holding Gwen burst back into action, instinctively holding her as they ran away toward safety, dragging her toward the castle. She fought them, trying in vain to break free. “I can help!” she cried, digging in her heels, carving twin grooves in the mud. “Let me go, I can fight!”
Then one of them, too terrified to obey his compunctions about hitting girls, drove his fist with expert accuracy into her bad shoulder. Gwen felt her muscles go limp, her vision spinning as pain flooded her senses. The last thing she saw, as dizziness swept through her and robbed her of the last of her sight, was a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl standing absolutely still, clutching the railing and staring after her.
Chapter Forty-Three
Someone get this hysterical girl out of here!
An eerie chill had taken over Isobelle’s body. She wanted to scream, and cry, and fight off Olivia’s iron grip to go running after Gwen, but the part of her that had taken control knew she didn’t have a moment to waste—that to scream would be an indulgence she couldn’t afford.
The huge beast took a long, leisurely pass down the length of the jousting field, sending the crowd below darting this way and that like a frightened school of fish. It was playing with them.
“Fight it,” Isobelle shouted to Lord Whimsitt, who was like a statue, staring up at the great beast. “Why are you just standing there?”
He whirled around to gape at her, eyes bulging. “It’s adragon, you stupid girl!”
“And this place is full of knights!” she shot back. “This is the Tournament ofDragonslayers! What were they competing for, if not the chance to do this?”
He stared at her, and she stared back, steel in her gaze. They both knew the answer: the knights had never volunteered for something so dangerous. All the dragons had been presumed dead long before these knights were born—not one of them had signed up to face one down.
“Thisisthe Tournament of Dragonslayers.” It was Sir Ralph, standing in the adjoining box among the other nobles scrambling for cover. “And our prize is named for what the dragon really wants—what the dragon used to be given, in times gone by.” He found his feet and raised one hand to point directly at Isobelle. “The dragon sacrifice.”
“I’m sorry,WHAT?” Isobelle shrieked, giving up on all her resolutions about not screaming. “Are you out of your mind?”
“The beast must be ancient to be so large,” Sir Ralph shouted over the noise of the crowd. “Ancient and far too dangerous to take head on. But if we give it what it wants...”
Olivia finally let go of Isobelle, moving to push past her, and now it was Isobelle’s turn to grab her maid by the arm. The last thing she needed was Olivia in jail too, and that was what would happen if she got anywhere near Sir Ralph.
“Sir Ralph,” Isobelle gritted out, eyes narrowed, spine straight, skewering the man in place with her gaze. “If you think for one moment I’m going to let you—”
“Someone get this hysterical girl out of here,” Lord Whimsitt demanded.
He wasn’t siding with Sir Ralph—but Isobelle noted he wasn’t naysaying him, either.
“Isobelle,” Olivia said quietly in her ear, composed once more. “Let’s go now.”
The words were like cold water flowing through her veins, washing away all the fire that had held her upright. Olivia was right. They had Gwen. There was a dragon in the skies. The town below was on fire. Everything was horribly, disastrously wrong, and she had no idea what to do next.
