The Summer Knight's Secret

• Chapter 1: Velvet and Chainmail
• Chapter 2: The Measure of a Squire
• Chapter 3: Rules of the Realm
• Chapter 4: Dust in the Lists
• Chapter 5: The Green Knight’s Shadow
• Chapter 6: Leather and Linseed Oil
• Chapter 7: A Tapestry of Expectations
• Chapter 8: Practice Swords and Stolen Fruit
• Chapter 9: The Midsummer Procession
• Chapter 10: Different Kinds of Armor
• Chapter 11: Whispers Behind the Pavilion
• Chapter 12: Holding the Reins
• Chapter 13: The Language of Ribbons
• Chapter 14: A Fault in the Breastplate
• Chapter 15: Lantern Light and Low Voices
• Chapter 16: The Queen's Favor
• Chapter 17: Words Left Unspoken
• Chapter 18: The Heat of the Forge
• Chapter 19: Questions in the Starlight
• Chapter 20: The Weight of the Shield
• Chapter 21: Storm Over the Fairgrounds
• Chapter 22: Unmasking the Champion
• Chapter 23: The Final Tournament
• Chapter 24: Splintered Lances
• Chapter 25: A Truce Declared
• Chapter 26: The Faire Farewell

The Ohio humidity hung over the valley like a wet wool blanket, but inside the storage barn of the Nottingham Valley Renaissance Faire, the air smelled exclusively of dried hay, machine oil, and twenty years of accumulated sweat.

Arthur Collins adjusted the heavy canvas straps of a battered breastplate, trying to ignore the way the rusted buckles bit into his collarbone. He was seventeen, tall, and built mostly of sharp angles that seemed designed specifically to catch on doorways and loose fencing. In the outside world, his summer was supposed to have consisted of lifeguard certification courses or bagging groceries at the local supermarket while his peers paired off in parked sedans by the lake. Instead, through a combination of his older sister’s theatrical connections and an urgent need to escape three straight months of well-meaning interrogations about his non-existent dating life, he had landed here.

"Don't yank on the leather like that, art boy," a voice called out from the depths of the costume racks. "The cows that gave their lives for those straps died during the Carter administration. Have some respect for the elderly."

Mina Ortiz emerged from behind a row of crushed velvet doublets, carrying a wicker basket overflowing with braided hemp cords and tin tankards. Mina was nineteen, possessed the posture of a retired ballerina, and was currently serving her third season as the faire’s assistant armorer and general warden of chaos. A smudge of black grease ran diagonally across her forehead like war paint.

"I’m not yanking," Arthur said mildly, loosening his grip. "I’m applying gentle, persuasive tension. There’s a distinct metallurgical difference."

"Tell that to the rivet you just popped off Sir Galahad’s spare greaves." Mina dumped the basket onto a scarred wooden workbench with a clatter that sounded like a hardware store collapsing down a flight of stairs. She wiped her hands on an apron that had clearly given up on ever being white again. "Listen up, squire-in-training. Today is orientation. The patrons don’t arrive until Saturday morning at ten hundred hours, which means we have forty-eight hours to turn twenty bewildered college freshmen and three high schoolers into a functioning feudal society. If you fail, the turkey leg vendors will eat you alive. They have knives, Arthur. Big ones."

Arthur offered a faint, lopsided smile. "I survived four years of high school gym class without making eye contact with a single person. I think I can handle a turkey leg."

"That's hubris speaking," Mina said, though the corner of her mouth ticked upward. "Come on. Mistress Henderson wants the whole livery gathered in the muster area before the heat makes the horses cranky. And put that gorget down—you’re holding it upside down, you’ll choke yourself."

Arthur sheepishly replaced the crescent of steel on its wooden peg and followed Mina out through the double doors of the barn.

The bright morning sunlight hit him like a physical blow. The Nottingham Valley Faire was not a modest strip-mall affair; it spanned forty acres of rolling woodland and compacted dirt paths, transformed into a permanent mock-Tudor village that looked remarkably authentic as long as one didn't look too closely at the PVC pipes hidden behind the ivy-covered trellises. Timber-framed cottages with faux-thatched roofs housed everything from blown-glass studios to meat pie bakeries. Overhead, strings of faded bunting fluttered lazily in the sluggish breeze, their heraldic beasts faded by seasons of torrential summer downpours.

To Arthur’s left, two men in linen breeches were arguing intensely over a plastic cooler full of energy drinks, both using exaggerated faux-Olde-English accents that they kept dropping whenever they got truly angry. Across the central green, known colloquially as the Maypole Plaza, a woman dressed as an elf was practicing stilt-walking while eating an unpeeled banana.

It was utterly ridiculous. And yet, for the first time since the school year had ended two weeks prior, Arthur felt his shoulders drop from their permanent defensive position near his ears.

Back in the suburbs, silence was dangerous. If you were seventeen and male, silence invited questions. Why aren't you going to the bonfire at the quarry, Arthur? Did you see the new girl who moved in down on Maple Street? What do you mean you don't think about anyone like that? Everyone thinks about someone like that. At school, romance was the oxygen everyone else seemed to breathe naturally, while Arthur felt like he was perpetually holding his breath, waiting for a suffocation that never quite arrived. Here, surrounded by grown adults earnestly debating the tensile strength of aluminum versus steel chainmail, nobody cared who you took to prom. They only cared if you could carry forty pounds of armor without dropping it in the horse dung.

"Arthur!"

A loud shout snapped him out of his reverie. Striding toward them along the gravel track was a towering figure wrapped in a heavy quilted gambeson. The padded tunic made the man look twice as broad as he already was, his skin tanned to the consistency of an old boot and his salt-and-pepper beard braided into two distinct forks.

"Bertram," Mina said, nodding in greeting. "I see you’ve chosen to begin sweating through your layers early today."

"Sweat is the body's natural chainmail lubricant, Ortiz," the man bellowed. Bertram Vance was the fight director and the undisputed patriarch of the faire’s jousting troupe. A former stuntman from California who had somehow washed up in central Ohio a decade ago, he treated the weekend tournament with the solemnity of an Olympic final. His pale blue eyes locked onto Arthur with the intensity of an approaching train. "Is this the stray your sister dragged in?"

"This is Arthur Collins," Mina said. "Arthur, meet Sir Bertram the Iron-Willed. When he’s not pretending to fall off horses for twenty dollars an hour, he yells at people about safety protocols."

"Safety is no mockery, girl," Bertram rumbled, extending a hand the size of a dinner plate. Arthur took it, bracing himself, and felt his fingers crushed in a surprisingly warm, iron-hard grip. "Good grip. Not afraid of labor. That’s something, at least. You ever worked with horses, Collins?"

"I’ve seen them in pictures," Arthur said truthfully.

Bertram sighed, a sound like bellows collapsing. "Marvelous. A clean slate. That means you haven’t learned any bad habits from the show-pony crowd down in Lexington. The joust is a violent, stupid, wonderful machine, boy. It runs on timing, trust, and precisely five people who know how to keep two half-ton draft horses from turning each other into sausage. As my squire, you don't just hand me a lance. You watch my blind spots. You check my girth straps. You tell me if the opposing knight has drunk too much craft beer at lunch before he climbs into the saddle. Do we understand each other?"

"Completely," Arthur said. "Watch the blind spots, check the girth, monitor alcohol consumption."

"Good. Now, pay attention to the muster. The Queen likes her speeches, and if she catches you yawning, she makes you clean the grease traps under the funnel cake booth."

They joined the crowd coalescing around the foot of the raised wooden pavilion at the edge of the jousting arena. Arthur looked around, fascinated by the dizzying variety of human plumage. There were peasants in earth-toned homespun tunics, archers with synthetic-fletched arrows bristling in back quivers, and court ladies whose silk skirts were hitched up with clothespins to keep the hems out of the gravel.

At the center of it all stood Mistress Henderson, who had played Queen Elizabeth I at Nottingham Valley for twenty-two consecutive seasons. Out of costume, she was a retired middle-school civics teacher with short gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses; in costume, crowned with a towering red wig and a stiff, lace ruff that framed her jawline like an ivory fence, she commanded absolute obedience.

"Listen well, rogues and vagabonds," she called out, her voice cutting through the humid air without the aid of a microphone. The chatter died down instantly. "The season opens in forty-eight hours. The health inspectors are walking the perimeter at two o'clock. If your grease fires aren't extinguished or your privy buckets are improperly stored, you will answer to me before you answer to the township."

A collective murmur of assent passed through the crowd.

"The script for the Grand Tournament remains largely the same as last year, with two exceptions," she continued, consulting a clipboard that looked hilariously anachronistic against her velvet stomacher. "Lord Blackwood will retain the championship through July, leading to the challenge by the Green Knight in August. However, due to Sir Donald’s knee surgery, our beloved Green Knight will be portrayed by a newcomer to the lists. Please extend your courtesy and your discipline to Rowan Gallagher."

A ripple of low whispers stirred the seasoned performers. Bertram grunted beside Arthur, his bushy eyebrows drawing together.

"Gallagher," the old knight muttered under his breath. "The kid from the Maryland circuit. Reckless as a startled stag."

Arthur followed the gaze of the people around him toward the wooden fence enclosing the paddocks. Leaning casually against the top rail, a half-eaten green apple in hand, was a tall, lean figure dressed in worn black riding trousers and a faded gray undershirt. Rowan Gallagher looked to be roughly Arthur’s age, perhaps a year or two older, with messy dark hair curled tight from the humidity and skin the shade of toasted almond.

As if sensing the weight of fifty pairs of eyes shifting in their direction, Rowan took a deliberate bite of the apple, chewed slowly, and gave the gathered faire cast an easy, two-fingered salute that was entirely lacking in historical accuracy but overflowing with effortless swagger.

"Showboat," Mina murmured beside Arthur, though there was a grudging respect in her tone. "Took second place in the unhorsing division at the Pennsylvania faire last year. People say they ride like they don't care if they break their own neck."

Arthur watched as Rowan tossed the apple core to an appreciative black Percheron in the paddock behind them, wiped their hand on the seat of their trousers, and offered a wide, crooked grin to no one in particular. It was the kind of bright, theatrical confidence that usually made Arthur want to sink through the floorboards—the sort of loud, magnetic presence that dominated high school hallways and demanded everyone else rearrange themselves around it.

Yet there was something curiously unmoored about the way Rowan stood, an edge of restless tension under the casual slouch, as though they were ready to vault over the fence and run if anyone looked too closely.

"Right," Mistress Henderson declared, clapping her hands once with the finality of a gavel. "To your stations. Armorers, lances must be tipped with balsa wood by noon tomorrow. Kitchens, prep the stew. Squires, Bertram will show you how to survive your first weekend without losing an ear."

The crowd broke apart into a flurry of directed energy. Performers scattered toward their respective shops and tents, their banter rising in volume as the official muster ended.

Bertram turned to Arthur, clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Time for your first lesson, boy. The stable block. Come along."

The stables sat at the northernmost curve of the fairgrounds, shaded by a dense canopy of ancient oaks that provided the only true relief from the midday heat. The air here was cooler, heavy with the sweet, rich scents of molasses feed, damp straw, and clean horsehide. The stalls were massive, built to accommodate the enormous draft horses favored for the heavy jousting routines.

"This is Barnaby," Bertram said, stopping before a box stall where an enormous dapple-gray gelding with hooves the size of dinner plates stood munching steadily on a hanging net of hay. "Belgian cross. Steady as a granite cliff. A bomb could go off beneath his tail and he’d only twitch an ear to see if it dropped any oats. You and Barnaby are going to be best friends, Collins, because if Barnaby decides he doesn't like how you tighten his cinch, he won't kick you. He will simply lean against you until you become two-dimensional."

Arthur cautiously raised a hand, allowing the horse to sniff his knuckles. Barnaby exhaled a warm, damp cloud of air that smelled of sweet grass, then gently pressed his broad forehead against Arthur’s chest with enough force to push the boy back half a step.

"See? He tolerates you," Bertram grunted approvingly. "Now, the first duty of the squire is the tack. Over here."

For the next two hours, the world shrank to the tangible, practical mechanics of the tournament. Bertram was a demanding teacher, but his instructions were grounded in physical reality, free of the social subtext that Arthur found so exhausting in everyday life. A leather strap either held under fifty pounds of tension or it snapped. A cinch was either set behind the elbow or it gall-burned the horse. The rules were clear, governed by physics, geometry, and centuries of trial and error.

Arthur found himself relaxing into the rhythm of the work. He learned how to lift the forty-pound Western-style jousting saddle without straining his lumbar spine, how to run his fingers along the stitching of the stirrup leathers to check for dry rot, and how to buff surface rust off a steel breastplate using coarse wool and mineral oil.

"You're a natural with the metal, Collins," Bertram observed, watching as Arthur methodically worked a stubborn patch of orange oxidation off an arm harness. "Most of the kids they send me treat the gear like Halloween costumes. They don't understand that ten pounds of iron moving at twenty miles an hour will crush a man's ribs like dry twigs if the harness shifts an inch."

"It’s just maintenance," Arthur said, his thumb following the clean curve of the elbow cop. "If you take care of the joint, the joint protects you."

"A philosopher in a squire's doublet," Bertram chuckled, turning back to oil a bridle. "Heaven help us."

The heavy wooden half-door at the far end of the stable aisle creaked open, admitting a sliver of bright sunlight and the sound of low, steady whistling.

Arthur looked up from his work. Rowan Gallagher walked down the corridor, their stride loose and rolling, carrying a scarred leather saddlebag over one shoulder. Without the gambeson, Rowan looked wiry, their forearms corded with the quiet, lean muscle that came from hard physical labor rather than a gym. They had tied their dark hair back with a scrap of blue ribbon, though several unruly curls had already escaped to cling to their damp neck.

"Bertram," Rowan said, stopping outside the tack room door. Their voice was surprisingly smooth, pitched right in the middle register, neither deep nor particularly high, with a faint, unplaceable lilt. "The paddock master said I could stow my personal kit in the end locker."

Bertram didn't look up from his bridle. "Locker four. Don't leave your boots in the middle of the floor. Collins here already tripped over a water bucket once today; I don't need him breaking his neck before we even get to the dress rehearsal."

Arthur felt his face warm slightly, though Bertram’s tone was fond enough. Rowan turned their dark hazel eyes toward him, the faint, knowing smirk playing on their lips again.

"Collins, is it?" Rowan asked, leaning against the doorframe. Up close, Arthur noticed a thin, pale scar slicing through Rowan’s left eyebrow, giving their gaze an inherently questioning, asymmetrical look. "The new squire?"

"Arthur," he said simply, setting down the polishing rag and wiping his hands on his canvas trousers. He braced himself internally, waiting for the casual, sizing-up scrutiny that usually accompanied introductions with athletic teenagers. He expected the usual rapid calculation: Is this guy competition? Is he weird? Does he fit into the social ladder above me or below me?

Rowan merely tilted their head, their gaze resting on Arthur's face for a second before dropping down to the armor resting on the workbench. "Good work on the cop. The fluting on the Italian pieces is a nightmare to clean if you let the grit settle into the creases."

Arthur blinked, surprised. "You recognize the style?"

"Milanese, circa late fifteenth century," Rowan said, stepping closer into the tack room. They dropped their saddlebag by locker four with an unceremonious thud. "Or at least, a very decent twentieth-century replica made by someone who actually gave a damn about historical accuracy. Bertram doesn't ride in junk."

"Damn right I don't," the old knight barked. "Now quit flattering my gear and go check your mare, Gallagher. She was pacing the fence line when the horn blew for muster."

"She hates the trumpets," Rowan said easily, not taking offense. "She thinks they’re giant brass hornets." They turned back toward the door, then paused, looking back over their shoulder at Arthur. "If you’re going to be around the lists tomorrow, Collins, keep an eye on Bertram’s left stirrup. He favors his right knee when he mounts, and the left leather stretches out faster."

"Gallagher!" Bertram warned, raising a brass buckle threateningly. "Out of my tack room before I have you cleaning the drainage ditches with a soup spoon."

Rowan laughed—a sudden, bright, unvarnished sound that seemed to bounce off the cedar walls—and vanished back into the sunny afternoon.

Arthur stared at the empty doorway for a moment, the echo of the laugh still hanging in the cool stable air. There had been no posturing in the interaction, no subtle testing of boundaries, no confusing social signals to decipher. Rowan had simply stepped in, spoken about the work, and left.

"Don't let them rattle you," Bertram grunted, finally setting down the bridle. "Rowan's good with the lances, maybe the best natural rider under twenty I’ve seen in a decade. But they’re used to running solo. The Maryland show was a mess—lots of ego, lots of politics. Around here, we ride for each other, not the crowd. They’ll figure that out, or they’ll spend August sitting on the bench watching the pageant."

"They seemed... alright," Arthur offered carefully, picking his rag back up.

Bertram gave him a sharp, evaluating look from beneath his heavy brows. "You're a quiet one, Arthur. Most lads your age are either trying to prove they’re men by puffing out their chests, or they're chasing after the maidens down at the rose arbor."

Arthur kept his eyes firmly fixed on the steel breastplate, his hands moving in tight, steady circles over the metal. The familiar knot of unease tightened briefly in his stomach, the old instinct to deflect or change the subject kicking in automatically.

"I prefer the horses," Arthur said evenly, keeping his voice light, neutral, and unbothered. "They don't expect you to make small talk."

Bertram let out a low, rumbling laugh that sounded like a dry creek bed filling with water. "Amen to that, son. Amen to that. Now, put some muscle into that shoulder piece. We lose the light in two hours, and if the rust isn't off the articulation points, Sir Galahad is going to squeak like an unoiled barn door every time he tries to salute the Queen."

Arthur nodded, bearing down on the cloth. The friction warmed the iron under his fingertips, the scent of the mineral oil rising up to mix with the dry dust of the barn.

Outside, across the wide, green expanse of the fairgrounds, the faint, reedy sound of a recorder began to play, practicing an ancient Tudor tune over and over until the notes smoothed out and floated away on the summer heat. Arthur listened to the rhythm of the melody, the rhythmic scrape of his own cloth against the steel, and the steady, unhurried breathing of the great draft horse in the stall behind him.

The velvet was stifling, and the iron was cold, heavy, and unforgiving. But as the shadows lengthened across the wooden floorboards, Arthur felt a strange, quiet settle over his chest—a sudden, unprompted feeling that for the first time in seventeen years, he might have found a place where the armor he wore on the outside matched the silence he kept within.

Dawn at Nottingham Valley arrived not with the gentle chorus of songbirds, but with the flat, percussive crack of a cast-iron skillet meeting a wooden table.

Arthur bolted upright in his cot, his skull missing an exposed oak beam by a fraction of an inch. His ribcage ached from thirty-six hours of hauling harness, and his hands were stained an indelible shade of graphite gray from mineral oil and metal shavings. The squires’ barracks—a converted sheep shed partitioned off behind the farrier’s lean-to—smelled overwhelmingly of damp cedar, stale sweat, and the clove cigarettes someone had been smoking outside the back window around three in the morning.

"Up, ye lazy varlets!" bellowed Toby, the head groundsman, his voice echoing off the corrugated tin roof. "The water truck’s here, the honey wagons are clearing the rear privies, and the Queen wants the tiltyard raked smooth enough to eat porridge off by eight bells! Move your carcasses!"

A chorus of muffled groans and thrown pillows answered him. Arthur swung his legs over the rough edge of the cot, wincing as his bare feet hit the cold, hard-packed earth. Next to him, a college sophomore named Daniel, who had been cast as a herald solely because he played trumpet in the Ohio State marching band, was currently trying to pull a wool sock over his head while half-asleep.

Arthur spared himself the indignity of panic. He pulled on his linen undershirt, stiff from line-drying in the thick valley humidity, and laced his canvas work breeches. He was discovering that the hardest part of Renaissance faire life wasn't the heavy lifting or the odd jargon; it was the relentless logistics of keeping an artificial seventeenth century running on modern mechanical infrastructure.

Outside, the mist clung low to the swales of the tournament arena. The dirt lists stretched two hundred yards from end to end, flanked by high timber grandstands draped in crimson and gold bunting that looked damp and wilted in the morning gray.

Arthur grabbed a wide wooden rake from the toolshed and began dragging it through the damp topsoil, working out the divots left by the heavy draft horses during yesterday’s rehearsal. The repetitive motion was soothing. With every pull of the tines, the clods broke apart, leveling the ground into a uniform ribbon of dark earth.

"You’re working too hard on the edges," a voice called out from the fence rail.

Arthur paused, resting his palms on the rake handle. Rowan Gallagher sat perched atop the split-rail fence, their knees drawn up to their chest and a tin mug steaming in their hands. They were wearing a faded charcoal hoodie over their breeches, the sleeves shoved up to their elbows, looking completely immune to the morning chill.

"The horses don't run on the edges," Rowan continued, gesturing with the mug toward the center line. "They run within three feet of the tilt rail. You can leave the perimeter rough. Save your back for the armor."

"Bertram said he wanted it smooth enough for a banquet," Arthur replied, his voice still raspy with sleep. "I don't think he was offering exceptions for horse geometry."

Rowan hopped down from the fence, landing with a muted thud in the soft dirt. They walked over, their boots kicking up small puffs of damp dust, and peered closely at the swath Arthur had just finished.

"Bertram has two artificial hips and thirty years of scar tissue," Rowan said dryly. "He talks like a drill sergeant because if he stops barking, he’ll realize how much his knees hurt. Give me that."

Before Arthur could object, Rowan reached out and took the rake from his grip. Their fingers brushed his—calloused, warm, and unexpectedly firm. Arthur reflexively pulled his hands back, not out of revulsion, but out of the ancient, ingrained habit of putting distance between himself and anyone who stepped inside his personal perimeter.

Rowan didn't seem to notice, or if they did, they didn't care. With long, sweeping strokes that engaged their entire core rather than just their arms, Rowan began dragging the rake along the center furrow, turning over the compacted earth with rhythmic efficiency.

"You hold it from the shoulders, Collins," Rowan said, breathing evenly through their nose. "If you use your biceps, you’ll be dead by Saturday noon. You’ve never done real manual labor, have you?"

"I shelved books at the municipal library for two years," Arthur said, falling into step beside them. "And I painted my uncle’s deck once."

"A true son of the soil," Rowan muttered, a fleeting smirk tugging at the corner of their mouth. "Well, library rules don't apply out here. Nobody cares if you're quiet, and nobody’s going to shush you. But if you drop a saddle in the mud or miss a loose cinch, someone breaks an arm. Or a horse breaks a leg. Everything here has weight."

"I noticed," Arthur said, looking down at his blistered palms. "The weight part, mostly."

Rowan stopped raking and leaned on the tool, their hazel eyes fixing Arthur with an intensity that felt entirely too sharp for seven o'clock in the morning. "Why did you take this gig, anyway? Most kids your age who sign up for the faire are either theater nerds looking to play Hamlet in the mud, or fantasy freaks who think they’re going to get into sword fights with real steel."

Arthur hesitated. The truth was a labyrinth he rarely invited anyone into. How did he explain that high school had become a suffocating corridor of romantic expectations he couldn't meet? How did he explain the sheer exhaustion of having his friends constantly analyze his lack of interest in girls, or guys, or anyone at all, treating his natural equilibrium like a medical mystery waiting for a diagnosis?

I just want to be useful without being measured, he thought. I want people to care about what my hands can do, not who my heart belongs to.

"My sister told me they needed someone who wasn't afraid of hard work and could follow instructions without improvising," Arthur said aloud, choosing the safest fragment of the truth. "And I wanted to spend three months somewhere that didn't feel like a strip mall."

Rowan studied him for a long beat, their dark curls shifting slightly in the early morning breeze. The scar through their eyebrow caught the pale light. "Fair enough," they said, handing the rake back to Arthur. "Though you picked a weird place to hide. Nothing stays secret around here for long. The gossip at this faire moves faster than the Wi-Fi in the main office."

"I’m not hiding," Arthur said defensively, taking the rake.

"Sure you aren't," Rowan replied easily, turning back toward the paddocks. "Keep the center line deep, Collins. The Green Knight needs good footing if he's going to stay on his beast."

Arthur watched Rowan walk away, their hands shoved deep into their hoodie pockets, before setting the rake back to the dirt.

By mid-morning, the temperature had climbed into the high eighties, turning the tournament grounds into an open-air sauna. The valley air was thick with the scent of pine shavings, frying funnel cake batter from the newly fired test-fryers, and the pungent tang of hoof dressing.

Bertram appeared at ten, clad in his everyday uniform of faded denim overalls and a wide-brimmed straw hat that made him look like a disgruntled Amish elder. He carried a heavy canvas bag of tools, which he dumped at Arthur’s feet with a resounding thud.

"Suiting up," Bertram barked without preamble. "We run the afternoon tilt at full canter. The Queen wants to see how the balsa breakaway tips behave on the new shields. That means I need to be in harness, and you need to learn how to put it on me without pinching my hide."

Arthur wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. "Where do we start?"

"At the bottom, idiot," Bertram said, not unkindly. "You don't put a roof on a barn before you lay the foundation. Greaves first, then the cuisses, then the maille skirt. Come along."

They set up their staging area behind the red tournament pavilion, where a pair of sturdy wooden sawhorses held the components of Bertram’s armor. The steel gleamed with a dull, oiled sheen, free of the rust Arthur had scrubbed away the day before.

For the next forty-five minutes, Arthur was subjected to a masterclass in human packaging. He learned that armoring a knight was an intimate, exhausting dance of leather laces, brass rivets, and sheer mechanical leverage.

"Pull the backstrap until you feel the leather bite, then give it half an inch of slack," Bertram instructed, his breath coming in heavy grunts as Arthur hauled on the thick hide behind his shoulder blades. "A knight who can't expand his lungs is a knight who passes out after thirty seconds of hard riding. You want him snug, not asphyxiated."

Arthur worked with focused precision. He knelt in the dirt, wrapping the steel greaves around Bertram’s tree-trunk calves, lining up the leather straps with the brass buckles. His fingers were stiff and sore, but he found a strange satisfaction in the logic of the plates. Each piece of steel was shaped to deflect, to guide force away from bone and tendon, interlocking with the next like the scales of an iron fish.

"Now the breastplate," Bertram ordered. "Lift from the hips, Collins, don't throw your back out."

Arthur hoisted the heavy front plate, holding it steady against Bertram’s massive chest while the old man reached over his shoulders to drop the leather suspenders into place.

"Fasten the flank straps," Bertram commanded, his voice muffled slightly by the high steel collar of the gorget. "And make sure the tongue of the buckle goes through the third hole. Not the second, not the fourth. The third. I ate two breakfast burritos this morning, and the third hole is the only thing standing between me and severe indigestion."

Arthur hooked the strap and pulled. The heavy latigo leather groaned under the tension. He found the third hole and slipped the brass tongue through, smoothing down the excess strap so it wouldn't snag on the horse’s reins.

"Done," Arthur said, stepping back and catching his breath.

Bertram rolled his shoulders, the articulated steel lames clicking against one another in a rhythmic, mechanical cascade. He twisted left, then right, testing the range of motion. "Not bad, Collins. A little loose on the left pauldron, but it won't kill me. Get the helmet and the heavy shield, then bring Barnaby to the mounting block."

Ten minutes later, Arthur was leading the massive dapple-gray gelding out of the shaded stable lane toward the lists. Barnaby walked with a slow, ponderous dignity, completely unbothered by the clang of the steel harness Bertram was wearing as he walked alongside them. The horse’s hooves made deep, rhythmic thuds in the soft earth, a heavy bassline under the distant squawk of testing sound systems and the clatter of food stalls being stocked.

At the entrance to the arena, the other knights were assembling.

There was Sir Donald, the veteran rider who was sitting out the season due to his blown knee, leaning heavily on a carved wooden cane and shouting unsolicited advice to anyone who made eye contact. There was Marcus, a handsome twenty-four-year-old personal trainer who played Lord Blackwood, the arrogant champion, wearing a suit of blackened steel trimmed in brass that looked as though it had been polished with jewelry cleaner. Marcus was currently surrounded by three female squires who were eagerly adjusting his cape and offering him chilled sports drinks.

Arthur watched the dynamic with a detached, clinical curiosity. Marcus was flirting openly with all three of them, tossing out easy, theatrical winks and flexes that seemed to work like magic. The girls laughed at everything he said, their postures mirroring his, leaned in, attentive, clearly caught in the gravitational pull of the whole routine.

Arthur looked away, feeling the familiar, hollow ache of alienation. It was the same script he had seen in the high school cafeteria every day for four years. The ritual dances of attraction, the subtle cues of flirtation, the unspoken negotiations of desire—to Arthur, it all looked entirely scripted, yet impossible to learn. It was a language everyone else had been born speaking, while he was left staring at the syllables, unable to fathom why anyone would want to spend so much energy trying to impress someone else in that particular, exhausting way.

"Penny for them," a voice murmured beside his ear.

Arthur jumped, nearly dropping Barnaby’s reins.

Rowan was standing at his side, leading a sleek, coal-black mare with an arched neck and wild, intelligent eyes. Rowan was wearing their gambeson now—a dark forest-green quilted tunic that fit their lean torso snugly, fastened with brass toggles down the front. They carried their steel helmet tucked under one arm, their dark hair tied back tightly, accentuating the sharp planes of their cheekbones and the quiet intensity of their expression.

"You look like you're trying to solve a calculus problem," Rowan said, nodding toward Marcus and his entourage.

"Just... observing," Arthur said, tightening his grip on the leather lead. "The ecosystem."

"Marcus is an idiot," Rowan said bluntly, their voice devoid of malice, stating it simply as an empirical fact. "He drops his shield every time he takes a blow, he pulls on his horse's mouth when he gets nervous, and he thinks the faire exists to supply him with college girls. In three weeks, he’s going to get unhorsed because he was too busy winking at the front row to watch his balance."

Arthur couldn't help a small, dry smile. "You don't seem very impressed by the reigning champion."

"I respect the craft," Rowan said, stepping closer to their mare and running a hand down the animal’s sleek neck to calm her as a trumpet sounded in the distance. "I don't respect the posturing. When you're running down the tilt at twenty miles an hour with ten feet of solid ash leveled at your chest, your ego doesn't protect your ribs. The only thing that matters is the horse, the line, and the guy holding your stirrup."

Rowan turned their hazel eyes toward Arthur, their gaze completely steady, devoid of the theatrical pretense that seemed to coat everyone else in the arena. There was an honesty to the look that made Arthur’s pulse kick up a fraction, not out of fear or romantic panic, but out of the sheer rarity of being spoken to like a complete peer.

"You're a good squire, Collins," Rowan said quietly. "Bertram’s armor didn't squeak once when he walked out here. For a rookie, that’s almost a miracle."

"Thanks," Arthur managed, feeling a sudden, genuine heat in his cheeks that had nothing to do with the Ohio sun. "I just... I like making sure things work the way they're supposed to."

"Good. Hold onto that." Rowan swung up onto their mare’s back in a single, fluid motion that looked almost effortless, settling into the heavy wooden stirrups with the ease of someone who had spent more of their life in a saddle than on their own two feet. They looked down at Arthur, adjusting the leather reins between their gloved fingers. "See you on the other side of the lists, squire."

The rehearsal began five minutes later.

Mistress Henderson stood in the royal box, a stop-sign paddle in one hand and a whistle around her neck, directing the chaos with the ruthless precision of an air traffic controller.

Arthur stood by the railing near the south gate, a spare lance resting against his shoulder and a water bucket at his feet. His job was simple: when Bertram finished his pass, Arthur was to run out, check the girth, hand up a fresh lance if the tip had shattered, and inspect the horse's bit for foam or blood.

The thunder of the horses was something you didn't just hear; you felt it through the soles of your boots, rattling up through the bones of your shins to settle in the pit of your stomach.

Marcus and Bertram went first. Lord Blackwood versus Sir Bertram the Iron-Willed. They charged down opposite sides of the heavy wooden tilt barrier, their lances leveled, the draft horses churning the carefully raked dirt into airborne clods.

Crack!

The sound of the balsa tip shattering against Bertram’s heavy wooden target shield was like a shotgun blast. Wood splinters showered the dirt lists like confetti. Bertram swayed back in his saddle, his massive thighs gripping Barnaby’s flanks, absorbing the immense shock wave before righting himself with an iron grunt. Marcus galloped past, his lance splintered down to the handguard, raising his arm to play to the empty bleachers.

Arthur bolted forward the moment Barnaby slowed to a walk. He caught the reins near the bit, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"Good pass!" Arthur called out over the horse’s heavy, rhythmic blowing.

"Felt like a love tap," Bertram grunted, tossing the shattered stump of his lance into the dirt. "The kid’s aiming too high. Trying to hit the neck instead of the target. Collins, check my right stirrup leather. I felt it slip a notch."

Arthur ducked under the massive shoulder of the horse, his fingers finding the buckle hidden beneath the saddle flap. The leather was slick with horse sweat, but he forced the pin into the next hole, locking it down hard. "Set!" he shouted.

"Fresh wood!" Bertram barked.

Arthur sprinted to the rack, grabbed a nine-foot pine lance with a balsa breakaway tip, and ran it back to the old knight, hefting the heavy butt end up so Bertram could slot it into his armored lance rest.

"Now clear the list!"

Arthur scrambled back behind the safety rail just as the horn blew for the next pass.

This time, it was Rowan.

The Green Knight rode not with the ponderous, heavy-armored momentum of Bertram or Marcus, but with an aggressive, predatory fluidity. Rowan leaned forward over the neck of their black mare, completely in sync with the animal’s violent, surging strides. They didn't hold the lance like a club; they held it like an extension of their own arm, the tip dead-steady, tracking the center of the opposing knight’s shield with terrifying accuracy.

The opposing rider—a seasoned stuntman named Greg playing Sir Percival—came down the opposite side of the rail, his lance leveled straight at Rowan’s chest.

Arthur found himself gripping the top rail of the fence so hard the splintered wood bit into his palms. He leaned forward, his breath catching in his throat. Rowan looked impossibly slight against the massive bulk of the charging draft horse, a lean slip of green and steel flying straight into an oncoming train.

In the final split second before impact, Rowan shifted. It was an adjustment so minuscule Arthur almost missed it: a dip of the left shoulder, a fraction of an inch of slack given to the reins, angling their body just enough to present the curved surface of their shoulder plate rather than the flat face of their chest.

CRACK.

Greg’s lance shattered cleanly against Rowan’s pauldron, sending white splinters flying twenty feet into the air. At the exact same instant, Rowan’s lance struck the dead center of Greg’s shield with the force of a battering ram.

The impact lifted Greg an inch out of his saddle. His horse stumbled, recovering with a violent snort, while Rowan galloped smoothly through the cloud of sawdust and splintered pine, their seat completely unbroken, their posture upright and totally composed.

A spontaneous cheer went up from the gathered troupe along the rails.

Rowan wheeled the black mare around in a tight, controlled circle at the end of the run, bringing the animal to a halt right in front of the gate where Arthur stood. The horse was blowing hard, nostrils flared wide and pink, its dark coat gleaming with sweat.

Rowan reached up with a gloved hand and flipped up the visor of their helmet. Their face was flushed dark red from the heat, sweat plastering curls of dark hair to their forehead and cheeks, but their eyes were blazing with an adrenaline-fueled brightness that made Arthur’s breath hitch.

"Collins!" Rowan called out, their voice breathless, carrying over the noise of the arena.

Arthur stepped forward automatically, slipping between the rails into the hot dust. "Yeah?"

"Tell Bertram the breakaway tips are too soft," Rowan said, a fierce, electric grin breaking across their face, making the pale scar on their eyebrow dance. "They’re shattering on the crest instead of driving through to the backing. I barely felt that hit."

"You... you almost took his head off," Arthur said, looking past Rowan to where Greg was currently being helped down from his saddle, clutching his bruised shoulder and swearing colorfully in modern English.

Rowan chuckled, the sound rich and rough around the edges. They reached down, extending their arm, and for a bewildering second, Arthur thought they were going to reach for him. Instead, Rowan tapped Arthur’s shoulder with the blunt leather butt of their riding whip, an informal, easy knightly accolade that felt startlingly personal.

"If you don't ride hard, Collins, there’s no point in putting on the steel," Rowan said softly, their gaze locking onto Arthur’s with an intensity that felt entirely private, despite the forty people milling around them in the sun. "Keep watching the blind spots. I think I’m going to need you this season."

Before Arthur could process the words, Rowan wheeled the mare around and trotted back toward the farrier’s shed, leaving Arthur standing alone in the center of the dusty lists.

The afternoon sun beat down on his shoulders, baking through the heavy linen of his shirt. Around him, the shouts of the armorers, the clatter of the weapon racks, and the distant hum of the highway beyond the tree line filled the air.

Arthur looked down at his boots, covered in the dark Ohio dirt he had raked smooth that morning. For years, the world had demanded that he be something he wasn't—that he join the clamor, that he play the game, that he want the things everyone else seemed wired to desire. He had always felt like an imposter in his own skin, waiting for someone to point out the missing gears.

Yet here, standing in the churned dust of the tiltyard, with his palms raw and the smell of cedar and iron in his lungs, he didn't feel broken. He felt solid. He felt necessary.

And as he looked toward the stable block where the Green Knight’s banner fluttered in the rising breeze, Arthur knew, with a sudden and quiet certainty, that whatever trials this summer was going to bring, he was no longer just running away from home. He was standing his ground.