“Why does that scare you so much?” Isobelle shot back. “If one of us dares to test the bars of our prison, you threaten her—kill her—as you planned for the women of Aberfarthing, and for Gwen. Why? Why are you so frightened when we go searching for the edges of the cage you put us in?”

The room was perfectly silent, filled with a tension as profound as the one that hushed the crowds when the guards ripped Gwen’s helmet away.

“I’ll tell you why you’re so afraid,” Isobelle said slowly, gathering her dignity about her like a queen. “Gwen was right. Gwen realized long before I did, this truth you’re all so frightened we’ll uncover.”

Isobelle’s heart was pounding, her blood singing in her veins as she drew one more breath.

“The truth is, there is no cage.”

She turned on her heel, vibrating with both fury and a strange, ferocious joy as she stalked toward the door, half certain she’d feel rough hands grab her at any moment.

But no one touched her.

I’m coming, Gwen.

Chapter Forty-Six
It came up from the mine

Gwen closed her eyes and let Achilles carry her through the forest toward the dragon’s lair. The thudding of her horse’s hooves was rhythmic to the point of being hypnotic, and after several rounds of trying to gather her thoughts and corral them, she finally let them go, to run alongside Achilles in his joyous sprint.

Her father had stripped off the armor pieces of his disguise and given them to her, allowing her to sneak out of the dungeons, with his assurance that he could make his own way out. After all, nobody had been told to guard him. The armor had even allowed her to sneak into the ballroom as several dozen servants scrambled around, trying to reassemble a massive oak table. The diagram the castle staff were following was clearly a poor one, with half the servant battalion waving bits of metal and various pegs while the other half turned the pieces of the table round and round, arguing which way was up.

They never even looked up as Gwen slowly, silently took the ancient dragonslaying spear from its spot over the grand fireplace.

She had retrieved her horse from the stables and had beaten her father back to Ellsdale, galloping straight to the smithy and leaving Achilles stamping and pawing at the ground as she hurried inside. Olivia had brought Gwen’s armor to her father, and if there were any pieces the guards hadn’t ruined, they would be better than the guard’s armor she still wore.

She’d walked in expecting an empty smithy—only to find a broad-shouldered figure standing in the middle of the room, staring at her with wide eyes.

“Theo!” she gasped, trying to catch her breath from her headlong ride and her surprise.