Chapter 14
Lilias
RACING
“So, you married Zarek,” the woman says, leaning back against a mountain of hay and watching me like I’m some sort of exotic insect she’s captured in a glass. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
I try to stand up straight and smile sweetly. Gods, I wasn’t expecting any of this. Honestly, just a month ago, I thought I’d be marrying Prince Laurance in the Kingdom of Ethiria sometime in the distant, hazy future.
“Yes,” I finally say, when I can’t think of anything else. “I did.”
The woman laughs. “Good luck,” she snaps, like she’s cursing.
I blink. I wasn’t expecting my husband to walk me to the stables, introduce me to a woman named Alia, who is apparently the stable master, and then leave the whole damn city. Without telling me where he was going, or why, or for how long.
“Do you, um, happen to know where he’s gone?” I ask as politely as I can manage.
Alia laughs again. “Honestly, I never ask. Safer that way, you know.”
Great. My smile feels like an ill-fitting mask. Alia narrows her eyes at me in a way that reminds me of what my husband just said about not having any friends.
“He wants me to give you all the same privileges he has,” she finally says. “He must think pretty highly of you.”
I smile until it hurts. I’m almost certain the snake hates me, but I don’t think I have much to gain from admitting that.
“You’re from Marion, right?” Alia asks.
“I am.”
“So, you might know a thing or two about horses,” she says, as if she’s conceding something.
“I can ride,” I reply.
The words come out a bit sharper than I’d intended. Being told I have no friends must bring out the worst in me.
“Course you can,” Alia says, with a smile that feels like a slap in the face. “Lots of people can ride Zarek.”
She stares at me. I smile sweetly and twist my fingers together until they hurt, but I don’t look away.
My husband was right. I have no friends here.
“Come on,” Alia finally says, standing up straight. She’s taller than she looked when she was leaning against the hay. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
She leads me to a tack room, then brings me older but serviceable riding pants, shoes, and a jacket.
I take off my blue velvet dress with a pang, brushing straw from the hem as I lay it over an empty spot on the saddle rack.
When I emerge, Alia is leaning against a post and watching me through narrowed eyes.
“What kind of riding do you like to do?” she asks. “Leisure? Hunting?”
“Racing,” I answer.
Alia chews on her lower lip as she stares at me. “Racing, huh?”
I don’t reply. I hold her gaze as my heart dances inside my chest, and some strange, distant part of my mind reminds me that I didn’t exactly have friends in Marion either.
I had my brother, I had Anura, and I had the horses.
Later, I added Blayne, at least to that strange gray territory between friend, teacher, and lover.
That was all I needed in Marion. Perhaps that’s all I’ll need in Vsenrog too.
“Come with me,” Alia says.
She leads me to another part of the stable, one with larger stalls and higher ceilings. The scents are thicker here, which makes me think most of the horses in these stalls are stallions. War horses, probably. It’s not exactly reassuring that at least half of the stalls stand empty.
Alia stops next to one of the stalls. The horse inside, a shorter bay, sticks his head out and nuzzles her empty palm.
“Pick any horse you like,” Alia says. “But this one’s mine.”
I raise an eyebrow. The stallion behind Alia doesn’t look like much; he’s shorter than most, with a crooked ear and a nasty glint in his eyes that says I’d be a fool to underestimate him.
“Pick a horse for what?” I ask.
“Racing,” Alia says, with a grin.
I take my time with my selection. Several of the stallions snort and kick when I approach their stall.
I rule those out, along with the ones who don’t react at all.
The massive, hulking black stallion alone in a stall at the end of the barn seems too obvious, so finally, I settle on one of the few mares in this wing.
She’s gray with a dark mane and tail and wide, bright eyes.
She’s slightly taller than the stallion Alia chose, but not by much.
“This one,” I announce.
Alia chews her lip as she watches me.
“Zarek’s gonna kill me if you break your neck,” she finally says.
I very much doubt that. My husband would probably send her a basket of wine if she managed to get rid of me.
“I won’t break my neck,” I say.
“We’ll see,” Alia replies.
She lets me slip a halter over the mare’s neck, lead her to the tack room, and saddle her. The mare’s nose flares, and her ears go back when Alia approaches with the stallion. Good. I was hoping she’d be a bitch.
We lead the horses out of the stable, then mount up. I follow Alia past the exercise rings, past mountains of manure, and up a rocky slope toward a smattering of pine trees spread across the mountain’s base.
“This is the edge of the city,” Alia calls over her shoulder. “Too steep for farming in the foothills.”
I stare at the city spread out below me. Farms and fields cover the low, rolling hills. Far in the distance, there’s a thin blue line that just might be the ocean. Alia clucks, and I turn to face the granite wall of the mountains.
Behind the trees, the low saddle of Vederill Pass wears a wreath of clouds.
It’s not the only way to cross the Barrier Mountains, of course, but it is the only easy way.
And the only way that’s not controlled by the elves or patrolled by the dragons.
Dungal once controlled that pass, but now Dungal is dust and ash, and all that’s left is the man I married.
That’s the secret to Vsenrog’s power, Elrick told me. They sit like a spider in a web, taking a bit of everything that crosses the mountains from the plains beyond. Blayne basically said the same thing in a lot more words. And without the spider metaphor.
I shiver, and the gray mare tenses beneath me, responding to my unease. It feels like bad luck to be thinking about spiders at the foot of these mountains, with all their secret caves and abandoned mine shafts. I keep my head down and run my palm across the mare’s soft neck.
Alia and I ride in silence as the sun slants through the trees and birds sing their songs all around us. Oddly enough, I realize I’m thinking about my husband, the last vestige of the vanquished Kingdom of Dungal. Where is he going, and why, and will I ever get an answer to any of those questions?
Alia stops short. Her stallion makes a little half step toward my mare, who responds with flattened ears and flared nostrils. The stallion steps back. I feel a surge of entirely unwarranted pride.
“There,” Alia says, pointing into the distance. “You see the lake?”
I shade my eyes. In the trees below, a spot of shimmering blue throws the sunlight back at the sky. I nod, and Alia grins.
“First one to the shore wins,” she says. “Sound fair?”
I smile sweetly. Then I lean forward, cluck in the mare’s ear, and let her fly.
The gray mare runs like the wind. I balance in the stirrups, keep my hands low, and lean over her neck as she lunges forward.
Alia curses behind us, and then hooves hit stone as the stallion lunges forward.
My mare puts her ears back as she approaches a bend in the trail, and I narrow my eyes against the sudden rush of wind.
The world falls away. This is all that matters, the horse beneath me, the wind in my hair, the trail leaping up to meet us.
A fierce, wild joy howls inside of me, the certainty that no matter where I’m forced to go, I will always have this; a good horse, a strong seat, and the trail wide open before me.
We almost win, the mare and I.
I didn’t honestly expect to beat the stallion chosen by the stable master on a trail I’ve never run, but still, disappointment curdles in my gut when Alia pulls him up at the shore a heartbeat before my mare’s hooves hit the water.
“Damn,” I spit, completely forgetting all the manners that have been beaten into me for my entire life.
Alia laughs. She’s panting, and her face is flushed.
“You’re good,” she says, somewhat grudgingly. “Come on. Let’s give them a rest.”
She dismounts, and I follow her. Together, we take off the horses’ bridles and let them nose at the soft grass growing along the edge of the pond. Alia sits in the shade beneath a massive spreading oak tree and pulls a flask from her jacket. She takes a sip, then offers it to me.
I remember what my husband said about having no friends. Then, for just a moment, I imagine how it would have felt to slap him. I take the flask and bring it to my lips.
Whatever’s in there is awful. I cough as my throat burns.
“Oh, gods,” I sputter.
Alia laughs again, then takes another pull. I shake my head when she offers it to me a second time.
“Marion has good horses,” she says. She’s watching me like she’s trying to solve a puzzle. “How involved were you in their stables?”
I watch the mare raise her head and bare her teeth as the stallion tries to sniff her tail, and I think about all the things I’m supposed to keep locked inside my heart, the secrets I hold that aren’t fit for polite company.
But, hells, didn’t my husband just tell me I’m not a princess here? I suppose that means I’ll have to discover what I am now.
“I ran the program,” I admit.
“I knew it,” Alia cries, smacking her leg. “I fucking knew it. I’ve met your stable master, and he’s a godsdamned idiot. Uh, no offense.”
“I know,” I reply with a smile. I feel warm, like whatever was in her flask made me glow. “I’ve been running it for a decade. Not publicly, of course, but—”
My voice fades. Elrick thought the deception was absurd, that I should take the public title of stable master if I was doing all the work. But my father threw over the dinner table when Elrick suggested it, and that was the end of that particular discussion.
I was going to do the same for Ethiria. I’d written dozens of letters to their stable master, and gradually, I wore him down to the point where he agreed to take me on as an apprentice, unofficially of course, after the wedding.
I blink at the little lake as it shimmers in the sunlight. Massive dragonflies race across the waves, their jeweled bodies winking in the light. Alia snorts.
“Look,” she says, “anytime you need to get away, just come by the stables. You understand?”
I meet her gaze. She’s trying to tell me something, some warning or promise that’s just below her words, like cold water hides beneath the dancing sunlight.
I nod. Perhaps she’s not a friend, but an offer of refuge comes pretty damn close.
“One more thing,” Alia says. “Don’t ever let King Malrik get you alone.”
I nod again. This time, a shiver dances up my spine as I do.