The Knightmare

Chapter Originals

Isabelle of Ardwyn is to be given to the kingdom her father spent ten years at war with, to a man she has never seen. She has bigger problems. Since she was seven years old she has dreamed of the same thing: a knight in black armour standing at the foot of her bed, who never moves and never speaks. The witch at the edge of the wood tells her it is not a dream at all. It is a mare — a thing that crosses out of the dark to sit on sleepers — and there are three rules. Do not speak to it. Do not call it. Whatever else you do, do not reach for it. Isabelle reaches for it. On her wedding day the sky goes black over the chapel, and he walks up the aisle in front of four hundred people and says she is his to take, and whispers one sentence to the King that turns her father the colour of ash. What Isabelle does not know — what she will spend a very long time refusing to believe — is that he was sent to kill her when she was seven, and that every night he has stood at the foot of her bed is a night he chose not to.