Isobelle took a tiny step back. When Gwen slid forward, she could feel a place on the stone where Isobelle’s thighs had pressed, warming the rock even through her skirts.

“It is getting late.” Isobelle turned to look back the way they’d come. The distant glow of the village bonfire was hidden by the trees, though it wouldn’t take long to retrace their steps back toward their abandoned finery.

“We’ll have to go back and get our dresses from the smithy,” Isobelle went on with a sigh. “And think of a reason why we took so long. And . . .” Her voice petered out.

Even though Gwen had made that choice to step back with Isobelle, and leave that cliff behind them for a while, her heart was still sinking. Despite her noblest intentions, she longed to stay in this place for a little while longer, where they were both free of their masks. To walk along the cliff’s edge, at least, even if they weren’t ready yet to leap.

Isobelle’s gaze swung back toward the creek, and then sidelong up to Gwen’s face. “Or . . . we could just keep walking?”

Gwen managed, with great difficulty, to answer in an even tone despite the thudding of her heart. “Or we could just keep walking.”

Isobelle tucked her arm through Gwen’s, and they kept walking. The silence between them hung like a warm, woolen wrap, comfortable and easy. Summer was coming to an end, and though the air was still balmy, there was the slightest hint of a sharper chill behind it, like an actor just offstage waiting to make her dramatic entrance.

By the time they reached the point where the creek joined up with its neighbor to form a wider stream, the breeze above the treetops had finished chasing the patchy clouds away from the full moon and had begun to sweep down into the forest, whistling through the trees. Isobelle gave a little shiver, and Gwen felt it as if her own body were chilled. Automatically, she turned her steps east, a path that would eventually bring them back to the road connecting the castle with the surrounding villages.

Isobelle glanced at her and then back at the stream, her steps slowing.

“You’re not cold?” Gwen said, and then cleared her throat, surprised to realize how long it had been since either of them had spoken.

Isobelle quirked a smile. “I am, a little, but . . .” She glanced back down the course of the stream, which joined with the river not too far away. The trees thinned out ahead, and with the full moon the meadows and more solitary trees beyond the thicker woods were visible. “Can we go see that massive tree? What kind of tree is that?”