“I’m going to slip away for a moment,” Bear suddenly whispered.

“Where are you going?”

He waved a hand. “I’ll come back straightaway.” Then he hesitated, tracing one of the blooms in my wreath. “May I?”

I nodded, and with one finger on my chin, he turned my head and tugged one half-blown white rose from the crown beneath my ponytail, grazing the skin of my neck. Captain Lang and Yu were talking privately, eyes on the crowd, and Perrault was trying to ingratiate himself with every titled person on the dais, and Cobie was busy being stony, as usual; but I sensed them all watching. Watching me.

The melee soon began, and Bear didn’t come back. Skop and Igraine tried to engage me amid the sounds of the battle, but I was distracted from the warriors in green and gold, glancing over at every sound on the dais steps, expecting to see him. Lang’s shoulders grew tenser with my every stealthy look.

Unlike his sister, Bertilak on my left didn’t speak to me. He hadn’t addressed me at all since dinner the night before.

A creak on the stairs made me jump—but it was only Alexander chasing Gemma over the dais. I slouched, disappointed.

Bear still hadn’t reappeared, and if the joust had been short, the melee’s pace was downright frantic. Time was slipping away from me, like water through my cupped hands.

But the pace of the event wasn’t in my imagination. The crowd sensed it, too, and they roared their approval.

The excitement centered around a tall, rangy warrior in green with an impossibly fast sword arm. The design of his shield—three stacked golden crowns on a blue field—was familiar, but I couldn’t place it, and his helmet’s visor hid his face.

I wasn’t sure who had commanded the green army the week before, but he was clearly leading them today. Seven knights in green surrounded him, identities likewise hidden beneath their helmets. They worked rapidly through the field, voices feral and fierce with strain, weapons flashing as their owners charged and retreated. Like a flower opening and closing they advanced and withdrew, returning always to circle their leader. And though he fought whatever enemy came his way, his gaze returned again and again to the leader of the gold army.

Cornwall. He was fighting well enough, I guessed. My stomach turned at the sight of him.

When the green knight was the last mounted fighter remaining, he jumped down and sent his horse away with a slap on the rump, earning him another almighty cheer from the crowd. The din only rose as a trio of warriors in gold attacked, and he flung away his shield to grasp the dagger at his belt, subduing his enemies even more skillfully on foot than he had on horseback.

The field was looking distinctly green.

“What’s happening?” I hollered in Skop’s ear.