Page 4 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

Too late, she snatched the lance from Neil’s outstretched hand and urged her horse onward, her haste sending her slightly off balance. The lance was couched too loosely under her arm. She bit down on her lip as she struggled to adjust it. This moment had always been an oasis of calm before, the quiet before the storm, the only noise she registered the sound of her own even breathing inside her helm. Now, everything was just soloud.

She could feel her fingers pressed uncomfortably into the joints of her gauntlet, the angle of her wrist not quite right, her seat on the horse unsteady. There was hot sweat prickling at the nape of her neck. Her boots were chafing, or on the verge of chafing—and now a sharp, undefinable pain somewherein her ribs, a rhythmic stabbing, as if she were the victim of a mouse with a splinter-sized sword. Her lance was slipping, and it meant that the coronel wasn’t set firm, her aim drifting. She looked up at Sir Grant as he approached. He had mud spattered up the flanks of his horse like wild sprays of blood.

It was too late; she wasn’t going to land a hit at all. She closed her eyes—coward—and had only taken half a readying breath when Sir Grant’s lance hit her so squarely in the chest it was as if her heart were a target, painted in livid scarlet on her breastplate.

It was like being struck by lightning. She was thrown clear of her horse, hitting the sand at an angle that sent pain rattling down her spine, blood on her tongue. She lay there, breathing hard as the horses moved away, watching the pigeons pass overhead as they took another lap. The crowd was making some sort of noise, but for the life of her, she couldn’t tell which.

She was back on the battlefield at Camelot, sprawled in the dirt, thinking of how strangely alike the screams of battle sounded to the happy roar of spectators. As she’d lain bruised and bleeding with her back pressed against the still-warm body of a fallen soldier, her eyes impossible to open, she’d pictured the flags flying above the tourney stands and told herself that it was all still a game they were playing. When the trumpets sounded, everybody would grumble and dust off their armor and get back up to shake hands and accept their failures and victories.

She could see the flags now. This was no battlefield. Her mind knew that; her racing heart did not.

“Leclair?” Neil said, out of breath as he leaned over her, his face pink. “Alive?”

It was just a bit of bruising. Perhaps a muscle wrenched toofar. In the old days, she would have shaken it off; even smiled about it, later, when the pinch of pain reminded her that she’d ridden hard and taken her knocks.

“Leclair, are youcrying?”

“No.” Bridget exhaled, gingerly heaving herself into a sitting position to see if it hurt. It did. “I’m sweating.”

“You’re sweating a lot. From your eyes. Is that usual?”

“Well,” Bridget said, wheezing slightly. “Now I feel self-conscious.”

Neil grabbed her by the pauldrons and dug his heels in to help haul her upright.

“Back on the horse?” he said hopefully. Bridget swallowed the blood in her teeth and bile in her throat, and was suddenly overtaken by a violent nausea, the black tickle of unconsciousness threatening the corners of her vision.

“No,” she said, taking off her claustrophobic helm—horrible thing, who’d invented it?—and handing it to Neil. “Withdraw.”

“Bridget—”

“Withdraw,” Bridget said again, only a slight tremor in her voice. “I forfeit.”

The tilt was already lost to her. She would not be a worthy competitor to anyone today.

Sir Grant was riding toward her, in a chivalrous and probably quite genuine display of concern, but Bridget took her horse by the reins and walked away, back toward the competitors’ barracks, hoping that from the stands nobody could see how much she was shaking.

The boos were nothing compared to the rush of blood still pounding in her ears.

Three

Being in the library was almost like being a prince again, when life was simpler, responsibilities slightly easier to avoid. Books didn’t demand that Gabriel come up with answers to impossible questions; they didn’t ask him to attend fittings for ceremonial robes that made him look like a sad tent topped with a miserable head, or urge him to attend constant feasts and tourneys hosted by various lords of the land he was supposed to be ingratiating to his cause.

His father had been charming in his own, gruff way, with the air of a retired warrior you wanted to drink ale with while he told you outrageous war stories. Gabriel had inherited none of this social ease. After one conversation with a northern noble he’d thought had gone quite well, he’d been informed by his new household steward, Lady Oakley, that he’d actually talkedatsaid noble for over an hour about the formation of rivers and estuaries.

Oakley had been kind about it, but it had been made veryclear that Gabriel could not tick “successful social interaction with a vassal” from his to-do list.

The list was real, although it was actually more of an in-depth strategy, devised by his steward immediately after her appointment. Gabriel hated every part of it. Unfortunately, it made a lot of sense. That only made him hate it all the more.

She’d presented it to him last November, with his father only two months buried and the nobles in uproar, when Gabriel’s stress levels had been rising by the day.

“The thing is,” she’d said, sitting down opposite him and putting a lot of large, ominous scrolls on his desk, “you ascended to the throne in the wake of a violent uprising, and one of your first acts as king was to reveal the long-buried romantic relationship between King Arthur and Sir Lancelot, and decree that your people were free to follow their example. And that’s… quite a lot. Most people might have started with a tax cut.”

“I did that too,” Gabriel had said, so exhausted that it had taken a lot of effort just to get those words out. He was still sure then that he’d done the right thing—what was less certain was whether he’d be able to survive it.

“Well, yes, but it was somewhat… overshadowed. People knew who your father was—a warrior king who defended his claim and swung the sword himself. Who are you going to be?”

“Um,” Gabriel said, trying to pick up what he thought was a cup of delicious, life-giving tea and realizing too late that it was an inkwell. “The king who… uh… brought education to ordinary people? The king who stabilized the market with a focus on strengthening relationships through international trade?”