“I’m gratified you think I could’ve stopped you. Of course I was worried. But my daughter is strong and clever, and a damn sight better at fighting than most of those puffed-up nobles in shiny armor. She can take care of herself. She’s been taking care of me for years.” His smile vanished as his eyes met hers. “Oh, Gwen . . . what kind of dad would I be if I tried to stop you from being who you were born to be?”

Gwen felt that weight on her shoulders collapse, slipping away, and she leaned forward with a sob to press her forehead against her father’s hands. She could not remember the last time she had wept that way—possibly not since the day her mother had died. But she couldn’t have stopped herself now if the dragon itself had knocked the prison down around them.

The storm was intense, but brief. After, she lifted her head, tears making her father’s visage waver and dance in the torchlight. “Dad, it’s all gone so wrong. I’ve messed everything up so badly.”

Amos’s eyes were damp, and he sniffed loudly before saying briskly, “I don’t see how. You’re talking about that girl, I presume—the one you brought home the night of the dragon bonfire?”

Gwen choked, having thought her father had run out of terrifying surprises to spring on her. “Wh— You know about Isobelle, too?”

“Is that her name?” Amos’s eyes twinkled. “Listen, as far as she’s concerned, I don’t think you have to worry. If you don’t get yourself out of here soon, I imagine she’ll be storming the place to get you out.”

Gwen swallowed hard. “But everything else—the tournament, the nobles . . . they all know. I never got to show them who I really am, never got to finish what I started. And now . . . now I can’t be a knight anymore.”

Her father’s eyebrows drew together. “Gwen, that has to be one of the silliest things I’ve ever heard you say. Why do you care what those people think of you?”

Gwen blinked at him. “I don’t, I just . . .”

“You want to be a knight?” her father pressed. “Then be a damned knight. It’ll take a little while to fix your armor, but . . .”

Gwen gaped at him in confusion.

Amos gave a noise of frustration and dug in his pocket. When he lifted his hand again, he held a tiny, perfect figurine of a knight, the twin of the one still left in Gwen’s room in Isobelle’s suite, with Gawain’s pennant flying in an imaginary breeze.

Then she looked closer and recognized the articulation in the joints that she’d invented, replicated there to the last detail.

This figurine wasn’t Sir Gawain . . . it was her.