34. AND THEN SHE FELL
And then she fell
Gwen fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Isobelle dropped to her knees beside her, ignoring the pain of hitting the stone. She grabbed at Gwen’s hand, cradling it between her own. ‘Gwen! Gwen!’
Gwen was horribly pale, and as limp as she had been when they pulled her from the harbour’s icy-cold waters.
A wave of fear ran through Isobelle, stealing her breath, setting off a distant buzzing in her ears.
Her mind, seizing on the smallest of details, saw that the water from the shattered spell jar was running through the gaps in the flagstones, a tiny river of it trickling down to pool against their joined hands.
‘Gwen!’ she tried again, squeezing her champion’s hand helplessly.
‘Gwen, please!’ Remembering Tabitha with a horrible jolt, she looked up, rising to her knees, preparing to shield Gwen’s body with her own if need be – but Tabitha was gone.
Isobelle prayed Olivia hadn’t managed to track them, that she wasn’t just outside the tower within Tabitha’s reach.
She looked around, seeking something, anything that might help. The shadows cast by the fire flickered and seemed to lengthen. The silence within the stone tomb of a tower was absolute.
She was alone.
Gwen’s lashes fluttered, and Isobelle’s heart leapt – but her beloved was unconscious. Asleep. Dreaming. Her head moved in a sudden, small jerk. Her lips parted, and a harsh breath slipped out.
Isobelle’s heart sank. This was no dream – she’d witnessed it enough times. She knew what it was, now. This was one of her nightmares.
She lifted one hand to cup Gwen’s cheek, the drops of water from the spell jar clinging to her skin like tears. Panic was coursing through Isobelle now – heart pounding, gut twisting, breath coming too fast – and so she almost missed the first hint of the spark.
Then her fingertips tingled, flickering with the first hint of that buzzing, humming energy – the feeling of the spell – wrapping itself around her hands where they touched Gwen’s skin.
Magic is mostly about intention.
Well, then. They lay in the remnants of a spell jar full of magic she and Gwen had made together. She had intention. She had determination, of the sort that had made things come true for her all her life.
What good was any of that if she couldn’t use it to rescue the girl she loved?
Isobelle narrowed her eyes, and with every ounce of the will that had brought Gwen into her life, that had brought together a small army of women to defeat a dragon, that had made a spell jar out of magic Tabitha told her wasn’t real – she focused.
Let me in, she thought, pressing her forehead to Gwen’s.
And then she fell.
Isobelle wakes in darkness.
The only sound is her own harsh breathing, her own beating heart. She waits for them to settle, listening in the empty blackness. From far away comes a sound – the faint, wave-like susurration of scales.
There is a torch in Isobelle’s hand – she raises it. Around her coalesces an image, one that disassembles and reassembles itself as she turns her head. Spinning itself from the darkness like a shadow play upon a screen, a tapestry of light and shadow.
She is in a mine tunnel. Tools litter the place, as if the miners simply walked off and left them where they were working. From the depths of the tunnel, the faint light of Isobelle’s torch picks out the bright glint of gold.
Not far away is an overturned miner’s cart, its bulk looming in the shadows. And against it, her sword in one hand and the other pressed to the cart, crouches Gwen.
Isobelle runs to her. ‘Gwen!’
Gwen drops her sword in surprise, whirling.
Her helmet visor is lowered, and only the quick sharp glint of eyes flashes through.
‘Isobelle, how are you …? Oh god, put out that light, it’ll see us!
’ She snatches the torch from Isobelle and thrusts it against the floor, beating the flame out with her boot as quickly and quietly as she can.
The only remaining light comes from a sputtering torch on the floor in the next corridor over, a decoy left to distract her enemy.
Isobelle lets Gwen pull her down into the shadow of the cart. She reaches for Gwen’s visor, but Gwen’s gloved hand grasps her wrist. ‘Don’t,’ Gwen gasps, before looking back over the edge of the cart. ‘I can’t let it see me.’
Isobelle can hear the pounding of Gwen’s heart, the harshness of her breath, as though they were her own. ‘Why can’t you let it see you?’
Gwen’s head tips up again, and again Isobelle sees the faint flash of her eyes. ‘When it sees me, it kills me.’
A shiver runs through Isobelle. ‘That isn’t how I remember it,’ she says carefully. ‘I was there, Gwen … I was here. I saw you defeat it.’
Gwen just looks over the edge of the cart again, as though she can’t hear Isobelle’s words. Her armour is dented and scratched, the metal of the breastplate torn like paper on one edge. She bears the marks of a thousand battles.
Isobelle whispers, ‘How long have you been here?’
Gwen’s helmet angles down for a moment. ‘Days? Weeks?’ She draws a shuddering breath. ‘Last night was the night before the tournament …’
Isobelle reels. She knows now, remembers now. Reaching out to Gwen. Finding that connection between them, from the spell they cast together, from long before they ever cast that spell. Following that thread, coming into her dream, stepping into Tabitha’s curse with her.
This is Gwen’s nightmare. This is the story that brings her awake, sweating and crying out, night after night.
‘You can’t be here.’ Gwen seems to have noticed the change too, suddenly realising Isobelle is somewhere she isn’t supposed to be. ‘You have to go … you have to run …’
Isobelle wants to argue with her, to tell her it’s not the night of the tournament, that they’re in a tower by the sea and not a mine underground, that she won this battle months ago and doesn’t need to be here – but she bites her lip. Gwen can’t hear her when she tries to explain.
And anyway, she knows, with a sudden clarity as sharp and gleaming as diamond, that isn’t what Gwen needs.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Isobelle says in her firmest voice, the one she’s been perfecting since childhood.
‘But it’s coming—’
‘Then I’ll wait with you until it does.’
Gwen gives a groan of frustration, muffled by her helmet. ‘I can’t … you don’t understand, Isobelle. What it does to me. What it takes from me. I can’t … I can’t let you see it too.’
Isobelle reaches out towards the helmet again – Gwen jerks back.
‘Don’t,’ says Gwen, but halts, the whites of her eyes showing behind her visor.
Isobelle goes still. ‘I know … but if wearing this means you can’t see the dragon properly, then you can’t see me, either. And I can’t see you.’
Gwen’s body is as tense beneath her armour as if she was frozen mid-battle. ‘I … I’m afraid to let you see.’
Isobelle bites her lip. ‘You think I can’t handle the dragon?’
A sharp breath from under the visor is her only answer for a moment. ‘It isn’t the dragon—’ The breath comes again, and Isobelle recognises it as the ghost of a laugh. ‘Isobelle, I’m afraid to let you see me.’
Isobelle can stand it no longer. She leans forward, grasping the edge of Gwen’s breastplate and laying her other hand at the edge of the helmet. Slowly, she presses her forehead against the metal, which has warmed to Gwen’s body, feeling strangely alive against her skin.
‘I’m here, Gwen,’ she whispers. ‘For as long as you need me. And for whatever you’re afraid to show me, I can wait. I’ll wait with you.’
Gwen gives a shudder. Then a touch on Isobelle’s hand makes her lift her head to find Gwen unbuckling her helmet, and pulling it off with a groan.
Isobelle takes it from her and tosses it aside, her eyes glued to her beloved’s face.
Her cheeks are red with effort, her eyes shadowed with exhaustion.
Her hair is damp with sweat, the braid unravelling and tendrils stuck to her cheeks.
A purpling bruise runs down the side of her neck, to vanish beneath the edge of her jerkin.
Gwen’s eyes fill with tears. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispers.
Isobelle reaches out and brushes back the wayward pieces of Gwen’s hair, strand by strand; she cups Gwen’s cheek, thumb brushing that flush of exertion.
‘I’ve got you,’ she whispers back.
Gwen leans into her, wraps her arms around Isobelle, and lets herself go. Her shoulders shake with sobs and with remembered tension. Her fingers close and release against Isobelle’s back; her face presses in against the crook of Isobelle’s neck.
Beneath her fear is just … sadness. Grief she doesn’t know how to let go of, for the way things have been, for the certainty she had before she was cast into shadow. Before she knew what it truly was to fight a monster.
Isobelle holds her until she comes back into her body, each of them leaning into one another. Gwen’s hand slides down her arm, as if properly feeling Isobelle’s presence for the first time. Her head lifts, her eyes red-rimmed but wondering, solemn – still frightened, but no longer falling.
Isobelle cannot help but smile, forgetting everything – the dragon, the mine, the spell, the curse, the tower – the only thing in her mind is Gwen, as dazzling as sunrise after a lifetime of darkness.
Gwen draws herself up and reaches for her sword. ‘I’m ready,’ she says softly.
Isobelle nods at her and reaches once more for the torch. It flares to life in her hand, and she stands, raising it up over her head, casting a pool of light that shimmies and dances as she waves the torch back and forth.
Gwen braces a foot against the overturned cart and shoves it away. She shifts her grip on her sword and raises the weapon.