AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, lords and ladies welcome to our Knight in Shining Armor Challenge.” Heather spoke into the bullhorn, which again, was not necessary. “Today our lords will don a suit of armor, cross the moat, scale the wall, slay the dragon, and rescue their ladies from the tower.”
Keaton looked around the course. They’d set up a makeshift moat which consisted of filling a ditch with thick black mud that was several feet deep. A rope hung down from the stone wall on the east side of the castle. On the parapet walkway, there was a large mechanical dragon standing guard in front of the southeast corner tower.
“Our newcomers to court will be able to choose their partners in this challenge. Lords, you will be scored on your time, your style, and of course, your swoon factor and the match with the lord who has the highest score will be crowned Couple of the Day.”
Out of everything that they had to do on this show, Keaton actually enjoyed the physical challenges the most. Not just because he and Zara were undefeated. Anytime he didn’t have to talk about his feelings or discuss other people’s feelings, it was a win for him.
The first couple to go was Harlan and Freya. Harlan had a little hiccup slaying the dragon because he dropped his sword off the side of the wall. Keaton threw his up to him, and he was able to disarm the animatronic beast by stabbing it in the sensor on its chest. Then he easily made his way up the stairs of the tower to rescue Freya. His time was five minutes and fifteen seconds.
Luca and Vic ran nearly identical courses time-wise. They both waded through the moat, made it up the wall, slayed the dragon, and saved their lady in four minutes thirty-two seconds and four minutes thirty-seven respectively.
Keaton took a different approach than his other competitors, instead of wading through the swamp-moat Keaton ran about fifty yards down the ‘moat’ to where there was a path of rocks. He knew they were there because he and Avery had found them when they’d explored during her renovations.
He didn’t know his time, but he felt like he got to the wall faster than it would have taken him to wade through the mud that Harlan, Vic, and Luca had all had trouble with. His arms burned as he shimmied up the wall. The men before him had made it look easier than it actually was with the damn costume they had to wear. The chest plate and shoulder plates were not easy to move in.
Once he made it to the walkway, instead of rushing the dragon and immediately engaging, Keaton walked up close enough that it activated its motion sensor. Then he waited as it thrashed its arms and blew out “fire” which was just sprays of water. Once it stopped moving, Keaton easily stabbed its chest in the sensor. He’d noted while watching his other opponents that the dragon only moved for about thirty seconds after it was activated before freezing again. Harlan, Vic, and Luca had all tried to kill it while it was flailing around. Killing it ate up half their time because they couldn’t get a clear shot at its chest.
After slaying the beast, Keaton ran up the steps. Unlike Harlan who had picked Freya up and spun her around in the tower when he reached her, Luca who put Sienna over his shoulder in a fireman carry, and Vic who Piper jumped on like a monkey, wrapping her legs and arms around him, Keaton picked Zara up like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold. She placed the back of her hand over her forehead dramatically, really playing up the swoon of it all, before cupping his face and planting a kiss on him that felt like it lasted longer than the time it had taken him to do the course.
He knew if he challenged her on the smooch crossing the PG line they’d agreed on, she’d claim it was for the swoon points. But he had a feeling she wasn’t happy with his interest in ‘the new girl’ because it was real, which threatened the very fake couple status.
Once she finally released him and they came up for air, his eyes instantly searched for Avery like they always did and found her cheering them on enthusiastically. When their eyes met, she even gave him two thumbs up. Each day, her unwavering and unconditional support of him during this complicated time made him fall even more in love with her.
He had no idea how, or when, but one day he was going to make that woman his wife.
* * *
“I’ll be right back and then let me know who you want your knight to be,” Iris told Avery before heading over to help Anton with his suit of armor. He’d chosen Zara as his lady. Avery wasn’t sure if he’d done it because he was genuinely interested in her, or if it was because she’d won the majority of the popularity votes. Anton seemed very calculated in how he was playing this game. She wasn’t judging him for that, the reasons she shouldn’t be a contestant on this show were like buried IEDs in the plains of moral ground.
Another reason Anton might have selected Zara was that Keaton and Zara were currently undefeated in their Couple of the Day wins. And Keaton had gotten the best time out of all of the lords. His time was a full thirty seconds faster at four minutes, two seconds. Anton might just be competitive and want to dethrone the reigning king.
As she waited at the end of the line of couples, she caught Keaton staring at her out of the corner of her eye. When she looked at him, he winked as if to say he knew she was going to pick him as her knight. Which, obviously she was. But something about the challenge wasn’t sitting right with her.
Avery had watched as each knight crossed the moat, scaled the wall, slayed the dragon, and saved their lady. For some reason doing that seemed much more appealing to her than waiting up in a tower to be rescued. Not because of the patriarchal undertones of the setup, this wasn’t an I-am-woman-hear-me-roar situation. It was the opposite, actually. Standing in a tower with three cameras pointing at her, capturing her every expression, breath—and she feared, thought—as she watched Keaton be a badass knight, sounded like medieval torture to her.
Over the past few days, she’d found that when she was doing a challenge, she wasn’t even thinking about the cameras filming her. The cocktail hours were much worse for her. When the only direction she was given was to stand somewhere and talk to people, she turned into Will Ferrell inTalladega Nightswhen he was being interviewed and didn’t know what to do with his hands. He kept awkwardly lifting them into frame.
If she didn’t have somewhere for her brain to focus her anxiety, it turned inward on her. She started hyper-fixating on everything from how loud she was breathing, to if she touched her face too much, to where to put her hands. The movie was slightly more exaggerated than what she felt like she did, but only slightly. It was the strangest phenomenon, if a camera was pointed at her, she didn’t know how to hold her arms naturally, where her hands went, or even how to walk. She would literally have to mentally instruct herself to put one foot in front of the other.
“Okay.” Iris returned with a wide smile on her face. “You are up as soon as Anton and Zara go. Which lord do you want to rescue you from the tower?”
Avery’s heart was racing. All her life, she’d been a rule-follower to a fault. She didn’t go in exit doors, she didn’t walk up escalators that went down, she never even snuck her own food into a movie theater. She didn’t have a rebellious bone in her body.
Her palms dampened at the thought of breaking a rule. But right now, that’s exactly what she was going to do. She was going to break a rule. Well, she was going toaskif she could break a rule.
“Can I rescue a lord?”
Iris tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, can I be the knight, wear the armor, and save one of the lords?”
Iris’s eyes widened as did her smile. She pulled out her walkie talkie and Avery heard Sabrina’s voice answer the call she put out. Iris walked away as she explained the situation, so Avery didn’t hear the conversation. A minute or two later, she was back with an even wider smile on her face.
“We got the green light. Which lord would you like to save from the tower?”
Avery hesitated a second. She felt like she knew Keaton and he wouldn’t be upset if she picked him. But what if he was? What if he was offended or it somehow made him feel unmanly? He was a world-champion MMA fighter. What if he felt embarrassed? What if doing this ruined any chance they had?
No.She wasn’t going to go down that path. She’d spent the past ten years with a man who had treated her as lesser than. He’d spoken down to her and never valued her dreams or goals. Case in point: she’d inherited Stone Castle six years ago, but the first time he’d seen it was five days ago.
