The starting line was chaos.
Some riders competed in the name of the Church temples. Those from the Pyre, Tal’s temple, wore scarlet and gold. Black and deep blue for the House of Night, the temple of shadowcasters and Tal’s sister, Sloane. Umber and light green for the Holdfast, the earthshaker temple.
The great Celdarian houses had also sent representatives. Rielle passed riders in lilac and sage for House Riveret, russet and steel for House Sauvillier. Riders had even traveled from the distant kingdoms of Ventera and Astavar, which lay across the Great Ocean.
Many riders, like Rielle, had been hired by merchants eager for the winning purse—though none of them were as wealthy as her sponsor, Odo Laroche.
And none of the other riders had had the privilege of training with the king’s finest horsemasters since they were old enough to sit in a saddle.
Grinning, Rielle guided her mare beneath the maze of stilted spectator boxes. Her ears rang from the noise—gamblers shouting their bets, children racing through the crowd and shrieking with delight. Smoke from market vendors selling roasted pork sandwiches and blackened fowl skewers stung her eyes.
She finally reached the tent set aside for Odo’s riders. The gown she wore was a favorite—forest green to match her eyes, iridescent vines sewn at the hem, a swooping neckline that showed off her collarbones—but the midday sun made her itch to rip it off. Leaving her horse with the paid swords guarding the door, she slipped inside to change.
And froze.
Audric was already there, clad in only his riding trousers and boots. His fine emerald tunic and embroidered jacket hung neatly from the back of a chair. In his hands, he held a plain linen riding shirt.
He grinned at her. “Took you long enough,” he said and threw her a shirt of her own.
She caught it, barely. “The crowds are larger than I had anticipated,” she said, though her throat was suddenly dry, and it astonished her that she could manage a word.
It had been a long time since she had seen her kingdom’s prince so unclothed.
Growing up together, it would have meant nothing. She had spent hours playing with him and Ludivine in the gardens behind the castle. They had swum together in the lake surrounding the city, worshipped together at the Baths.
But that had been before.
Before Audric and Ludivine’s betrothal, an arrangement that bound the houses of Courverie and Sauvillier even closer together. Before Audric had transformed from her shy, gangly, awkward friend into Prince Audric the Lightbringer, the most powerful sunspinner in centuries.
Before Rielle had realized she loved Audric. And that he would never be hers.
She drank in the sight of him—the lean muscles of his arms, his broad chest, his narrow waist. He was not as dark as his father, not as pale as his mother, the queen. Dark-brown curls, damp from the heat, loosely framed his face. Dappled sunlight fell through the tent’s netting and painted his skin radiant.
When he looked up at her, she flushed at the warmth of his gaze. “Lu’s all right?” he asked.
“And enjoying the attention, I’m sure. And your mother?”
“I told her I’d take care of Lu, and that she should relax and enjoy the race.” He shook his head ruefully. “She thinks I’m a dutiful son—”
“And instead you’re sneaking off to risk life and limb.” Rielle threw him a sly smile. “Your lie was a kindness. She’d be frantic if she knew where you really were.”
Audric laughed. “Mother could use a fright now and then. Otherwise she gets bored, and when she gets bored, she starts to meddle, and when she meddles, she starts pestering me and Lu.”
About when we will be wed. The unsaid words lingered, and Rielle could no longer look at him.
She stepped behind the dressing screen Odo had provided, undid her gown, stepped out of it. Clothed in only her shift, she reached for the trousers Audric tossed over to her.
“If I didn’t know better,” she said, keeping her voice light, “I’d say you’re sounding rather rebellious. And here I thought you weren’t one for breaking rules.”
He laughed again. “You bring it out of me.”
This was, she began to realize, a terrible idea. She should have asked Odo for a separate tent. Undressing five feet away from Audric was the sort of delicious madness for which she could never have prepared herself.
God help her, she could hear the fabric of his riding tunic sliding against his torso. She could almost feel it, as if he were there beside her, drawing her gown up over her head, freeing her of the last remaining barrier between them.
As she tried to wriggle into her own black tunic, cursing herself and her unhelpfully vivid imagination, she got her arm stuck through the heavy embroidered collar.
“Rielle?” came Audric’s voice. “Hurry, they’ve started announcing the racers.”
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.
The heralds blew their horns a third time.
With a deafening roar from the crowd, the racers plunged forward onto the Flats, the wide stretch of grasslands outside the city gates.
The Chase had begun.
• • •
The first few minutes were a blinding frenzy of sound and color. The hooves of five dozen horses kicked up clouds of dust.
To Rielle’s right, a man with a metal guard over his teeth yanked on a spiked glove and knocked another racer off his mount with the thrust of one meaty arm. The other racers trampled him, cutting off his screams, and his horse left the course with its reins trailing.
Rielle drove Maliya forward, looking around wildly. An arbiter should have disqualified the man for that. But in the storm of dust, she couldn’t pick out the arbiters’ colors. It was as though they had vanished.
She crossed the Flats, guiding Maliya through a throng of shoving elbows and flying whips, racers shouting at their mounts to move and yelling threats in a dozen languages. When she reached the foothills of Mount Taléa, she slowed her pace and directed Maliya up the steeper forested climb. She saw a flash of familiar color through the trees ahead. Black and gold. Odo’s colors.
Audric.
She lowered herself against Maliya’s neck, urged her mare up the foothills, and emerged out of the trees into the first mountain pass. A broad stretch of grass shivered in the wind before her. Walls of rock towered on either side.
Rielle’s heart lifted. She murmured the Kirvayan words Odo had told her the mare would respond to: “Ride the wind, falcon of my blood, wings of my heart!”
Maliya shot forward.
The wind whipped past them, ripping tears from Rielle’s eyes. She caught up to Audric and crowed with triumph.
He glanced her way, his scarf falling loose. He grinned at her, and her heart leapt. Despite the danger of the race, she couldn’t help but wish they could stay out here—away from court, away from everyone else—forever.
Seconds later, Audric veered away, taking the shortest path around the mountain. His Celdarian mare was bred for such steep, rocky trails.
But Maliya was built for speed. Rielle pushed her on across the pass, and Maliya obeyed. The wind howled in Rielle’s ears. She could hardly hear herself breathe. The shapes of the other riders, fanning out across the pass, were blurs of color. They were catching up to her.
She turned Maliya right, onto a narrow cliffside trail. Not her first choice, but it would give her better time. She told herself not to look and yet couldn’t help it, peering over the edge into the chasm below. She broke out in sick chills; her vision tilted. One wrong shift of her weight, one misstep from her horse, and she’d fly to her death.
Behind her came a clatter of hooves and rock. When the cliff trail widened, sloping down into the wooded foothills, she looked back.
One racer zipped by her, and then three more, so close she could smell their sweat. Behind them, a racer rammed his horse into the side of another, knocking both horse and rider off the cliff Rielle had just traveled. The fallen horse let out a terrible scream, then fell silent.
Rielle turned away, heart pounding, eyes stinging from the dust clogging the air. She exited the woods near the trail to the second pass that would bring her around Mount Taléa and back toward the city.
There, she found arbiters at last: seven of them, some distance ahead of her. They had thrown off their masks, letting their blond, braided hair fly free. They were letting out shrill war cries that Rielle recognized at once from one of Audric’s interminable lectures about Borsvall.
They were closing in on the rider nearest them—a man in black and gold, his cap and scarf fallen free, the wind ripping through his dark curls.
The world distilled to this single, terrible moment. Dread knocked the wind from Rielle’s lungs.
The arbiters, whoever they were, were no soldiers of her father’s. They were from Borsvall.
And they were surrounding Audric with their swords raised to kill.
4
Eliana
“But when the Empire forces came to Orline, the capital of Ventera, they were struck blind by a brilliant light. It was the Sun Queen, glittering and vengeful. She led the charge with King Maximilian at her side, and everyone she touched felt their long-forgotten magic awaken. They were sunspinners once more, firebrands and earthshakers. And the river that morning ran red with Empire blood.”
—The Sun Queen’s Triumph (Being an Alternative History of the Kingdom of Ventera)
As written in the journal of Remy Ferracora
June 14, Year 1018 of the Third Age
After the executions, Eliana saw Harkan home to his tiny apartment on the top floor of the building next to her own.
As she turned to go, he said softly, “El?”
She hesitated. If she stayed, they would share his bed, as they often did. His touch would be absolution—his strong, brown arms, the tender way he held her after and stroked her hair. For a little while, she would forget who she was and what she had done.
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