“Well,” said Gwen, and Isobelle realized her eyes had adjusted—now she could see Gwen’s silhouette illuminated by the faint moonlight filtering in through the cracks in the walls. “Perhaps they got a few things right, too. This does feel a little like an adventure.”

Isobelle bit her lip, on the verge of blurting out something quite embarrassing indeed—that if Gwen could have only seen herself this afternoon as she practiced her jousting, she would have known what Isobelle herself knew. That whatever they were doing, it was better than any adventure story Isobelle had ever read. She could tell how frustrated Gwen was, missing more often than she struck the target at first, but Isobelle had the advantage of knowing how often knights missed the shields of their opponents entirely. She’d watched Orson practice enough times to know he probably wouldn’t have hit Dupont’s tiny swinging target even once.

And with Orson, she’d never found herself watching with such breathless focus, needing the sight of the form astride the horse more than she needed air.

They were both quiet again—thinking, Isobelle was certain, very different thoughts—until Gwen broke the silence. “Well, good night, I suppose. We should get some rest.”

It was the forced cheerfulness in Gwen’s voice that made something inside Isobelle snap. All the half-formed speeches she’d been rehearsing fractured into pieces, falling around her feet like the shards of a mirror. She’d given herself all day to find the right words, and none had come. Her only course was to launch into the conversation before she lost her moment, and hope she found her destination without too many detours.

“Look, Gwen. About yesterday. I owe you an apology, but I also want to say—”

“There’s no need to apologize,” Gwen cut in, the words tumbling out.

What Isobelle really wanted was to get to the next part, the I also want to say part, not least because she was interested to find out what, precisely, she also wanted to say. But she made herself deal with the apology first. “No, I must. I made you feel pressured to do something you didn’t want to do, and—”

“Truly, it’s fine, Isobelle. We’d both had too much tea, and you didn’t know I— Well, I overreacted.”

“But what I want to say is—”

“Isobelle, please.”

She stopped. It felt like a fist had wrapped itself around her stomach and begun to squeeze.

“Let’s just forget any of it ever happened,” Gwen said gently.

Isobelle wanted to reply, but she couldn’t seem to get a proper breath.

“We can get back to being partners in crime,” Gwen continued. “We have to stick together if we’re going to succeed, right?”

Isobelle said nothing. She felt as though one of the donkeys was sitting on her chest, pressing her down into the hay.

“Isobelle?”