I thought I was going to lean in and kiss him, but I guess I was stronger than I thought because I stowed my practice sword under my arm and turned away.
“See you this evening,” I said over my shoulder.
I was going to save his life, even if I didn’t get to enjoy it with him.
Chapter Two: Romantic Failure
Geese honked overhead. Circling the camp, the trees contemplated autumn. One large, looming oak at the end of the meadow had turned completely red.
I finished my list of questions for Sorrel last night and now camp was breaking for another day of riding. I had been told we would come to the most northern town of the valley lands that afternoon, Sage Ravine. We’d seen small groups of thatch-roofed farmhouses here and there, even a crossroads with a smattering of village but, for the most part, our route had been green forests and shady, glacial-carved valleys.
In my first days in Landsome, I spent little time in the hillside town clustered around Castle Creneda. I was eager to see another side of Landsome as well as break up the routine of the road.
“No, Peanut Butter, whoa.”
I stood on the wooden stepping stool the groom delivered with my horse. I held the reins tight in my hand, but every time I lifted my left leg for the stirrup, Peanut Butter shifted away, meaning I had to climb off the step, reangle the stool, and try again.
For the last time.
I vaulted onto Peanut Butter’s back, stomach over saddle, feet dangling on one side, neither on the stool nor in a stirrup. Peanut Butter wasn’t a tall horse, but he was tall enough.
He took a step forward.
“Whoa! Whoa.” I tried to make my voice deep and authoritative. Peanut Butter took another step, and I hefted myself up and forward to get a leg over to the other side. I felt my hips groan at shifting back into the weary riding position. I sat partway up but lost the reins, didn’t have a foot in either stirrup, and promptly slid to the ground with a jolt. Peanut Butter took a dainty step away, as if to distance himself from me. My arms were sore from last night’s mandatory sword drills and now my butt was throbbing from the fall.
A moan grumbled out of me as I stooped to my feet and caught the dangling reins before Peanut Butter accidentally stepped on them. If he jerked his head up with a rein under his hoof, that would be a true disaster. He could break the bridle, even get hurt.
“Do you need help, Lady Dottie?”
Lady Ariana, the queen’s lady-in-waiting, was atop her handsome dappled gray. The horse’s mane was trimmed neatly. Ariana wore a split dress of deep ocher that allowed her to put a leg on either side of the horse while appearing to be in a full skirt. The yellow set off her brown skin and dark eyes. Her thick black braid was straight down her back today, the tail of it touching the saddle. She was perhaps a few years older than me and had that effortless aura of calm confidence.
My own horse was short with a black tail and mane that fell shaggily on both sides of his neck. (Was I supposed to be the one brushing it?) Peanut Butter was currently trying to snatch a bite of grass despite the bit in his mouth, and I was dressed in the wrinkled hunting greens I’d worn yesterday morning while drilling, then while riding in the afternoon, again at evening practice where I tried to convince Omar that meditating was an important first step on the road to enlightenment for young magical folk, and still again this morning at drills.
I was a fraud. I was pretty sure I was starting to smell. And there was a handsome man I was trying not to be alone with so I could make a move on another.
It was a long cry from the romantic vacation Sorrel had promised.
