Mavlyn nodded. “Hurry. I have a feeling we’re running out of time.”
Leap used his stolen knife to shimmy the lock back into place, then returned to his own rooms. He needed time to regroup and figure out a plan, but the sight of Gale standing outside his door, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, told him that would have to wait.
“What is it?” Leap asked wearily.
Gale shrugged, pushing off the wall. “Ryker’s summoned you to the great hall.”
A lump of dread solidified in Leap’s stomach as he followed Gale to the great hall, where his Uncle Oren typically held court. He’d hoped to have a reprieve before Ryker dragged him out to make a spectacle, but apparently his cousin was unwilling to wait.
“Ahh, there he is!” Ryker cried as Leap and Gale entered the room. Leap stiffened at the sight of Ryker lounging on his uncle’s throne, one leg thrown haphazardly over one of the arms as he dangled a wine glass from his free hand. The advisors were all absent, most having left with Uncle Oren, while the remaining ones had likely not been summoned for this farce. In their absence was a gaggle of Ryker’s cronies and admirers—sons and daughters of the court who hadn’t yet been assigned posts and duties by their families, and who were more than up for a bit of fun at Leap’s expense.
The only actual adults in the hall were the guards stationed at the entrances, and Gale, who stopped a few feet away, leaving Leap to approach the throne on his own. He glanced back to see the lightning rider’s reaction to all this, but Gale’s expression was smoothed into an expressionless mask.
Ever the professional,Leap thought bitterly as he turned to face his cousin. He swept low into an exaggerated bow, gathering his false bravado around him like a suit of armor.
“How can I be of service to the court?” he asked.
“I thought you would never ask,” Ryker said in that gleeful tone that always made Leap’s skin crawl. He straightened to see Ryker looking not at him, but at the assembled crowd, all of whom were eyeing Leap. “My fellow courtiers, you may remember my dear cousin Leap. His parents were honorable members of the Lightning Guard, and we took him in when they were killed in battle. My father had high hopes that Leap would follow in his parents’ footsteps, but he turned his back on the Lightning Rider academy and ran away, throwing his lot in with a band of thieves in Wynth.”
The cronies gasped at the scandalous portrait Ryker painted, and Leap had to force himself not to roll his eyes at their theatrical reaction. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gale frowning. He wondered if he should even bother speaking up in his own defense, but he knew there was no use—he had already been judged and condemned. Ryker was merely laying out the sentence now.
“And that’s not even the worst of it,” Ryker declared. He paused to take a sip from his wine glass, then continued. “After Leap finished fleecing the hard-working citizens of Wynth of their coin, he left the city and joined up with a group of bloodthirsty harpies, who he’s been helping by luring poor, unsuspecting fae to their lair!”
Angry shouts echoed through the chamber at this, but they were nothing compared to the outrage that flared to life inside Leap. “I never helped the harpies capture or kill fae,” he said hotly, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He took a step toward Ryker, but before he could say or do anything more, his cousin blasted him with a powerful burst of wind. Leap went flying across the room once more, and he braced himself for a collision, too stunned to catch his fall this time.
But instead of stone, he crashed into an armored torso instead.
Gale grunted as he caught Leap, his arms banding around the boy as he absorbed the brunt of the blow. Leap glanced up into the rider’s face, shocked to see genuine anger blazing in the older male’s eyes.
The lightning rider set Leap on his feet, then turned his flinty gaze to Ryker. “You can play your hazing games if you must, Lord Ryker,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone. “But your father gave me strict orders to make sure Leap remains unharmed, and until his death, I answer to him, not you.”
Ryker’s face mottled with fury at not only being thwarted, but at having a set down delivered by a mereguardin front of his peers and friends. His throat worked as he searched for words, likely trying to figure out how to punish both the guardandLeap.
But the lightning riders, though they served the air realm at the behest of Lord Oren, were otherwise a law unto their own. Ryker had no power over Gale, and he knew it.
“There’s no need to worry about Leap’s safety,” Ryker said, affecting an airy tone in an attempt to wrest control back over the room again. “I merely brought him here to tell him that since he refuses to make himself useful as a cadet, he can serve the realm by scrubbing the palace’s floors.” His thin mouth stretched into a gamine grin. “Starting with this one, of course.”
A mop and scrub brush were produced, and Leap was forced to spend the next four hours scrubbing the great hall’s floors on his hands and knees while his cousin continued to hold court. Ryker and his friends made sure to drop crumbs of food, spill droplets from their wine goblets, and even ‘accidentally’ knocked over his bucket so he had to stop and fill it with more soap and water. Their constant efforts to sabotage him made the process take twice as long as it should have, and by the time he left the great hall, he was shaking with suppressed rage.
“You shouldn’t let them get to you like that,” Gale said as he trailed Leap. The lightning rider seemed to have become his shadow, and Leap couldn’t decide if he liked that or not. On the one hand, his presence curbed Ryker’s cruelty, but on the other hand, Leap had no chance of escaping while having a guard in his presence twenty-four hours a day.
“Did Uncle Oren really assign you to protect me?” Leap asked, not looking back at Gale. His mind was stuck on the events that had taken place in the great hall, on the way the courtiers had pretended he wasn’t there even as they tormented him, making him feel as though he had less importance than even the lowliest servant in the palace. They probably would have stepped on him, too, if Gale hadn’t been there to monitor them.
His ears burned with humiliation at the thought that he had to be babysat after all these years of being self-sufficient. Was this really what he'd been reduced to?
“Not exactly,” Gale admitted. “He ordered me to make sure you didn’t escape, but he didn’t say anything about you being hurt or injured. I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of Ryker physically attacking you, though, so I don’t feel bad about the lie.”
“Right, but he has no problem with Ryker abusing me in other ways, is that it?” Leap asked sarcastically. “Forcing me to scrub floors and allowing his friends to tease and torment me is fine, so long as they don’t actually lay a hand on me?”
Gale shrugged. “Hazing happens everywhere, Leap, even in the lightning rider academy.” Leap could hear the frown in his voice as they crossed the courtyard. “Is joining the academy really so abhorrent to you?”
Leap stopped and turned to face Gale. “It would be an honor,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically serious. “There was a time where I wanted nothing more, and would have jumped at the opportunity my uncle gave me yesterday. But that was before I met Adara, Einar, and Mavlyn, and realized that some causes are worth putting aside old grudges and boundaries for.”
“And what causes are those?”
Leap took a deep breath, trying to gather his thoughts. “When I met Adara for the first time, she used her fire magic to cure one of the harpies of a shadow magic infection that would have killed her. This was after the harpies tried to kill her and take her back to the nest—and before you say anything,” he added, annoyance creeping into his tone at the look on Gale’s face, “—Iwastrying to stop that from happening. But anyway, Adara saved the harpy even though she had every reason to leave her in the snow to die. Einar, crotchety old dragon that he is, has stayed by Adara’s side through thick and thin, even though he hates fae with every fiber of his being. Mavlyn—” the guilty knife lodged in his heart twisted a little at the thought of her— “left her hometown and her parents and everything she knows to help Adara, even though she knows Lady Mossi would punish her for it if she found out.”
“The houses have been fighting for dominance for as long as fae memory can recall, even before the dragon wars. In all the stories I’ve heard about champions and heroes, I've never heard a single one where fae from all the realms banded together to fight a common enemy. But here we all are, risking everything for Adara because we believe she has what it takes to end the shadow curse destroying our kingdom.”
