I'd braced myself for flames licking the barricades, for rival factions pouring through the gates with blades drawn, or for some nightmare beast clawing its way out of the mountainside to devour us whole.
That seemed par for the course.
What I was not prepared for, however, was the sight of the naked knight striding into the main hall with a half-dressed woman draped around his arm, both of them flushed and gasping like they'd just wrestled a bear in the broom closet.
And when I say half-dressed, I mean truly half-dressed: stockings and disheveled skirts, hair in wild tangles, lips bruised like cherries.
The knight, on the other hand, seemed more radiant than I'd ever seen him, chest puffed, chin held high, as though the entire siege had been staged merely as backdrop for his latest conquest.
