“Yes, I’ve walked everywhere I’ve ever needed to go. And I borrowed the horse and cart sometimes from our neighbor.” Which had already been set up for me, and the horse knew the way to the village and home again without much entreaty from me.
Stonehaven had horses. Smaller than these war horses, they were steady, practical creatures that pulled carts, carried merchants, and occasionally threw someone into the mud if sufficiently provoked. I had always assumed that reflected poorly on the rider. A personal weakness, really.
I put a hand on its side, testingly. The entire animal shifted and I yanked my hand away as if I had been burned. I now felt less judgmental than I had once been.
Kiegan, already mounted, did not try to hide his amusement. I made a note to be uncharitable to him at the first opportunity.
“You’ll ride with me,” Fear commanded. He swung up onto his enormous black horse with the effortless ease of someone for whom this was entirely routine, then extended a hand down to me.
I took it, and he pulled, and I flailed at the horse’s side until Fear had somehow sorted me onto the horse and against his thighs. Fear gripped my hip and did not comment, which was wise.
I ended up in front of him. His thighs bracketed mine, longer than mine, the inside of them pressed against the outside of mine through too few layers of fabric.
“All right?” he said, close to my ear.
“Fine.”
I was not fine. The horse was far from the ground, and I had not fully thought through whatwe’ll share a horsemeant in terms of proximity. His chest was warm against my back. I could feel his breathing, slow, even, deliberate. Mine was none of those things.
He took up the reins, his arms coming around either side of me, and we moved with a sudden lurch for which I had not been prepared.
I gripped the front of the saddle with both hands. Fear, for once, mercifully, said nothing. He’d teased me about my fear of riding a dragon; now we were not far above the road and I was still anxious.
He took the reins in one hand and put an arm around my waist. His hand, with the reins, rested lightly on my thigh, and I was far too conscious of the solid wall of muscle that he was at my back. Apparently, even my fear of being thrown to a slow death—as opposed to the quick death falling from a dragon—could not distract me from Fear’s body.
“Stop fighting it.”
His lips were altogether too near my cheek. When he spoke, his voice was a vibration in his chest that traveled through my back, my ribs, the base of my spine. I felt him speak before I heard him.
As if I needed that much more of Fear’s overwhelming presence.
“I’m not fighting it.”
He probably didn’t just mean the horse.
“You’re always fighting. Trust the horse.”
I was going to say something about the horse being a stranger to me, though perhaps more trustworthy than Fear, but then his hard forearm settled across my thighs, and the insult dissipated like smoke.
It took a significant amount of road, but slowly, something in my clenched-as-a-fist body began to relax. My shoulders first, dropping away from my ears. My thighs, which had been gripping the horse hard enough to ache. My back, which I had been holding away from his chest until I gave up and leaned against the warm expanse of his chest. I stopped bracing againstthe movement and settled into the rhythm of the horse’s long strides.
“There. You’ve got this. Good girl,” he murmured into my ear.
I wanted to tell him to fuck off. His words warmed me anyway. I settled for saying nothing.
He held the reins loosely. He held me with the same loose competence. I was acutely aware of what he was not: his breath at my ear; the rhythm of his chest expanding and contracting against my back; the fact that the horse’s gait was moving me, very slightly and very repeatedly, against his lap. There was nowhere to go that was not further into him.
If I had known riding with him would require me to be planted in his lap, maybe I would’ve tried harder to bond with the horse.
The road unrolled ahead of us out of the city and into the wider morning.
Kiegan pulled up alongside us on his own horse, a stockier, enormous animal that suited him, and looked at me assessingly.
“You’re doing better than I thought,” he said.
“You thought I’d fall off.”
“At best.”
