Two - Riverlight
TWO
RIVERLIGHT
MY SHOES HIT the dirt, and I already hate this place.
I’m all for nature and shit, but this is just too quiet. No horses snorting or hooves clapping. Can’t think of a single training center I’ve been to where no one is shouting directions across a paddock, or asking for guidance, material, or commenting on the damn weather.
Not that I miss the echoing and the ruckus. It just weirds me out.
“Want me to call the manager, sir?” the driver asks, handing me my duffel bag.
I put on my sunglasses then take it from him, slinging the strap over my head and adjusting it on my shoulder. “No, I’ll find my own way.”
With a single nod, he gets back in the car and rolls out, tires crunching through the dusty gravel and leaving white tire marks when it’s back on black asphalt. I don’t watch it go. My eyes stay locked on what’s supposedly the best equestrian facility in the world .
Could’ve fooled me.
Rustic, but not fake rustic, not the grit-for-aesthetics you get in brochures. This is lived in. Maybe a little wild, bordering a forested area.
And I’m gonna live here for the next six months? Can’t believe Mom agreed to this.
No automated gates or oversized arenas. Just aging barns, support outbuildings clad in mismatched timber, and the low thrum of something alive but quiet.
No flashy signage, apart from a burnt-wood plank over a heavy oak door labeled ‘Entrance.’ For sure, someone is already waiting for me on the other side.
No thanks. I’m seeing this for myself.
Without rushing, I step off to the side, around the main entrance structure, following the log fence until I find a small gate. The lock is black metal and old-fashioned—not even a keyhole, just a latch anyone can flip up. Like so.
The gate is mostly silent, and so is everything else, like I stepped into someone’s cottage in the woods.
Birdsong, leaves rustling, a soft breeze lifting the dirt and fanning the grass, but not much else.
The scent of pine wood carries in the air, dry and spicy—actual pine, not the car scent kind. I hear a stream around here somewhere.
Farther in, nothing jumps out as unusual for a mid-size horse ranch, except this one feels…breathy. The outdoor pens are wider than I’m used to for individual horses, each with its own shaded patch and water trough. Some are even tucked between the trees, clearly separate but not hidden.
It feels less like a facility, more like a clearing shared with the forest—open, gentle, intentional. Not where I’d expect the world’s millionaires to store their most prized horses.
Though they’re not here for being stored, are they? They come to get ready, to prepare for top-level competition. Seen from that angle, maybe this place does make more sense .
I guess.
I keep roaming, curiosity pulling more than purpose. Any worries I had about this place remain intact, just can’t remember what they were, right now. It’s all this… nature. Need to touch grass more often.
Eventually, I pass one of the largest barns. The dirt is different here, compared to earlier foot-traffic areas, but I can’t tell where it changed. No lazy curls when the wind picks up, no echo under my steps. Nothing clinging to my soles.
I poke at it with my sneaker, try to lift it, scatter it. It behaves like damp sand, almost, sinking just a little then holding steady. Not slick like turf. Not too springy like showgrounds. Just solid, horse-safe, and quiet underfoot. Arena footing. But this is outside.
I frown. They can’t possibly coat all this dirt with synthetics.
My eyes snap up, swipe over the ranch. Over the best equestrian facility. In the whole world.
Shit, can they?
Then I hear it—hooves, low and steady, thudding like heartbeats through the earth. A few more steps toward the sound, and I turn a corner, stopping when I catch movement.
Up ahead is a round pen, weathered wood, a man sitting on the top log. His hands clamp him steady, sturdy arms stretched in that way that makes shoulders rise to the jaw, like a kid who decided to stop for a minute to watch the sunset. He’s smiling like he is.
In this case, his sunset is a horse—a beautiful Palomino mare. Some good years on her, I bet, but still moving like a filly. Wild mane and tail billow behind her like white silk in the wind, healthy light cream fur shining gold when the sun hits right.
I step closer to get a better look. The guy doesn’t see me, so no harm in staring a bit, right?
Thick dark hair, chin-length, the kind of messy that stylists spend hours trying to reproduce on movie stars.
Coffee-brown leather boots under worn-out jeans that didn’t come that way off the rack, and a cowboy hat hanging from his knee.
Plus a black t-shirt stretched so tight he might as well be shirtless. Do us all a favor.
Maybe that way I could try to find something to ick about, like too much body hair or one of those bloated ten-packs no one asked for.
99% sure it’s perfect, though. Which is frankly rude.
I will not crush on the damn stablehand.
“Like what you see?”
My heart jumps twice—one for the scare, one for the way his voice travels like live current down my spine. Hopefully, it didn’t show, but he only faces me after the fact, so it’s probably safe.
It is not safe. I’ll drown in those eyes.
Big and dark and deep, framed in the most perfect expression lines, as if he spent his whole life smiling too wide.
From afar, he looked to be pushing at least thirty-five, but those lines that should’ve confirmed it paint him somehow boyish up-close.
Vibrant, youthful. A kind of gorgeous I don’t see often. Or ever.
Look elsewhere. Do it now.
Fucking tricep line flowing down his arm?
Nope.
Huge fucking hands, rugged and scraped from hard work and God knows what else?
No, that’s worse!
The way his fucking thighs stretch the fucking denim and show every fucking detail down there?
…
Goddammit, I’m done for .
But I’ve trained for this. All my life, I trained to feel something while looking something else, so I got this. I got this!
I straighten my sunglasses and look at the horse—the beautiful, beautiful horse—casually leaning against the fence, both arms folding over the top rail next to him.
Then I clear my throat. “Here for business, but sure. Hell of a hat. Black is your color.”
He grins. “Meant the horse, slick.”
I nod. I knew that. “Is that a tension-release drill?”
“Of a sort,” he says, curling his lips like he’s mildly impressed. “Sometimes, horses hold on to efforts and can’t drop ‘em easy. Let ‘em move the way they want, sometimes they let go.”
My eyes flick to the horse again. Strong frame, calm gait. Definitely not the one I came for. “That what you guys do here? Let them trot around until they mellow out?”
The guy smirks like I opened the prize-winning door, a mischievous kid in grown-up bones, all the way to the dare tilting his eyebrows.
His eyes return to the mare, his expression washed off and reapplied, confident, steady. Two soft clicks of his tongue, and then a stillness—so quiet it feels intentional. His shoulders draw subtly back, spine tall.
The mare flicks an ear, eyes on him now. He whistles once, low and unrefined, and instantly her gait shifts—barely—from casual to poised. A beat later, she lifts into a floating trot, slow and suspended, knees rising with the kind of collected grace that’d make a Grand Prix judge weep.
When he moves again, he mostly doesn’t. Just a lift of a finger—his left pointer—which I wouldn’t catch if it didn’t happen right beside me.
The mare arcs her neck, tightens her core, and begins a half-pass, diagonal and deliberate.
Her hooves land with the precision of nimble fingers on piano keys, crossing front over back like calligraphy in motion.
No reins. No longe line. No whip or stick.
Just the tiniest cue, a suggestion. And the horse responds like she’s grateful to be asked.
Another few seconds pass, and he relaxes his posture—not abruptly, not commandingly. Just a soft release of tension through his shoulders and down his arms.
The mare melts out of the half-pass into a forward walk. She stretches her neck long and low, blowing a contented snort as she loosens her back. Her ears flick lazily, no longer tracking. Just drifting, like the rest of her.
Dressage riders would sell their souls to get that transition on command.
I… Fuck, I can barely process what I saw, let alone say anything.
Just glad my sunglasses are wide enough to hide how stupidly I’m staring, because that…
I don’t think there was even obedience there—too weightless, happy even.
If anything, it looked like consent, like a dog doing tricks for a smile instead of a treat. Damn beautiful.
Is that what they do here?
“Also some of that,” he says, not even smug about it, just casually proud.
“Fancy,” I offer, aiming for unimpressed and mostly sure I missed it.
“Oh yeah. Dressage riders eat it up.”
I groan. “Fucking dressage.”
He chuckles like he gets it. “Yeah, that’s what you folk usually say.”
“You folk?” I lift a brow. “Who’s ‘you folk’?”
“Fucking showjumpers,” he says, smile so casual and so unfairly cute I can’t even muster the instinct to be annoyed.
I glance away, shake it off. “So you know who I am.”
“Everyone who knows horses knows Cassian Vale. ”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “I guess.”
He offers his hand. “Name’s Eli. Navarro.”
I take it. Warm and firm—like Eli and Navarro in that exact order, rough in all the right ways. The kind of hand that’s used to pressure and doesn’t flinch from it. I try not to show anything as our grip slips apart. Just clear my throat, breathe through it.
My eyes drift back to the horse. “And that one? What is she in for?”
Eli chuckles under his breath, casting a glance toward the mare as she slows. “For being the boss’s old lady, I guess. Just needed a stroll.”
So this is the Whisperer’s mare. The way she moves on cue, makes sense, actually.
I need to meet this guy.
Please may the fabled Whisperer be some cuckoo sage who drinks fermented oats and doesn’t make me horny. I’ll have the damn stablehand to worry about as it is.
To prove my point, the damn stablehand leans back a little, stretching the muscles across his perfect chest like he’s not doing it on purpose.
Goddammit, Eli…
“You should probably keep moving,” Eli eventually says. “Y’know you’re trespassing, right?”
“Oh, one hundred percent.” I nod slowly. “But there was literally nothing stopping me. Most facilities like this have at least barbed wire. Electric fences, if they’re feeling fancy.”
“That’s ‘cause most facilities are built for humans.” That proud grin… Turning my bones to jelly. “Riverlight’s built for horses.”
Riverlight. Yeah, Mom told me. Pretty name.
Sounds more beautiful from his lips, though.
I clear my throat and adjust my duffel strap again. “Help a trespasser out. Where should I flee to next?”
He tips his chin toward the tree line. “Trails are nice and cool this early.” Then his eyes shift, just slightly, to something behind me. “Oop, too late.”