What the hell am I doing here? she thought desperately, closing her eyes and focusing on the air moving in and out of her lungs. Dupont had taught her a pattern of breathing that forced the body to relax as a way to combat her nerves before jousting. Gwen wasn’t sure she’d ever really mastered it, though, relying instead on her fury at her opponents, at the tournament itself that reduced a human being to a prize. Now, the anger she’d felt at seeing the destruction outside paled in comparison with her fear.

Still, Dupont’s breathing exercises worked, even though the air she inhaled was acrid with sour smoke. Her heartbeat was slowing, quieting. Each inhale felt easier, her lungs less tight. The hand holding the torch steadied enough for the flames to stop quivering.

And as her mind quieted, Gwen became aware of a soft sound. At first it seemed to her that she was hearing some distant underground ocean, tides still stirred by the moon invisible beyond the top of the mountain—she heard the rise and fall of the surf, a soft, rhythmic susurration. The sound was so incongruous, there in the depths of the earth, that Gwen could only stand still in confusion, staring into the darkness beyond her ring of torchlight.

And then a section of shadow beyond the light moved, and all at once the meaning of the sound, the moving shadow, and the faint rumble that now echoed through the tunnel clicked together into a single, awful truth.

The dragon was there.

It lay just beyond the light of her torch, chest rising and falling in a rhythm like an ancient sea. Gwen’s body moved of its own accord, even as her mind froze like a mouse before a deadly serpent—she took one step, and then another, moving as silently as she could in her heavy armor. Sweat gathered damply against the padding at her lower back, and dripped, itching, between her breasts.

The torchlight fell upon a flow of thick scales—an outstretched leg, the foot alone as large as Achilles, each scaled toe tipped with a black claw as long as Gwen’s leg. She stepped closer, still strangely distant from her own movements, like an observer watching some foolish ant about to be annihilated by a booted foot.

Gwen lifted the torch higher.