The tent for Lord Whimsitt’s steward stood at the edge of the lists, and with so many bleary-eyed people milling about, Gwen simply slipped Sir Gawain’s patents of nobility into the pile that had formed. After they’d sidled away again, Isobelle whispered, “Huzzah! Easy as can be.”

“That wasn’t the part I was worried about.” Gwen had found a loose thread at her sleeve and kept worrying the thread back and forth between her fingers, tugging it further undone every time. “When will we know if they’ve been accepted as authentic?”

“When the herald pins up the opening draw,” Isobelle replied. “If all’s gone well, Sir Gawain will be on it. It’ll be okay, Gwen, I can feel it.”

Gwen cast her a sidelong glance, her brow furrowed. “I just—I can’t help but feel like something’s about to go wrong.” Her eyes lingered on Isobelle’s face, then fell, a faint flush rising to her freckled cheeks.

Isobelle’s throat tightened, realization dawning. Gwen was so used to responding to happiness with a sense of dread. Isobelle had to suppress the urge to go find that Fiora girl and give her a stern lecture about only kissing blacksmith’s daughters if she was serious about it.

Instead, she reached for Gwen’s hand and squeezed it. “Come on. The herald will take his sweet time. Let’s take a turn and kill an hour or so.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Gwen muttered. Under her freckles, she was white with nerves, but she did crack a tiny smile as her fingers curled around Isobelle’s in response.

“I believe that ditch over there is the traditional spot,” Isobelle replied, marveling at the way she chirped, despite her own churning stomach. “Though that’s mostly for hangovers.”

They took a turn around the grounds, and Isobelle listened to herself with no small admiration as she managed to point out far too many sights, produce opinions on the archery she had never known she held, and generally fill the air with chatter. Given the hurricane underway inside her own head, everything she had been sure of tossed hither and yon, she really thought she was doing quite well.

Neither of them spoke about that moment under the moonlit trees, when either one of them could have leaned forward and changed the nature of their friendship forever. Not yet.

It wasn’t until well after noon that the head herald, dressed in tournament livery, emerged from the steward’s tent with a scroll in his hands. A ripple passed through the milling crowds, the air of bored idleness instantly sharpening to breathless anticipation.

Like a pack of wolves waiting for the kill, rows of squires—and even a few knights, judging by their clothes—were standing in a barely restrained semicircle around the herald, who walked to the list barricade and began nailing his parchment to the post.