“Oh? Already the best day of my life.”
“I want to ride in your place,” I blurt out.
His brow climbs. “Bold. What do I get?”
“Victory.”
“Tempting. But—”
“He’ll run harder for me, and you know it. I trained him.”
“That may be true…” Aaron hesitates. “But you haven’t raced in years. The course is deadlier now.”
“You know that doesn’t scare me.”
He shrugs. “Then ride under your own name.”
I could lie. I could yank him off the saddle. Instead, I hand him the one currency he can’t resist: information.
“Because I must petition the Council, and I can’t ask my father,” I say. “If he thinks he can speak on my behalf, people will get hurt. And anyway, he wouldn’t grant what I have to ask him. Please, Aaron.” I beg him with my eyes.
“For Kat?” he asks, softer.
I nod, and he sighs, his façade of boyish mischief slipping.
“You’re mad. Gods, I love it.” He swings down and presses the reins into my palm. “You’ll owe me.”
“Put it on my tab.”
He cracks a smile again. “Oh, I intend to.”
I wrap my head in a scarf as Aaron sweeps off his deep-blue racing cloak and pins it at my throat, pulling the hood up so it shadows my face and hair.
He leans in and presses a quick kiss to my cheek.
“Tradition,” he says dramatically, the tiniest grin teasing the corner of his lips, “dictates a kiss for luck. Now you’ve been blessed by the handsomest man in Solmere; your victory is assured.”
“How tragic that I’m immune to his charms, then.”
With that, I vault up. All around us, the crowd crackles with energy, as if a tempest is rising.
“Ride like hell, witch,” he calls after me. “And don’t scratch my saddle.”
I nod and tug the reins, turning the stallion toward the line of contestants.
The world narrows to hooves and heartbeats—thunder and war drums inside my chest.
The gates explode with a crack of lightning and a typhoon of dust. The crowd roars as a hundred riders launch as one.
The course is chaos. Tight alleys, razor turns, stone stairs, an oil-slick ramp, and the worst of it—theFlamewind Gauntlet, a needle-thin pass through the old coliseum where shattered glass and barbed stakes wait to unseat the reckless.
As we round the first bend, another rider slams into me, almost knocking my stirrup loose. I lean forward and dig my heels in, urging my stallion faster.
Wood splinters behind us. Someone screams.I don’t look back.
“Come on, Stormwind,” I whisper, snapping the reins. He responds like a dream, surging ahead and leaving thepackof riders in the dust.
The oil ramp gleams ahead. The lead horse hits it, skids, and crumples. Another tries to leap across. The steed clips the rail and flings its rider into stone.
