Quiet Power
“YA ALWAYS MAKE a habit of using the side door, or just when you’re sizing up the place?”
Before I get to react to Eli’s warning, a woman’s voice booms behind me. Her tone isn’t loud, exactly, but it lands with that bold-and-underlined Busted! energy.
I sigh, patting the top rail as a farewell. “Been nice while it lasted, Eli.”
“See you ‘round, Mr. Vale.”
That makes me itch at the neck. Mr. Vale is for event handlers, brown-nosing reporters, and shy fans, not pretty guys I’d put out for on the first date. “It’s Cassian.”
He smiles. “See you ‘round, Cassian.”
Hard as it is, I stop engaging so my heart settles and the woman doesn’t progress to actual anger. I face her fully as I step closer.
She looks like one of those scientists on nature channels that spend months on end in some jungle observing frogs—combat boots over khakis, canvas vest with a million pockets. Hair frizzy, curly, and multiple shades of gray, even though she looks younger than Mom. Just weathered and proud of it.
“Sorry about that. Didn’t see an entry desk,” I lie to my own reflection on her sports shades.
“Well, shoot,” she crosses her arms, thin as twigs but fully tattooed. “And here I thought the big hardwood sign spelling Entrance might’ve done the trick. Ya didn’t see it?”
“Nope.”
She nods with a contained grin. “What? Sun too bright? Fancy aviators not calibrated for country dust? Should I call your private butler chauffeur guy back, come clean’em for ya?”
I roll my eyes behind my fancy aviators. “Fine, you got me. I snuck in. You make it too easy. This place is open-access.”
She grins like a poker player who is about to clean me up.
“Oh, is it now?” With two fingers, she slips a stick of gum from her vest, strips it of the wrapper, and folds it into her mouth.
Slowly, letting the silence make it sweeter.
“Ya got here without being spotted. How did I know where ya were?”
For a blink, I don’t get it. But then it’s obvious. “I tripped a silent alarm.”
“Bingo, Fancy Pants.” She double-taps her nose. “We’re holding more millions in hooves than most banks got in vaults. Sitting on the porch with shotguns ain’t exactly the best use of our time, is it?” A pause then, and a smirk. “Not for the lack of shotguns, mind you. Just… other priorities.”
Already walking, she nods for me to follow. “Build something that works—really works—and ya don’t just get good attention. Ya get the kind that needs fences, cameras. And, yeah, smartass-proof silent alarms.” She glances back, grinning wide. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I mutter, glancing around, and now I notice what she’s saying.
It’s clear in the way that the old woman oiling a gate hinge up ahead carefully tucks black and red wire out of the way.
Clear from the naturally-brown wood nodes on paneling and posts, and the way they don’t match hollow ones that shine like optical sensors—too black to be natural.
For sure, there are cameras tucked into tree lines too. Layered, invisible, smart.
It doesn’t soothe me one bit.
“I’ve got an untamable stallion tied to my name,” I tell her, “and my only shot at qualifiers is some mythical horse-fu sensei no one seems to know anything real about. So yeah, excuse me for wanting to see the real version of this place, not the PR fairytale.”
That stops her. She turns and lifts her sunglasses onto her head, gray-streaked curls pinned back, and I get hit by all the gentleness in her brown eyes. Then her hands grip both my arms—strong enough to startle.
“Well, shit…” she says, soft and level. “They really did throw ya overboard and hoped you’d swim, huh?”
I bristle instinctively, but fight the urge to pull away. Who the hell does she think she is? Why is she saying that?
As she lets me go, her gaze drifts as if accessing a memory. “We watched your last press conference. Took your ‘mythical horse-fu sensei’ maybe three seconds to say, ‘That one’s been left out to dry.’”
My chest tightens. “W-What?”
Shit. Was I that obvious?
No—no, Mom would’ve caught it. So would everyone else. My team doesn’t let cracks show if they can help it. Someone would’ve told me.
“Ya looked fine,” she adds, catching all of it written across my face. “He just notices things the rest of us miss.”
And that’s somehow worse. That I looked fine when in truth—
No. Shut up.
That is the truth, period. Was fine then, am fine now.
Regardless of what some decrepit old bag hiding in the woods thinks he read between the lines .
I don’t try to defend it, though. Old bag or not, the guy seems even holier here than among the outsiders who swear by the miracles. And I’m here to get that train wreck of a stallion on track and ready to go, not debate the accuracy of the Whisperer’s predictions.
Still, this is all lining up for me so fucking fantastically…
“Thanks a million,” I groan, rubbing my eyes under the sunglasses. “A loose cannon horse wasn’t enough, now I gotta deal with a mind reader too.”
She cackles, patting my shoulder—hard enough to make me sway a little.
“Lucky for you , he’s got a soft spot for smartasses hauling too much weight on their shoulders.
Horse or human.” She slides her sunglasses back down, then her hands down her pockets.
“Dare I say, it’s the whole reason he can do what he does. ”
As if a breeze gives us a push, we drift into walking again.
No rush anymore—in our steps or her words.
“Some people see quiet power, and immediately it’s prey.
Either too abnormal or faking it for attention.
” Her head shakes. “All this security? It ain’t for the horses.
They’d be fine in a pasture under the stars.
It’s for him, for what he’s built here. He won’t say it, but I will. ”
“Nice for him to have an in-house press agent.”
A snort. “Nah, this is a press-free area. I’m more of the bouncer,” she continues. “Name’s Rey, by the way. Vet. Head of intake. Resident bullshit detector.”
I nod. “Cassian.”
“Oh, we know, Golden Boy.” She grins. “Welcome to Riverlight. Let’s give ya the down ‘n dirty, shall we? I’ll even show ya the composting station.”
Of course they’d have a composting station.
Rey picks up the pace again, just enough to show she’s got places to be, but also all the time to get there.
“So here’s what you won’t see at Riverlight,” she says, flicking a hand toward a split-log bench someone carved with a horse’s face.
“White noise machines. Cello covers of pop songs. Mirrored walls. Definitely no standing wraps just for the aesthetics.” She groans, most likely at the memories of those very things.
“No client lounges. No mahogany-wrapped conference room for board meetings. Also, no conference room, hardly any board meetings.”
I say nothing, just clock the layout, the building materials, the spacing between paddocks. No sound here, either—just wind and birds and the crunch under our shoes.
“What you will see,” she goes on, “is horses at their own pace. Eating when they’re hungry, lying down when they feel like it. You’ll see rehab tracks, run-outs into the woods. Horses on a rhythm, not a schedule.”
“Sounds like a vacation home,” I mutter, eyes scanning the fencing. Thick posts. Uneven grain. Real wood everywhere.
“It is what it is. Call it whatever ya need to.”
Ahead, I spot a row of open pens, no two the same. Some have toys, others hanging ropes. One has a series of step-ups built from salvaged timber, and another nothing but a bare patch of sand and a tire to lean against.
“We have what they need. And the will to build it if we don’t,” Rey says, not bothering to match my pace. “Got a stallion here once who’d attack other horses on sight. We set him up a solo track up the ridge—could see, couldn’t touch. That boy healed faster than any meds ever promised.”
I let that sit with me a moment. The layout clicks into place now. Nothing is random, just tailored. No aesthetics, but intention. Every decision made for a reason, for the horse—a specific one.
“We do have some fancy shit too, ya know?” She chuckles. “Best vet tech money can buy. Portable thermography. Tendon imaging. AI gait tracking. Half our budget goes to diagnostics, the other half to preventing us from needing them.”
“So you’re data-driven, but you let horses nap under trees and decide their own schedules.”
“Exactly.” She grins. “Science ‘n trust. Revolutionary, I know.”
I don’t smile back. This all sounds great in theory, but horses don’t run on theory. And careers don’t run on vibes.
But then the universe puts Sheik Zahil’s Arabian in my line of sight. And I question everything again.
Big, slender frame. Gleaming coat like polished copper. And that scar—starburst, just under the left eye. Theories of his whereabouts went from buried under sacred soil to kept alive in cryogenic sleep.
“That can’t be him,” I murmur, gawking at the horse.
“Oh, it is.” Rey nods. “Azaan himself.”
Azaan. Yeah, I remember the news spread after the accident. That bloodline is older than some countries—richer too. He should be living in marble-tiled stalls with gold inlays, not dozing under a patched-up awning with a bit of hay stuck to his tail.
“He’s been here this whole time?” I frown, trying to piece it together. “Still? It’s been—what? Two years?”
Rey hums, like she gets that question all the time, and the answer isn’t what you expect.
“Two ‘n a half. Been a year since he got to us, months before he was ready to even start.” She smiles at Azaan. “I travel all over, ya know? See the top stallions, the money barns, the drama. Everyone wants to say they’re doing it for the horse. Not everyone actually is.”
“But the Sheik is. We are.” She nods to herself. “So he’s still here, yeah. Until the three of us believe he’ll continue to thrive when he ain’t.”