Damn, damn, damn. Rielle twisted and squirmed, tugging at her shirt.
On the other side of the screen, the tent flap opened. “The race is starting, and it seems my two riders are nowhere to be found,” came Odo’s smooth baritone, with only a touch of irritation. “May I remind you that I’m wagering quite a bit of coin on both of you, as well as my own head, should either of you be stupid enough to be discovered? Or worse, break your necks?”
“We’ll be right there,” Rielle called. “Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?”
“On numerous occasions, in fact,” Odo replied. There was a pause. “Shall I enumerate them for you?”
“One moment, please, Odo,” Audric said, laughter in his voice.
The tent flap closed.
“Can I come around?” Audric called.
“Yes, but…oh, hang on.” With a violent twist, Rielle managed to free herself. She jerked down the tunic, fumbling with the gold ribbons at the neckline. “Yes, all right, I’m decent.”
Audric rounded the screen, her leather riding jacket and cap in hand. “Could it be that we’re about to sneak into this life-threatening race, and you’re the flustered one?”
“Never mind that you tried to get out of doing this a dozen times.” Rielle yanked her cap from his hand. “Never mind that you haven’t broken a rule in your life before now.”
“But what an inaugural defiance it is, don’t you agree?” He moved closer to help her fasten the tunic’s clasp between her shoulders. His fingers grazed the nape of her neck. “I mean, I could have begun my rebellious streak with something simple. Being late to morning court, skipping my prayers, bedding a servant girl—”
She burst out laughing. It sounded shriller than she would have liked. “You? Bed a servant girl? You don’t know the first thing about courting a woman.”
“So you think.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Am I that hopeless a case to you?”
“To start, you’d have to put down your books every now and then.”
“Lady Rielle,” came his teasing voice, “are you offering to educate me in the art of seducing a woman?”
A terrible silence fell. Rielle felt Audric tense behind her. A blush crept up her cheeks. Why had she let herself get drawn into this, of all conversations? She knew nothing about courting anyone.
Her father had made sure of that.
Once, at thirteen, Rielle had come home after watching fifteen-year-old Audric practice his swordwork in the barracks yard, feeling on edge and ready to burst out of her skin.
Her father and his lieutenants had run Audric through many drills that day. Magister Guillory sat nearby, offering advice whenever she saw fit. As Grand Magister of the House of Light, the ferocious old woman had overseen Audric’s sunspinner studies for years. She and Rielle’s father had helped Audric focus the sometimes overwhelming call of his power into the physical, reliable work of fighting with a sword.
Rielle had watched many of Audric’s practices, but that particular one had been different. She had not been able to get him out of her head afterward—how he’d moved in the afternoon light, every motion steady and sure, brow furrowed in concentration as his sword scattered flares of sunlight across his skin. She had brought her father his customary drink after dinner that night and been so rattled that she dropped the cup.
Her father had raised an eyebrow. “You’re not yourself tonight.”
She had said nothing, unsure of how to answer him.
“I noticed you in the yard today,” he observed mildly. “You’ve been coming around often of late.”
Rielle crouched to sweep up the mess, her hair hiding her hot face.
Then her father had pulled her to her feet, hard enough to hurt her wrist.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he had told her, “and I forbid it. You might lose control one day and hurt him. He has a rare gift, do you understand? The most power anyone has had in half an age. It’s important for the realm to see that he is master of it, not the other way around. The last thing Audric needs is someone like you hovering about.”
Rielle’s eyes had filled with tears. “Someone like me?”
Her father had released her, impassive. “A murderer.”
Lord Commander Dardenne had not allowed his daughter to attend Audric’s practices after that.
Now, at eighteen, Rielle had not kissed a soul, nor come close to it. Certainly she had imagined it, and often. She knew she was beautiful—if not in the conventional sense, then in the way that at least made people look, and look hard. Striking was the word Ludivine often used. Or arresting.
Her father had only once commented on her looks: “You have the face of a liar. I can see all the machinations of the world in your eyes.”
Nevertheless, Rielle cultivated this beauty however she could, dressing in the most outlandish fashions she could get away with—bold and just shy of revealing, crafted from exotic fabrics that Ludivine secretly ordered for her and that made her stand out at court like a peacock among pigeons. Every time she had dared to show herself in such a garment, she had sensed hungry gazes upon her and felt her own secret hunger rear up inside her belly, hot and eager.
But even then, her father’s words hung about her neck like a yoke of thorns, and she tamped down every voracious instinct she possessed.
Besides, she didn’t want just anyone, not enough to take the risk.
So she kept herself apart, her frustrations manifesting in slick and frantic dreams, sometimes of Audric, sometimes of Ludivine or Tal—mostly of Audric. After those nights, when Dream Audric had drawn her into his bed, she would wake to find the mirrors in her room cracked, once-extinguished candles freshly lit and sputtering.
Her father was not wrong; there was a danger to her, an unpredictability. She would not bring that to someone else’s bed.
Especially not someone who had been promised to her friend.
Rielle made the mistake of looking at Audric over her shoulder, and his dark gaze locked onto hers for a brief moment before they both looked away.
“We should go,” she said. She grabbed her jacket from his hands, twisted her hair up into her riding cap, and went outside to mount her horse. She wrapped her cap’s veil about her neck and face, tucked the end of it into her collar. When Audric joined her, wearing his own protective coverings, they did not speak, and she was glad.
This race would not be kind to her if she remained distracted.
? ? ?
Together, they followed the other riders to the starting line.
Audric rode one of Odo’s horses, a chestnut Celdarian mare from the southern riverlands. Rielle’s own mount, another from Odo’s stables, was smaller—a gray Kirvayan mare named Maliya who held her banner tail high.
Rielle took her place at the starting line, five slots to the left and two behind Audric. The herald, high overhead, announced each racer through a small round amplifier engineered at the Forge.
When Rielle heard her own false name announced, she waved to the crowd, to generous applause. Though her and Audric’s assumed identities meant nothing to these people, the name of their sponsor—the wealthy merchant Odo Laroche, who owned half the city’s businesses—carried tremendous weight.
High overhead, King Bastien took his place before the amplifier to begin the opening remarks.
“To celebrate another year of peace in our kingdom,” the king’s voice boomed, “and in hopes for a bountiful harvest—and a joyous festival—and to give thanks to God who has blessed Celdaria with such gifts, I welcome all of you to this year’s Boon Chase!”
King Bastien returned to his seat, and the drummers began. The lines of racers shifted; the air crackled against Rielle’s skin.
The race heralds blew on their horns once. Twice.
Rielle curled her gloved fingers around Maliya’s reins, every inch of her body thrumming.
The final racers took their place—twelve masked arbiters in the royal colors of plum, emerald, and gold. They would run the course and watch for foul play.
The drumbeats accelerated, matching Rielle’s pounding heart.