She knew that look. She’d been getting it all her life—whenever a man realized she had made the weapon he’d commissioned from her father. When she’d beaten her childhood friend play-fighting with sticks. Every time she’d ever been stronger or smarter or cleverer than they expected her to be, every time she’d dared to step out of line without softening the surprise with a smile or a lowering of her eyes. She’d seen it just yesterday, on the face of the nicest man she’d met these past weeks, when she’d beaten him at swordplay.

It was the same look now that turned Whimsitt’s face into such a threatening, furious mask.

He knows.

That certainty washed through her like a cool, calm stream, carrying with it the last traces of her confusion. Her exits were blocked. She was surrounded by guards. Even if she was willing to hurt or even kill perfectly innocent men who were just following their lord’s orders, there were too many of them for her to fight.

She ran a hand over Achilles’s neck to calm him, and then dismounted. One of the guards came up to snatch at Achilles’s reins, leading him away with some difficulty as Achilles reared and attempted to get back to his mistress’s side.

“Lift your visor,” Whimsitt’s voice came again, low and cold.

Gwen lifted her chin, her hands at her sides. “If you would let me finish the tournament, my lord, I will—”

“Lift your visor and show them who you are!” Whimsitt’s calm evaporated, this repetition of the command sounding out in a higher, more penetrating shout. This time, he did not wait for Gwen to comply, but rather gestured to one of the guards, who leapt forward and seized Gwen’s helmet. The metal scraped at Gwen’s ear, leaving behind a searing line of pain as the man wrenched the helmet from her, half knocking her down in the process.

Gwen caught herself as she staggered, and went still, listening as reaction swept across the stands. Those farther away could not see what was happening, but ripples of gasps and cries of shock and alarm scattered back from those closest to Whimsitt’s box, murmurs and explanations spreading across the stands before dropping into an unnatural hush.

Gwen stood, the breeze ruffling her hair and tugging at the loose strands that had fallen from her bun, a trickle of blood dripping from the spot where her helmet had scraped a layer of skin off her ear . . . and listened to the terrible sound of a thousand people not knowing what to say.