Isobelle narrowed her eyes, and with every ounce of the will that had brought Gwen into her life, that had brought together a small army of women to defeat a dragon, that had made a spell jar out of magic Tabitha told her wasn’t real – shefocused.
Let me in, she thought, pressing her forehead to Gwen’s.
And then she fell.
Isobelle wakes in darkness.
The only sound is her own harsh breathing, her own beating heart. She waits for them to settle, listening in the empty blackness. From far away comes a sound – the faint, wave-like susurration of scales.
There is a torch in Isobelle’s hand – she raises it. Around her coalesces an image, one that disassembles and reassembles itself as she turns her head. Spinning itself from the darkness like a shadow play upon a screen, a tapestry of light and shadow.
She is in a mine tunnel. Tools litter the place, as if the miners simply walked off and left them where they were working. From the depths of the tunnel, the faint light of Isobelle’s torch picks out the bright glint of gold.
Not far away is an overturned miner’s cart, its bulk looming in the shadows. And against it, her sword in one hand and the other pressed to the cart, crouches Gwen.
Isobelle runs to her. ‘Gwen!’
Gwen drops her sword in surprise, whirling. Her helmet visor is lowered, and only the quick sharp glint of eyes flashes through. ‘Isobelle, how are you …? Oh god, put out that light, it’ll see us!’ She snatches the torch from Isobelle and thrusts it against the floor, beating the flame out with her boot as quickly and quietly as she can. The only remaining light comes from a sputtering torch on the floor in the next corridor over, a decoy left to distract her enemy.
Isobelle lets Gwen pull her down into the shadow of the cart. She reaches for Gwen’s visor, but Gwen’s gloved hand grasps her wrist. ‘Don’t,’ Gwen gasps, before looking back over the edge of the cart. ‘I can’t let it see me.’
Isobelle can hear the pounding of Gwen’s heart, the harshness of her breath, as though they were her own. ‘Why can’t you let it see you?’
Gwen’s head tips up again, and again Isobelle sees the faint flash of her eyes. ‘When it sees me, it kills me.’
A shiver runs through Isobelle. ‘That isn’t how I remember it,’ she says carefully. ‘I was there, Gwen … I was here. I saw you defeat it.’
Gwen just looks over the edge of the cart again, as though she can’t hear Isobelle’s words. Her armour is dentedand scratched, the metal of the breastplate torn like paper on one edge. She bears the marks of a thousand battles.
Isobelle whispers, ‘How long have you been here?’
Gwen’s helmet angles down for a moment. ‘Days? Weeks?’ She draws a shuddering breath. ‘Last night was the night before the tournament …’
Isobelle reels. She knows now, remembers now. Reaching out to Gwen. Finding that connection between them, from the spell they cast together, from long before they ever cast that spell. Following that thread, coming into her dream, stepping into Tabitha’s curse with her.
This is Gwen’s nightmare. This is the story that brings her awake, sweating and crying out, night after night.
‘You can’t be here.’ Gwen seems to have noticed the change too, suddenly realising Isobelle is somewhere she isn’t supposed to be. ‘You have to go … you have to run …’
Isobelle wants to argue with her, to tell her it’s not the night of the tournament, that they’re in a tower by the sea and not a mine underground, that she won this battle months ago and doesn’t need to be here – but she bites her lip. Gwen can’t hear her when she tries to explain.
And anyway, she knows, with a sudden clarity as sharp and gleaming as diamond, that isn’t what Gwen needs.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Isobelle says in her firmest voice, the one she’s been perfecting since childhood.
‘But it’s coming—’
‘Then I’ll wait with you until it does.’
Gwen gives a groan of frustration, muffled by her helmet. ‘I can’t … you don’t understand, Isobelle. What it does to me. What it takes from me. I can’t … I can’t let you see it too.’
Isobelle reaches out towards the helmet again – Gwen jerks back.
‘Don’t,’ says Gwen, but halts, the whites of her eyes showing behind her visor.
Isobelle goes still. ‘I know … but if wearing this means you can’t see the dragon properly, then you can’t see me, either. And I can’t see you.’
Gwen’s body is as tense beneath her armour as if she was frozen mid-battle. ‘I … I’m afraid to let you see.’
