Gwen snorted, rolling her eyes a fraction. “Just don’t tell the other knights I screamed.”

Isobelle mimed locking her lips shut before throwing away the imaginary key, then pulled Gwen on to look at another stall.

Gwen looked down at the spot where Isobelle’s hand rested on her arm. “Er—Isobelle,” she started, not completely certain where she wished to steer the sentence. “Last night, you started to say something and I cut you off. Did you—”

“Ooh!” exclaimed Isobelle, her head lifted and turned to one side. She’d evidently been listening for something going on elsewhere in the festival. She began tugging at Gwen’s arm, dragging her off in the direction she was looking. “I think we’re just in time! Come, I’ve been so wanting you to see this.”

The emotion tangling Gwen’s response into a wordless murmur of assent was rather difficult to pinpoint. Frustration, certainly. But also a heavy dose of relief.

Just be glad everything is as it was, she told herself sternly. And enjoy what connection you have as co-conspirators.

Isobelle led her to a space that had been cleared on the slope of the hill above, dominated at the far end by a group of musicians. To judge from the crowd gathering around the area, some favorite event of the festival was about to take place.

The drummer had begun a low, pulsing beat. The crowd rather melted in front of Isobelle to let her and Gwen up to the front, either recognizing the tournament’s sacrifice and her reputation, or else assuming that the size and number of layers and frills on her dress meant she should be allowed to do as she wished.

Gwen had a flash of insight—was that why Isobelle wore such insanely over-the-top dresses?

The drummer added a second, lesser, syncopated beat that made Gwen’s blood sing strangely, until she recognized it for what it was: a heartbeat. Slow, decorous, far more languorous than any human heartbeat, but a heartbeat nonetheless.

An ancient heartbeat.

The hairs had begun to lift all along the back of Gwen’s neck before the first dancers emerged from the crowd. Their costumes were a riot of color—some in brightest red, orange, and yellow, and others in more muted shades of green, brown, burnished gold, and maroon. Something deep and primal and instinctual was signaling Gwen at the sight of those colors, though she could not have explained why.

The dancers began to move, in seeming chaos at first. Then the rest of the musicians began to play, adding to the pulsing heartbeat the screel of a reeded woodwind, the low bleat of a deep horn, and several layers of strings weaving the sounds together. As if the music were the start of a spell, the chaotic movements of the dancers coalesced into one single, fluid shape that undulated in the firelit night with eerie realism.

A dragon.