The Knight at Willow Creek Faire

• Chapter 1 Ye Olde Family Business
• Chapter 2 Chainmail and Corsets
• Chapter 3 The New Sir Galahad
• Chapter 4 Sparks at the Blacksmith Tent
• Chapter 5 Rehearsing the Fall
• Chapter 6 Funnel Cake and Feathers
• Chapter 7 A Tilt of the Lance
• Chapter 8 Mud, Sweat, and Pageantry
• Chapter 9 Behind the Royal Pavilions
• Chapter 10 The Jousting List
• Chapter 11 Crossed Swords
• Chapter 12 Mead and Meadow Musings
• Chapter 13 Unlaced and Undone
• Chapter 14 The Midsummer Tournament
• Chapter 15 Secrets in the Stables
• Chapter 16 A Knight Without Her Armor
• Chapter 17 The Maiden’s Favor
• Chapter 18 Broken Shields
• Chapter 19 Thunder Over the Arena
• Chapter 20 Off Script
• Chapter 21 The Royal Court Drama
• Chapter 22 Whispers by Firelight
• Chapter 23 The Final Pass
• Chapter 24 Unmasked at Willow Creek
• Chapter 25 Huzzah for the Heart
• Chapter 26 The Queen of My Own Faire

The grease from an oversized smoked turkey leg has a half-life longer than weapons-grade plutonium. It seeps through butcher paper, coats fingertips like motor oil, and embeds itself so deeply into rough-hewn pine countertops that by mid-July the wood itself smells faintly of hickory and brine.

I leaned over the prep counter, scrub brush in hand, attacking the crusty remains of last autumn’s mustard spills. Outside the screened window of the fryer shed, the late spring sun filtered through the canopy of the woods, dappling the dirt paths that crisscrossed the twenty acres of the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire. Right now, two weeks before opening weekend, the shire looked less like an enchanted English village and more like an abandoned logging camp that someone had decorated with faded burlap and crooked cedar shingles.

"Cat, stop murdering the table," my mother called out from behind the heavy iron smoker. She emerged wiped out, her face streaked with soot, wiping her forehead with the back of an oven mitt. She wore denim overalls, steel-toed work boots, and an ancient ballcap that read The King’s Feast: Meat on a Stick Since 1998. "You’re going to rub the grain right out of the timber."

"I’m trying to make sure the health inspector doesn't condemn us to the stocks before we even open the gates," I said, pausing to shake the cramp out of my wrist. "Look at this corner, Mom. It looks like someone sacrificed a bratwurst to an ancient deity."

"That is authentic seasoning," she replied, completely unbothered. She dropped a heavy stack of galvanized aluminum trays onto the shelf beneath the window with a deafening rattle. "People don’t pay sixteen dollars for a turkey drumstick because they want sterile hospital tiles. They pay for the illusion of scurvy and medieval splendor. If it looks too clean, they suspect we’re using microwaves."

"Nobody who spends sixteen dollars on poultry is looking for historical realism," I pointed out. "If they wanted realism, they’d demand we serve them stale rye bread and a cup of ditch water."

Mom chuckled, reaching into her pocket for a rubber band to tie back a stray lock of graying brown hair. At forty-eight, she had spent more than half her life running our family’s food stalls. My grandfather had started with a single funnel cake trailer back in the eighties, but when the original organizers of Willow Creek bought out the surrounding farm and turned it into a permanent seasonal attraction, the Miller family expanded. Now we held the concessions contract for three different outposts: The Boar’s Head Smokehouse, Friar Tuck’s Fryers, and the Queen’s Sweet Shoppe.

I was born in the middle of Faire season. My dad liked to tell everyone who came within earshot of the ale stand that I took my first steps on sawdust while wearing a miniature linen chemise. For seventeen years, my life had been dictated by the calendar of the Shire: winter was for repairing equipment and ordering wholesale spices; spring was for grounds cleanup and deep cleaning; summer was eight weeks of screaming Huzzah! until your vocal cords bled; and autumn was for counting the cash that kept our heat turned on through the winter.

The screen door banged open, rattling on its loose spring hinges, and my younger brother Leo stumbled in carrying a plastic crate full of wooden spoons, heavy tongs, and condiment squirt bottles. At fourteen, Leo had recently grown four inches in six months, transforming him from a nimble little goblin who could slip through crowds into a lanky, awkward giraffe whose limbs constantly operated on a half-second delay.

"Dad said the water pressure in the privy line is fixed," Leo announced, slamming the crate down onto the counter I had just scrubbed. "Which means we can finally run the hose over the fryer vat. Also, one of the resident peacocks chased me down the jousting lane again."

"Did you look it in the eye?" I asked.

"I didn't even look in its general direction," he protested, rubbing the back of his calf where he had apparently suffered an avian assault. "I was minding my own business, carrying mustard, and that blue monstrosity launched itself off the rail like a velociraptor."

"They own the park, Leo," Mom said mildly. "We just rent the dirt. Treat them with respect and they won't peck your kneecaps."

"They're pigeons with good PR," Leo grumbled, collapsing onto an empty pickle bucket. "Why can't we have normal family jobs? Lucas Miller’s parents own a dry cleaner. You drop off shirts, you pick up shirts, nobody has to pretend they're a peasant in the fourteenth century."

"Lucas Miller’s parents also don't get to spend August watching amateur swordplay and eating deep-fried dough for lunch," I countered, throwing a damp rag at his head. He caught it on the cheek with a wet slap and glared at me. "Get moving. We have forty bags of dry rub to mix before five, and Dad’s still down at the front office arguing about our vendor passes."

My father’s battles with the management of the Willow Creek Faire were the stuff of local legend. The Faire was owned by a small consortium of aging theater enthusiasts and local businessmen who operated under the corporate name of Shire Productions, LLC. Every May, without fail, they attempted to squeeze an extra half-percent off the concession revenue, and every May, my father threatened to pull our fryers and leave them to feed forty thousand tourists with nothing but salted nuts and pre-packaged cotton candy. It was an elaborate annual dance that ended with both parties shaking hands over lukewarm pilsner and signing the exact same contract they had signed the year before.

I grabbed the industrial box of coarse kosher salt from the dry storage corner and dumped it into a massive plastic mixing tub. Next came the brown sugar, the smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and a bucket of black pepper that immediately set off a chain reaction of sneezes across the shed.

"Bless you," Mom said, sneezing into her shoulder.

"God save the Queen," Leo mumbled, sneezing into his shirt collar.

Through the window, the distinct sound of hoofbeats thudded against the packed earth of the main thoroughfare. I paused, measuring cup halfway into the paprika.

The joust was the heart of Willow Creek. Everything in the park’s layout radiated outward from the central arena, an oblong dirt pit lined with split-rail fencing, a covered royal viewing box, and bleachers capable of holding twelve hundred spectators. In a small, seasonal independent faire like ours, we didn't hire the massive nationally touring stunt companies that traveled with full semi-trucks and choreographed laser shows. Willow Creek hired independent performers—regional trick riders, stunt doubles between commercial gigs, and local equestrians with enough nerve to ride a draft horse at a full gallop toward another human being holding an eight-foot piece of pine.

For the last four years, the lead knight had been a guy named Marcus Vance, a thirty-something former rodeo competitor who played the villainous Black Knight with so much swagger that half the moms in the audience openly rooted for him to run over the King. Marcus was loud, arrogant, tipped terribly at the food stands, and always smelled like stale clove cigarettes and expensive leather conditioner. Last August, I’d had an awkward, short-lived flirtation with one of his squires, an art student named Tyler who spent all his downtime drawing sketches of broadswords in his notebook. Tyler had kissed me behind the archery range during the season finale party, which had been nice enough, but by October he’d ghosted me to go back to college in Chicago, leaving me with nothing to show for the romance except a pencil sketch of a falcon and a lingering suspicion that boys who liked LARPing took themselves way too seriously.

The hoofbeats outside didn't have the heavy, plodding rhythm of Marcus’s usual mount, a massive Belgian mare named Buttercup who had been trained to ignore screaming children and flying turkey bones. This sounded lighter, quicker, the gait of a horse with something to prove.

"Are the performers in already?" I asked, wiping my powdery red hands on my apron and peering out through the wire mesh.

"Most of the cast moved into the campground yesterday," Mom said without looking up from her inventory clipboard. "Rehearsals start tomorrow morning. The office was supposed to post the cast list for the fight shows on the message board by the gatehouse at noon."

"I'm going to run the empty cardboard down to the recycling dumpster," I said immediately, dropping the cup.

"Cat, the rub isn't mixed," Leo groaned. "If you leave, Mom’s going to make me stir it, and my arms are already dead from the pickle buckets."

"Consider it strength training for your squire auditions," I said over my shoulder, already gathering up an armful of flattened boxes.

"I'm not auditioning for squire!" Leo yelled as the screen door slammed behind me. "I'm running the beverage cart, Mom said!"

The fresh air outside was a relief after the cloud of spices in the shed. The midday heat was building, warming the pine needles beneath my sneakers and releasing that specific, nostalgic scent that only belonged to the faire grounds: sap, damp earth, sawdust, and the distant, metallic tang of the pond down by the south gate.

Willow Creek had been built on the bones of an old apple orchard. The trees were long gone, replaced by half-timbered storefronts with crooked faux-stucco walls, brightly painted wooden booth signs swinging from wrought-iron brackets, and clusters of picnic tables shaded by green canvas awnings. Without the crowds, the place had an eerie, stage-set quality. Props were scattered everywhere: a plastic broadsword leaning against an outhouse wall; a wheelbarrow full of unpainted fiberglass gargoyles parked beside the leatherworker’s shop; a stack of painted wooden shields resting against an electrical junction box.

I dumped the cardboard into the blue dumpster hidden behind the privy block and took the long way around, cutting along the perimeter fence toward the arena.

The lists were quiet. The red-and-white canvas canopy over the royal pavilion was sagging on one side, waiting for the maintenance crew to tighten the guy-wires. The dirt in the ring had been recently dragged, cleared of rocks and smoothed out, though a fresh set of horseshoe prints cut a sharp arc around the south end of the barrier rail.

Down by the stables—a long, corrugated-metal shed that Shire Productions had lazily disguised with rough wood paneling—a horse was tied to the hitching post. It wasn't Buttercup. It was a tall, lean bay gelding with four white socks and a broad, intelligent face, currently busy trying to untie its lead rope with its teeth.

Beside the horse, someone was wrestling with a heavy leather Western saddle, hauling it off a wooden sawhorse.

I slowed my pace, leaning against the fence rail. It wasn't Marcus. The person hauling the gear was far too small, narrow-shouldered beneath an oversized gray hoodie, with dark hair shoved up under a backwards baseball cap. As they lifted the saddle onto the horse’s back, the animal shifted, sidestepping slightly, and the person let out a low, frustrated whistle.

"Stand, idiot," a voice muttered—clear, brisk, and definitely female. "We’ve done this fifty times. It's just a saddle, not an iron maiden."

The horse huffed, blowing air through its nostrils, but settled down, lowering its head as she reached beneath its belly to fish for the cinch.

I didn't mean to stare, but new people were rare at Willow Creek. The Faire was a closed loop; the same families ran the booths, the same community theater regulars played the King and Queen, and the same handful of college athletes took the hits in the stunt shows year after year. A new face was practically an event, especially in the stables, which had been Marcus Vance’s private kingdom for as long as I could remember.

She stepped out from behind the horse’s flank, pulling the cinch tight with a sharp, practiced tug, and glanced over toward the rail.

Her eyes caught mine instantly. They were an intense, sharp hazel, framed by dark brows that were currently drawn together in an unreadable expression. Her face was smudged with dust along the jawline, and she had a strip of medical tape wrapped securely around the knuckles of her left hand. She didn't look like an extra or a vendor’s kid. She moved with the quiet, functional economy of an athlete who didn't care about looking graceful because she was already too busy being efficient.

For a second, the breath hitched in my throat. It was a ridiculous, involuntary reaction—the kind of sudden internal stutter that usually happened when a car swerved into your lane or you dropped your phone on concrete.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice carrying across the empty arena without her needing to shout. It wasn't hostile, but it wasn't friendly either. It was the tone of someone who was working and didn't appreciate an audience.

"Just... looking at the horse," I said, clearing my throat and resting my elbows on the top rail to seem casually indifferent. "Nice bay."

She tapped the gelding’s shoulder, and the horse immediately shifted its weight obediently. "He’s alright when he isn't trying to eat his own reins. You work here?"

I glanced down at my grease-stained t-shirt and my flour-dusted jeans. "Concessions. Miller family. Smoked meat and high-fructose corn syrup."

A slight, almost imperceptible twitch pulled at the corner of her mouth. "Ah. The nobility of the Faire."

"We keep the realm from rioting," I said. "You take away the sugar, the peasants get ideas about labor rights. It’s an important civil service."

She reached for the bridle hanging from the fence post, slipping the halter off the horse’s nose with one hand while smoothly sliding the bit between its teeth with the other. The animal accepted it without a fight, clearly used to the routine. "Good to know. I’ll make sure to pay my taxes to the kitchen."

"Where’s Marcus?" I asked, curiosity overriding my common sense. "Did he buy a new horse? Usually he refuses to ride anything that doesn't look like a walking sofa."

She buckled the throatlatch, then turned, resting one hand flat against the horse’s sleek neck. She looked me up and down, taking in my dusty shoes, my messy ponytail, and the general aura of an overworked teenager whose parents owned three deep fryers.

"Marcus Vance took a stunt contract for a historical drama filming in Canada," she said plainly. "He won't be back this year."

I blinked. Marcus had been threatening to go to Canada for five seasons, but none of us had ever believed anyone would actually hire him to do anything other than fall off a bridge. "Seriously? Who’s taking the Black Knight role?"

She reached up, pulled off her baseball cap, and shook out a mass of dark, shoulder-length curls that were damp around the hairline from sweat. She wiped her forehead with the back of her taped hand, looking straight at me with those cool, steady eyes.

"Nobody," she said. "They rewrote the scenario. Sir Galahad’s got the midday show."

"And who's playing Galahad?"

She caught the reins in her fist, stepped into the stirrup, and swung herself up into the saddle with a single, fluid motion that looked so effortless it defied gravity. The horse stepped out immediately, turning toward the open arena gate, its ears pricked forward.

She looked down at me from eight feet in the air, gathering the leather reins between her gloved fingers.

"You're looking at him," she said.

Before I could find a response that didn't sound completely idiotic, she touched her heels to the horse’s flanks. The bay surged forward into a smooth, effortless lope, kicking up twin sprays of pale arena dust as they banked hard around the railing and headed straight down the center line of the list.

I stood there by the fence, the wind from her pass rustling the stray hairs at my temples, watching her sit the saddle like she had been born in it.

Back at the smokehouse, Leo was probably currently ruining seventy dollars worth of poultry seasoning, and my mother was probably wondering if I’d fallen into a vat of oil. But for three solid minutes, I couldn't move an inch away from the rail. Willow Creek was definitely not going to be the same this summer.

By four o’clock, my muscles felt like overstretched rubber bands, and the scent of smoked paprika had permanently grafted itself into the lining of my nostrils. We had mixed sixty pounds of rub, hauled two dozen sacks of lump charcoal into the dry lean-to, and scrubbed the interior of Friar Tuck’s Fryers until the stainless steel gleamed with a dull, reluctant brightness.

"Costume fitting," Mom announced, dropping the heavy wooden drop-leaf counter of the Boar’s Head with a solid thud. She peeled off her grease-spattered yellow dishwashing gloves and pointed a stern, prune-skinned finger directly at my chest. "Wardrobe trailer closes at six. If you don't get fitted today, Agnes will assign you whatever burlap monstrosity is left over from the Morris dancers. And God help you if you end up with the bells on your shins again."

A shudder ran through me at the memory of my fourteenth summer, when an inventory miscalculation had forced me to spend July dressed in green felt with copper jinglers sewn to my ankles. The tourists had spent six weeks asking me if I was an escaped Christmas elf.

"I’m going," I said, ditching my apron on the counter. "Leo, do you want to walk over, or are you going to stay here and bond with the pickle buckets?"

Leo was sprawled across three overturned plastic crates, looking like an abandoned marionette with all its strings cut. "If I stand up right now, my spine will crumble into dust. Tell Agnes I’m a medium. If she gives me the doublet with the moth holes, tell her I’ll grease the hinges on her costume trunks with rendered lard."

"Tell her yourself," I told him, stepping out the screen door and letting it slam shut.

The heat had peaked and begun its slow descent, softening into the golden, heavy warmth of late afternoon. As I walked the dirt thoroughfare toward the back lot, the Faire hummed with an odd, liminal energy. The midway was still largely lifeless, but behind the scenes, the ecosystem was reviving. Over by the Queen’s Garden, two men in cargo shorts and work boots were testing a wooden catapult with small, rotten cantaloupes, sending wet green shrapnel exploding against the back of the privy wall with hearty shouts of triumph. Further down, near the archery glade, a woman with braided silver hair sat cross-legged on a picnic table, patiently re-stringing a recurve bow while a Bluetooth speaker blasted synth-pop into the pine needles.

The wardrobe trailer was an ancient, thirty-foot aluminum RV parked behind the administrative shed, permanently blocked up on cinder blocks and shaded by a sagging green tarp. The air conditioning unit mounted on the roof rattled like a coffee grinder full of marbles, spitting a thin stream of condensation onto a patch of thriving wild nettles below.

I climbed the aluminum steps and pushed the door open. The atmosphere inside was fifty percent humidity, thirty percent mothballs, and twenty percent lavender-scented steam. Racks of clothing lined every square inch of wall space, groaning under the weight of velvet cloaks, linen chemises, wool hose, and faux-leather jerkins. In the center of the cramped aisle, bathed in the glaring fluorescent light of a hanging shop lamp, stood Agnes.

Agnes was seventy, stood barely five feet tall, and had been the head costumer of Willow Creek since the Carter administration. She held three straight pins between her lips, a pair of heavy tailor's shears tucked into the waistband of her floral pedal pushers, and a yellow cloth measuring tape draped around her neck like a pet python.

"Catherine Miller," she muttered without looking up, her voice slightly muffled by the metal pins. She was aggressively pinning the hem of an elaborate, ermine-trimmed royal mantle that smelled distinctly of cellar damp. "You’re late. The tavern wenches were supposed to report at two."

"I am concessions, not a tavern wench," I corrected gently, stepping sideways to squeeze past a towering stack of plastic storage bins labeled PEASANT CODPIECES - DO NOT MIX WITH MONKS. "And we were scrubbing fryers."

Agnes pulled the pins from her mouth with a practiced, terrifying flick of her wrist and speared them into a wrist cushion shaped like a fat tomato. She turned her hawkish gaze onto me, eyes narrowing behind thick bifocals. "Same difference. Concessions, wenches, washerwomen. You all wear the square-neck linen and the twill bodices. Stand on the box."

I dutifully stepped onto the small wooden apple crate near the fitting mirror. The glass was clouded with age, reflecting a slightly wavy version of myself: dusty sneakers, paprika-dusted cutoff shorts, and a navy tank top with faded collegiate lettering.

"Arms out," Agnes commanded.

I held my arms straight out like a scarecrow. She snapped the measuring tape across my ribs with the speed of an angry rattlesnake, grunting softly at the numbers.

"Still a thirty-four. At least someone in this camp has the decency not to gain ten pounds of winter bloat," she grumbled, stepping over to the rack labeled FEMALE PEASANTRY: BUST 32-36. She flipped through the hangers with a violent clatter of plastic. "Your mother took two extra yards of green twill last year for the tavern aprons and never brought back the remnants. Tell her I haven't forgotten."

"I’ll deliver the indictment," I promised.

Agnes yanked a stiff, chocolate-brown canvas bodice off the rack, followed by an off-white cotton chemise with elastic gathering at the shoulders. "Here. Put these on. We need to check the boning before I let you walk out of here. Shire Productions bought a bulk shipment of cheap plastic stays from a liquidator in Ohio, and if they snap when you’re bending over the fryer, they’ll puncture your lungs. I won't have a worker’s comp claim on my conscience."

She tossed the bundle into my arms and gestured vaguely toward the curtained dressing alcove in the back of the trailer.

I ducked behind the faded floral curtain and peeled off my t-shirt and tank top, trading them for the rough, unwashed cotton of the chemise. It was slightly scratchy, carrying the faint, lingering detergent scent of a thousand previous summers. I slid into the brown bodice, struggling with the back grommets until I realized Agnes had laced it completely backward. I wriggled around, tugging the front cords as best I could, before sticking my head out of the curtain.

"Agnes? I need an assist on the lacing. The knots are fighting back."

"Don't yell, my hearing isn't gone yet," Agnes called back, though she didn't move from her cutting table. "I’m in the middle of a collar. Somebody grab the laces on box three!"

"I've got it."

The voice didn't belong to Agnes. It was cool, smooth, and entirely too familiar.

A hand reached out and pushed the floral curtain back on its brass rings with a sharp rattle. I froze, my hands still tangled in the thick brown cords of my bodice, and found myself staring directly into the hazel eyes of the new Sir Galahad.

Up close, without the dusty baseball cap and the blinding sun of the arena list, she was even more striking. Her dark hair was pushed back from her forehead, still damp and unruly at the edges, curling tightly against her neck. She had shed the oversized gray hoodie, wearing a plain black compression shirt that showed off the lean, defined cut of her shoulders and arms. Her posture had an easy, grounded stillness to it—the way martial artists stand when they aren't trying to intimidate you, but definitely could if the situation required it.

She paused, taking in my tangled hands, the lopsided canvas garment, and the sheer deer-in-headlights terror currently plastered across my face.

"Need a hand?" she asked, one dark eyebrow ticking upward.

"I—yeah," I managed, my voice sounding an octave higher than normal. I cleared my throat, aiming for casual competence and landing somewhere near mortified squeak. "Agnes has a vendetta against functional zippers. It's an occupational hazard."

"Turn around," she said simply.

I obeyed, stepping back onto the wooden crate and facing the cloudy mirror. Behind me, she stepped into the small alcove. The space was tiny, designed for one person and a pair of trousers, which meant she was suddenly standing so close I could feel the residual warmth of her skin. She smelled like cedar shavings, saddle soap, and the crisp, clean scent of peppermint gum.

Her fingers caught the thick brown laces at the base of my spine. The contact sent a sharp, electric jolt straight up my vertebrae, so sudden and distinct that my shoulder blades instinctively twitched.

"Breathe out," she said. Her voice was right behind my left ear, low and practical. "If you breathe in while I pull, you won't be able to talk for the rest of the day."

I exhaled completely. Her hands moved with immediate, practiced authority. She didn't hesitate or fumble with the eyelets; she gathered the laces in her fists, braced her knuckles against the small of my back, and gave a firm, steady pull.

The canvas snapped taut against my ribs, hoisting everything upward and compressing my torso into the traditional, shelf-like silhouette of a sixteenth-century scullery maid. The sudden restriction forced my posture ramrod-straight.

"Too tight?" she asked, her fingers working deftly through a cross-stitch pattern up the center of my back.

"Only if... breathing oxygen is a requirement of the job," I wheezed, watching her in the mirror.

Her mouth curved into that same slight, devastating half-smirk I’d seen in the arena. "You get used to it. Try wearing thirty pounds of mild steel over a padded gambeson in ninety-degree weather. It makes canvas feel like pajamas."

"Is that your expert knightly opinion?" I asked, gripping the edge of the wooden crate to keep my knees steady. Her knuckles were warm where they brushed against the thin linen of my chemise, weaving the cords through the brass grommets with mechanical precision.

"It's my professional assessment," she countered. She reached the top of the bodice, pulled the remaining cord tight, and tied it off with a swift, tight square knot. "There. You won't fall out of it, and the plastic stays aren't digging in."

She didn't step back immediately. For a fraction of a second, her hands rested lightly on the tops of my shoulders, steadying me as I found my balance in the newly rigid contraption. Our eyes met in the cloudy silver of the mirror. Up close, her eyes weren't just hazel; they had tiny flecks of pale amber near the pupils, sharp and clear.

"Thanks," I said softly, the single word hanging heavy in the cramped space between us.

"Don't mention it," she said, letting her hands drop away. She took half a step backward, giving me room to breathe—metaphorically, at least, since the bodice was still doing its best impression of an iron lung. "I’m Kit, by the way."

"Cat," I said, turning around to face her. The canvas held me so rigidly that turning my upper body required moving my entire torso at once, like a wooden doll. "Catherine, technically, but nobody uses it unless I've dropped a box of frozen turkey legs."

"Nice to meet you, Cat." She extended her right hand. The skin of her palm was calloused along the base of the fingers, hard and dry, the unmistakable grip of someone who spent hours holding reins and weapons. When I took it, her grasp was firm and direct, lasting just a beat longer than a standard handshake.

"Kit what?" I asked, reluctant to let go, though I dropped my hand back to my side before it became weird.

"Kit Harlow," she said.

"Harlow..." I frowned, turning the name over in my head. Willow Creek didn't have many secrets, and the competitive medieval circuit was even smaller. "Any relation to Dave Harlow? The guy who runs the stunt barn down in southern Illinois?"

Her expression tightened slightly, the easy humor fading behind a shuttered, professional neutrality. "He’s my uncle. I worked at his facility for three seasons."

"He came through here four years ago with an exhibition troupe," I said, remembering the dust, the massive Clydesdales, and the terrifyingly realistic sword combat that had left half the royal court genuinely gasping for breath. "They said his riders could dismount at a gallop and hit a straw target while doing a backflip."

"The dismount is easy," Kit said, the corner of her lip twitching again, though the guard stayed up. "It’s the landing without tearing your meniscus that takes practice."

"Kit! Over here!" Agnes barked from the main aisle of the trailer, her patience clearly evaporated. "Stop socializing with the poultry department and let me look at your mail shirt. Shire Productions bought it from a decommissioned theater company in Milwaukee and half the shoulder rivets are rusted shut."

Kit stepped back, ducking through the curtain. "Duty calls. Try not to pass out before dinner, Miller."

"I survived three years of the Morris dancing bells, Harlow," I called after her, peeling the laces loose with clumsy fingers now that the expert was gone. "A little compressed air isn't going to kill me."

I changed back into my shorts and t-shirt as fast as my trembling fingers would allow, bundling the brown bodice and chemise under my arm. When I emerged into the trailer aisle, Kit was standing by Agnes’s central worktable, holding up a heavy, shimmering tunic of linked steel rings.

Even unadorned, the chainmail looked impossibly heavy, catching the fluorescent light with an oily, pewter sheen. Agnes was prodding the underarm seam with a metal knitting needle, muttering dark curses under her breath about cheap zinc plating.

Kit held the dead weight of the metal shirt with one hand, her shoulders completely relaxed under the strain. She caught my eye as I edged past the rack of royal velvet, offering a small, conspiratorial nod toward Agnes’s furiously bobbing gray head.

I swallowed hard, offered a weak wave, and practically bolted down the aluminum steps into the cooling evening air.

The outside breeze felt incredible against the back of my neck. I stood on the woodchip path for a long moment, clutching the rough canvas costume to my chest, my heart thumping against my ribs with an erratic, foolish rhythm that had absolutely nothing to do with the tight lacing.

Across the lawn, down in the center of the arena, the shadows were lengthening. The sawdust smelled sharp and sweet, mingled with the dry earth and the ever-present scent of woodsmoke drifting from the campground fire pits where the cast was settling in for the night.

Marcus Vance had been loud, arrogant, and predictable. He was a known quantity, a fixture of the Shire who took up space like an old piece of furniture.

Kit Harlow was something entirely different. She was a spark in a dry haystack, sharp and quiet and utterly out of place among the faded cardboard shields and plastic broadswords.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the evening air, and turned toward the smokehouse. Leo was waiting, the fryers still needed their final rinse, and the season hadn't even started yet. But as I walked back toward the Boar’s Head, the dirt beneath my sneakers felt a whole lot less solid than it had that morning.