She raised her hand and placed it in Orson’s, and he led her out to join the dancers.

“Tomorrow,” she said, and though it was only one word, there were whole ballads in it, questions and answers, hopes and fears.

“I don’t know,” he replied, understanding as easily as he’d spotted her twitch. He’d had years of practice. “None of us knows what will happen, Izzie.”

“If it’s Gwen,” she said, her fingers tightening around his—why were her hands so cold?—“what will we do? How will we ever get them to accept . . .”

Her? That a girl dared step outside the cage they’ve made for her, and . . . The words wanted to push their way up her throat, to spill out, and so she almost missed the flicker in her old friend’s gaze: something very like hurt.

“Orson, you know you have as good a chance,” she began. “Better, even. I’m just saying—”

“Izzie.” He cut her off with a look, and she fell silent, holding still as he danced a circle around her, each of the women on the floor pinned in place as the men moved. Orson didn’t speak again until they’d joined hands once more. “I don’t think we can,” he said quietly. “I don’t think there’s a way anyone will accept . . . You need to be ready for that.”

The buzz of thoughts in her head was rising to a roar, her dress was suddenly too tight, squeezing the breath from her. You accepted her, she wanted to scream. Why can’t you make anyone else do it?

When the music stopped, she stumbled from him without a word, propping up against a table at the edge of the room where drinks were being served.

“That’s what I heard,” the man beside her was saying as she closed her cold hand around a flagon. “Vanished right out of their cell, lock still intact. Makes the sentencing easy, though.”

“They’ll have to catch them first,” another pointed out.

“Please. Bunch of housewives on the run? Castle guard’ll have them back here in no time. And there’s always a slump after something big’s over, like the tourney. Some executions will pick the mood up.”

The women from Aberfarthing.

And come tomorrow, Gwen might face the same fate.

From somewhere nearby came Lord Whimsitt’s laugh, and she spun around to search for him. He was the one who would hold Gwen’s life in his hands tomorrow. He was the one who would see who she really was, and have a choice to make.