Olivia shot her a look. “I’m only an hour into this news,” she replied. “And a cell is a cell—thick walls, iron bars. Not easy. But we’ve got time. Hanging half a dozen women during the tourney would spoil the festive mood. So we’re going to pause, think, and then proceed carefully.”

“They must be terrified,” Gwen whispered.

“We’ll get them out, Gwen,” Isobelle promised, and now, finally, Gwen did meet her eyes, the oak-tinted moss that Isobelle loved so much brimming with fear, with worry. “I can’t believe they’d kill them over a warning.”

Olivia sighed and allowed herself one slow shake of her head. “They’ll kill anyone who tries to upset the order of things.”

Her words fell into a hole that was forming deep inside Isobelle.

Gwen was muttering curses, still clutching her shift against herself, holding her body so gingerly that she managed to vibrate with fury without moving a muscle.

But Isobelle was hearing those words again and again.

They’ll kill anyone who tries to upset the order of things.

Gwen could die if she came off Achilles the wrong way. Gwen could be impaled by a lance, or break her neck, or get knocked out, never to wake again.

But if she survived all that, and they found out who she was—what she was . . .

They’ll kill anyone who tries to upset the order of things.

Isobelle’s own chest felt tight, as if it were her ribs that were compressed, as she met Olivia’s eyes. The knowledge was there waiting for her—this was what her maid had wanted her to understand.

Just as Gwen had truly become a knight, Isobelle was realizing that she’d led this girl she cared for into terrible danger.

And in four days, she would face it all over again.

Chapter Thirty-Four
A girl who knows exactly who she is

Gwen opened her door a crack, then eased it a crack wider. Her eyes fell on Isobelle’s door, across the large sitting room at the center of her suite. She’d not seen much of the other girl for the last four days, and to Gwen’s dismay, that lack ached worse than her healing bruises.

“Stop fidgeting,” Olivia commanded, tightening the strips of cloth she was binding around Gwen’s shoulder. “Unless you want your arm to fall off for real this time.”

Gwen abandoned her efforts to catch a glimpse of Isobelle and obediently held still. She ought to let Olivia’s warning guide her thoughts back to the present, and the next joust. But every time she tried—today’s opponent was named Sir Makarios, a heavyset man from the Mediterranean coast—she just thought of Isobelle’s face, stricken with horror as she saw the extent of Gwen’s injuries.