Chapter 15
An expiration date for us
Isobelle stood frozen in place, simply staring at the carnage that had once been her possessions.
Ink had soaked into the rug, and flowers lay strewn under the windowsill.
Her trunks were open, clothes scattered as if someone had picked them up by the handful and tossed them aside.
Her mind jumped from detail to detail, refusing to absorb the whole of it all at once.
She felt … violated. Someone had been here, had put their hands all over her things without her knowing. She felt as if someone had pulled aside the screen while she was in the middle of getting dressed.
‘Stay here,’ Gwen said quickly, instantly becoming the warrior who’d fought a dragon: light on her feet, competent, wary. She moved past Isobelle, taking up a poker from the fireplace and investigating the room.
Once she’d checked under the bed, inside the wardrobe, behind the door, outside the window on the eaves below, and determined they were the room’s only occupants, she lowered the poker and looked back at Isobelle. ‘Who would do this? And why?’
‘They didn’t take my jewellery,’ Isobelle managed, looking down at the sparkling pile, ‘so it wasn’t burglary.’
‘Could someone want to scare us?’ Gwen suggested, doubtful. ‘Want us to leave? Why would they?’
‘You just slew a sea monster, anyway – they can’t possibly have thought you’d scare so easily,’ Isobelle replied. ‘Though perhaps that’s why they targeted me.’
‘The worst part is that the whole town saw us heading off to Lord Bingleton’s, and I’m sure word went around that we were at the springs,’ Gwen said slowly.
‘We can hardly start by asking ourselves who knew the room would be unattended. I don’t believe there are any town guards, but I suppose we could ask his lordship if he has anyone who could try to figure out …
’ But she trailed off, pinching the bridge of her nose.
‘Can you imagine Lord Bingleton dealing with this?’ Isobelle asked, hands on her hips, making her voice light. If she showed fear, Gwen would want to leave and take her somewhere safer. And she couldn’t leave, not yet.
‘Not competently,’ Gwen admitted. ‘So what would you like to do?’
‘Tidy up,’ Isobelle said firmly. ‘And lock the door from now on.’
‘You don’t think we should—’
‘Can we decide in the morning?’ Isobelle asked, lowering her lashes, pressing a hand to her middle. Gwen wasn’t wrong, to wonder if they should leave. At least waiting until morning would give her a chance to think up a better excuse for staying.
Gwen stepped closer immediately, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. ‘Of course we can. Let’s get this back to rights. Shall I fetch the girls? It’ll go faster with all of us.’
Isobelle shook her head, and this part, at least, wasn’t feigned. ‘I just want to be with you,’ she whispered, tilting her head to rest it on Gwen’s shoulder.
‘Then you’ll have me,’ Gwen murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry, Isobelle. What a mess. What kind of lowlife would you have to be …’
‘One with great taste,’ Isobelle replied, sounding only a little wobbly. ‘They went straight for my clothes.’
Gwen kissed the top of her head again, then released Isobelle to drop into a crouch and pick up her jewellery box.
The lid came away from the body of it, and she winced.
‘We’ll fix it,’ she said, setting the box back on the floor and carefully transferring its contents back to the little sections where they belonged. ‘Oh no.’
Isobelle leaned in, and pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle her sound of dismay.
One of her necklaces – a gift from Olivia – was smashed to pieces.
It had been porcelain, Olivia’s little owl stamped into the clay.
It was the same symbol they’d shown Archer, the mysterious forger who’d manufactured Sir Gawain’s pedigree for them, to secure his cooperation.
‘Well,’ Isobelle said, marvelling at her bright tone. ‘Let’s hope we don’t need a favour from a mysterious shadowy contact of Olivia’s anytime soon.’
The two of them fell silent, tidying up together, moving around each other as they folded clothes and did their best to salvage Isobelle’s belongings.
Isobelle didn’t know what Gwen was thinking, but her own mind was whirling.
Had this been meant to scare her away? For what reason?
Or had it been someone somehow driven by the curse?
But why would it force anyone to do such a thing, and to her best hat?
‘Isobelle?’ It took her a moment to realise Gwen was speaking to her, and she turned, her dressing gown clutched in her hands.
Gwen was holding a much-folded piece of parchment, her eyes fixed upon the words written there.
The silky fabric slipped from Isobelle’s grip to pool on the floor as she recognised it.
The edges were dog-eared from spending so much time in her pockets, the creases fuzzy from folding and re-folding, though it was unfolded now.
It was the letter from her parents.
Gwen lifted her eyes from the words on the page and gazed at Isobelle. ‘What is this?’ she asked, her voice shaking.
Isobelle had been so focused on finding out more about the spell someone was casting on Gwen that she’d entirely forgotten about the other thing she was keeping from her. Now, with a horrible feeling like she was falling, that other problem was marching back into view.
‘Your parents said no?’ Gwen asked quietly, her expression dangerously neutral. ‘No to giving you your dowry, giving us our freedom … and you didn’t tell me?’
Isobelle was floundering, desperately unsure which shore to strike out for. The truth? Some convenient lie? She was uncomfortably aware that it was only her absolute failure to think up a convincing lie that forced the truth from her now.
‘I was going to show it to you, I promise.’ Eventually. ‘I just … didn’t know how to tell you,’ Isobelle admitted, almost inaudible.
‘How about Gwen, my parents wrote back and said no?’ Gwen snapped, pink spots appearing at her cheekbones, green eyes lit with a heart-wrenching mix of anger and hurt.
It seemed so simple, when Gwen said it. But Gwen wasn’t the one who had watched her beloved waking from nightmares with a shuddering gasp, who had heard her call out at night as though someone were driving a knife into her soul.
She wasn’t the one who had watched her champion being forced to dance to Lord Whimsitt’s tune, who had agonised over the strain wearing her beloved thin.
Isobelle felt like she was grasping at control as it disappeared down the drain, slipping through her fingers.
She felt as though she could see this whole conversation unspooling in front of her, and it was leading somewhere terrible.
‘Gwen,’ she said, still in almost a whisper. ‘I was trying to protect you.’
‘By lying to me?’ Gwen whispered, the hurt in her eyes mixed with bewilderment.
Isobelle could feel it beginning to shatter, the fragile understanding they’d forged in the hot springs.
Isobelle had meant every word, with all her heart – she was here, she was Gwen’s, as long as Gwen would have her.
Only now, seeing the agony on Gwen’s face, did she realise how this must feel for her champion.
Like Isobelle’s faith in her had been a lie.
‘You were hanging everything on my dowry coming through,’ Isobelle blurted, her throat tight, her heart thumping far too hard, now.
‘And I didn’t know how to tell you that we had nothing.
You kept saying that we only had to wait until the letter came, and we could stop trudging around the county in the rain, living off burnt potatoes.
That we could choose our own fate. That we could stop putting you through the pain of talking about the dragon over and over and over again! ’
Gwen’s face paled. ‘You hid this from me because of my dragon nightmares?’
‘You were already carrying so much, how could I give you more to carry?’
Gwen’s hands were shaking, the worn parchment trembling. ‘You thought I couldn’t handle this?’
Isobelle stood, cheeks burning, breath coming too fast, heart pushing against her ribs.
For once, no words showed up to spill forth and fix everything.
For once, she was frozen in helplessness.
She could see, moment by moment, Gwen pulling away.
She could see Gwen’s eyes shuttering, the hurt crystallising into armour to block her out.
Isobelle’s heart seized in a panic so visceral she could do nothing but let her sobs break free – not to win the argument, not to distract Gwen, but because this panic had been trying to push its way to the surface for months now, even before she received the letter, because deep down she had known, or at least feared, that her parents would not understand.
Suddenly, Isobelle couldn’t bear to keep it inside her any longer.
‘You don’t understand, Gwen. Your father loves you, he loves us, separately and together! I haven’t seen my parents in years, and when I showed them my heart, they …’ She broke off, throat closing, gesturing to the ball of parchment in Gwen’s fist that held everything her parents had to say to her.
Gwen made a sound, not quite a sob – it sounded like a gasp of pain, like someone had run her through with a sword. ‘And yet you hid it from me, when I could’ve been there, could have done this with you.’
Isobelle had no ready response, nor indeed any response that showed signs of getting ready anytime soon.
‘Isobelle, you kept this from me because you thought, somehow, telling me the truth would be the end of this, of us.’ Gwen’s eyes were shuttered hard, but wet with unshed tears. ‘Because you do see an expiration date for us.’
Isobelle wanted to shout a denial, to throw herself at Gwen and tell her she was wrong, that no such thought had ever crossed her mind. But she found she could not move, could not speak – because Gwen was right.
Isobelle managed to say three more words. ‘I was scared.’
Gwen took a step back, the crumpled parchment falling from her hand to the floor.
Isobelle could see her fighting to speak – her lips parted and her throat worked, but no sound came out.
For a moment, Isobelle’s heart squeezed, and she wondered if it was the spell, if Gwen was in there trying to break free.
But somewhere, deep down, Isobelle knew the truth.
She took a step towards Gwen, and stopped when the other girl recoiled and held up a hand between them.
‘Don’t,’ Gwen blurted. She took a few ragged breaths, each intake of air reforming that fortress around her emotions. Then, her voice taut, she said quietly, ‘I’m going to ask one of the girls to come stay with you tonight, so you won’t be alone if whoever did this comes back.’
‘Gwen, wait—’
Gwen shook her head. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll gather everyone and see if we can’t make some headway on the mystery of this place – solve this town’s mess once and for all. Prove there’s no necromancer, no spell, no magic whatsoever. And then, either way, I’ll see you safely back to Darkhaven Castle.’
‘Gwen –!’
‘Please,’ Gwen said, her stony voice cracking. ‘Please, let me go.’
‘No,’ Isobelle cried, rushing forward, reaching for Gwen’s arm. ‘I can’t let you leave, not like this – you have to stay, you have to let me make everything right again—’
‘You can’t always make things be how you want them to be!’ Gwen cried, pulling her arm away. She stood for one last, awful moment, and then left, ripping half of Isobelle’s heart from her as she went.