“If you ride with me, we’d be slowed.”
I paused, breathing fast. This wasn’t the time to doubt myself.
And, after all, he was the shot-caller. Best not question our strategy the first time it was needed.
I stepped forward with a nod. I gripped Pettifey’s mane, stood alongside her, and with two quick steps I swung myself up onto her back. They were the steps I’d practiced, and they came to me with shocking ease.
I settled on her back, hands going straight to the reins. When I met Dorian’s eyes, he gave a nod. He stepped away, toward the roan horse, and mounted it in one effortless swing up.
He took hold of the reins and turned the horse toward me. “Galloping’s easier than cantering. You only need to stay low, keep your thighs tight, let the horse’s head out. Got it?”
Stay low, thighs tight, let the reins out. “Yes.”
So we had to move quickly—as fast as a horse could go. Around us, the other pairs were mounting. There seemed to be a general hurry, but all I could hear was that single child’s voice crying above everything else.
It sounded like a little girl. Like Elisabet, finding out her parents had died beyond the wall so many years ago.
“I’ll lead,” Dorian said as the horse danced beneath him. “Don’t worry about running her too hard—she’s trained for it. Just keep her close to me.”
Faun and her partner mounted two horses beside us. They spun the horses and disappeared from view, thundering toward the moat.
Dorian kept the horse dancing in place. “Ready?”
I found my hands tightening more on the reins. I nodded.
The roan horse’s head jerked as Dorian pulled the reins. The horse pivoted toward the forest, and with a press of Dorian’s heels, the creature fell straight into a canter. But I barely had time to register it.
I squeezed my heels against Pettifey’s sides, and she burst into a trot after the roan. It only took one more squeeze before she was cantering.
Dorian’s voice was a loud rasp ahead of me. “Secure your grip. Lean into it.”
I did so. As soon as we touched the bridge, Dorian leaned low on his roan’s neck. I leaned toward Pettifey’s mane as the horse broke from a canter into a gallop.
The trees moved by at a blur, and I nearly lost my hold on the filly. I held on, but barely; it wasn’t that the gait was not smooth, but that a canter to a gallop had been so sudden, such a burst of power, anything less than all my strength would have sent me flying.
I kept my eyes on the roan, on Dorian’s blown-out cloak. The Sylvanwild forest passed us in a haze of emerald green. The wind whipped my braid, desperate to take hold of it for good. Around us, other horses threaded through the trees.
“Where are we going?” I called out.
“To the edge of our territory,” Dorian said over his shoulder. “Where the autumn and winter courts meet.”
Sylvanwild and Noctere.
“We need the daylight,” he said. “As much of it as we can get.”
They all knew about the Eldermaze. Dorian, and every fae in this court. And daylight mattered, which meant…
“How long before we arrive?”
“An hour at this pace,” Dorian said, his voice carrying in an odd, clipped way on the wind. “No more questions now; guard your strength. You’ll need it once we arrive.”
My mind returned to that wailing child. Perhaps Dorian thought I’d throw myself from the horse if he answered all the questions swirling through me.
He knew about this place, so he should make the calls. I had agreed to that in his study.
We rode in silence for the next hour. I leaned low, gripped tight, and thought of everything I knew about mazes.
It was said that in the Kingdom of Storms, the king and queen had commissioned a maze of stone for their two eldest children. Itwas a series of corridors, most dead-ends or wrong turns. Only one proper sequence of turns led to the exit.
