Gwen had told Olivia to inform Isobelle that she was feeling poorly and needed to rest before the tournament. Later, she’d listened to Isobelle’s footsteps, unmistakable in their light, graceful patter, pause for a long, breathless moment outside Gwen’s door—and then move away again, down to join the feast.

She ought to sleep. But her whole body buzzed and ached for action, to fight this enemy that tormented her—her body didn’t know that the enemy was time, and situation, and hopelessness, and longing.

Secure in the knowledge that anyone who would recognize “Céline” would be at the feast, Gwen donned her old riding dress, slipped out to fetch her gear, and made her way to the ballroom where she’d first begun practicing her footwork at the castle.

The room was cavernous and still, illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the diaphanous, sheer curtains. The ballroom’s golds and creams and peaches were muted, transformed into silvers and lilacs and deep, secretive rose. The very air quivered with unfulfilled purpose, with the echoes of the thousands of dances and balls that had been held in this space—whispers of memory that made Gwen feel like an intruder, someone who had crept uninvited into someplace sacred.

Which, in fact, she had done. She didn’t belong here. Isobelle seemed content to ignore the insanity of her scheme, counting on pure optimism to win the day and forcing Gwen to be the voice of reason. In her mind’s eye, she saw Isobelle’s face again as it had looked that afternoon, all beseeching eyes and quivering lips as she implored Gwen to remember how she longed to prove herself among the other knights. That’s why you were doing this, wasn’t it? Isobelle had whispered.

Gwen had felt two paths open up in front of her. To leap off the cliff, or turn away and walk back the way they’d come. To say, No, I was doing it for you, or . . . or do as Gwen had done, and flee.

Gwen gave herself a shake and pulled her sword from its sheath, the scrape of steel echoing loudly in the expectant air. After a few experimental swings of the blade, she launched into one of Madame Dupont’s exercises, an unlikely combination of delicate dancing footwork and deadly swings and blows from her sword. She could almost hear Isobelle playing the organ in the background, the remembered notes hanging ghostlike in the air; could almost see her form at the shadowed instrument.

She shook off that image and tried to focus instead on visualizing the man she’d be fighting tomorrow. To visualize winning, beating him, taking him by surprise. Those piercing, hawklike eyes wide with shock, looking up at her from the ground.

The way those eyes had looked as they scanned over Isobelle at the castle bonfire, like he was an acquisitive collector inspecting his latest purchase.