‘ItoldOlivia not to bring you anything too depressing,’ Isobelle muttered, reaching out for the scroll.
Gwen snatched it back protectively. ‘I think I can decide for myself what to read,’ she retorted, aware she sounded as sullen as a child.
‘Not if it means you greet me with talk of beheadings!’ Isobelle fired back, her brow furrowing. ‘Come on … let’s go for a walk. Just a little one, up and down the street. It’ll help you get your strength back. We can visit the smithy, and you can start designing your new sword.’
Exhaustion rose up and gripped Gwen from the inside out. ‘A new sword,’ she echoed weakly. ‘Isobelle … why in the name of … Why would I bother making another sword?’
‘You’re a knight.’ Isobelle beamed at her with all the true warmth of the distant winter sun. ‘You need a sword.’
The very thought of trying to pour herself into another sword – her third weapon in as many weeks – made Gwen want to scream. ‘I’ve no need for a sword anymore,’ she said quietly. ‘This spell that you insist I’m under – it’ll follow me, right? Even when Olivia spirits us away? I’m no knight, not like this. It’s just as well the sea keeps claiming my weapons – I should listen to what fate is telling me.’
‘Now you’re being foolish.’ Isobelle’s hands clenched around a handful of the bedclothes. ‘Gwen, you can’t just rot in your bed, reading about doom and gloom—’
‘Why not?’ Gwen replied calmly. ‘Did you know that a witch’s curse is unbreakable except by the witch who cast it, or by a significantly more powerful witch? I wonder how many witches out there are more powerful than one who can control a giant sea monster with his mind …’
‘Enough!’ Isobelle snatched the text from her with an ominous crackle of ancient parchment. ‘All this doom-scrolling isn’t helping! Now, come downstairs and we’ll have a snack and go for a stroll. We’ll visit the hot springs and have a soak, and think of something nice to do once we’re away from this place.’
‘Something nice,’ Gwen echoed, watching Isobelle with a remote fascination. Her performance was flawless – her brow clear, her blue eyes sparkling, her lips at ease and curved into a smile of delight. ‘Somethingnice?’
‘A trip somewhere without a cursed town,’ Isobelle suggested. ‘Or staying with your dad for a while in Ellsdale—’
Gwen coughed, her throat seizing in horror at the idea of letting her father see her as she was now. ‘God, no.’
‘Somewhere new, then,’ Isobelle insisted.
‘Stop—’
‘We can rendezvous with the girls and travel to Europe for the spring fashions—’
‘Stop!’ Gwen’s voice snapped out of her with all the shocking force of a lightning strike. ‘Just … stop!’
Isobelle stared at her, expression cracking as though that lightning strike had split her mask straight down the middle.
‘You can’t just … believe your way out of everything,’ Gwen blurted, her voice beginning to shake and her throat so tight every word was like a knife. ‘You can’t laugh and shrug it off and distract me with something shiny. Idied, Isobelle. You told me we were over. Everything we’ve done for the past few weeks was for nothing, we haven’t weakened the sorcerer at all. We’re running away and leaving an innocent girl as a monster’s captive. Your only real family is a spy sent to watch you by an ancient order of dubious morality. And you want to go on a shopping spree toEurope?’
The broken pieces of Isobelle’s mask, as brittle as a badly tempered sword, shattered. Her voice came in a wrenching sob. ‘I don’t know what else to do!’
The words hung in the silence that followed them, punctuated by snatches of breath and the patter of tears – hers or Isobelle’s, Gwen wasn’t sure – against the coverlet. Outside, a gust of wind leaned against the window, making it creak. The inn was brutally silent now, without its guests and staff and tavern full of colourful locals.
‘Well, neither do I.’ Gwen drew a shaking breath. ‘Maybe it’s okay not to know how to fix things.’
Isobelle’s eyes were lowered, her face flushed. ‘I don’t know how else to help except to make you feel better.’
‘Isobelle … you can’tmakesomeone feel better,’ Gwen said helplessly.
‘But that’s what I do!’ Isobelle burst out. ‘I convince people, I get them to go along with my ideas, I … it’s literally all I have to offer. And it’s not enough, not with everything slipping through the cracks and falling apart …’
And without warning, Isobelle began to weep. Palms braced on the bed, head bowed, tears sliding down her chin, shoulders shaking – and as suddenly as Isobelle’s tears had come, Gwen’s icy paralysis shattered.
Gwen shoved aside her pile of scrolls and tangled bedclothes and reached out, pulling Isobelle against her. She came willingly, one hand curling in Gwen’s shift and the other circling her neck, her forehead bowed against Gwen’s collarbone. Gwen’s eyes began to burn in response, and she felt Isobelle’s thumb stroke her chin when a tear made its way down her face.
They were both struggling to breathe, lungs heaving in syncopation against each other, until slowly, slowly, those rhythms began to settle, to deepen, to match. Isobelle shuddered and Gwen curled her fingers to stroke her hair. Gwen’s face turned, and she felt the warmth of Isobelle’s temple against her lips.
‘I tried to make you stop,’ Isobelle whispered, a thread of tension still wound tightly within the circle of Gwen’s arms. ‘I tried to force you to stop fighting – but it isn’t over between us, Gwen. I don’t ever want it to be over. I didn’t mean it, what I said.’
Gwen was giddy with the sudden release of a band of tension she hadn’t noticed squeezing her harder than the others. ‘I didn’t mean what I said, either. Even if I’m no knight, even if I can’t fight … I’ll never stop fighting for you.’
Isobelle started crying all over again, but the terrible gulping, wrenching sobs were gone, and the tears subsided after a few moments.
