Page 85 of This Dark Descent
Reid shot her a furrowed look of confusion, but Mikira ignored it. “That isn’t against the rules,” she said. “Not like targeting another racer and trying to kill them is.”
A smile curved Rezek’s lips. “Now, that would be a problem. I don’t suppose you have proof?”
Mikira gritted her teeth, trying not to say something she’d regret. Rezek’s fingers dropped to the door latch, and he flicked it loose. The door swung inward, and Mikira retreated a step, aware of every inch of space between them.
He took a single step inside. “Gren said your horse got injured. However did you manage to finish the race?”
Gotinjured, as if it hadn’t been Gren’s blade that did it.
“He was wrong,” Reid cut in. “It was another horse’s blood.”
Rezek came another step closer, his eyes still on her. “If you’re lying to me, Miss Rusel, the consequences will be far worse than any lost bargain.”
Reid shifted between them. Mikira wanted at once to disappear behind him where Rezek’s searing gaze couldn’t follow, and to tell Rezek to go to all four hells.
In the stretch of silence between them, a distant humming rose. She andReid exchanged looks a second before the stable door flew open. A crowd had gathered outside, each craning their necks to get a glimpse inside. Their many voices coalesced into one: “Rusel! Rusel! Rusel!”
Every beat of her family’s name tugged at the fear inside her chest, unspooling it and fitting something new in its place. She seized Reid’s hand and pulled him past a scowling Rezek into the main stable. The crowd’s cheers redoubled, surging through her like the adrenaline of the race, buoying her.
From the back of the crowd, Damien and Ari watched her with knowing smiles.
Mikira glanced back at Rezek, who was staring at them with barely concealed annoyance. “I’m going to win,” she told him, and stepped into the crowd.
CHAPTER 30
ARIELLE
ARI CLOSED HERbook of enchantments and rubbed her dry eyes, her head pulsing with a growing ache. She didn’t know how Damien did this for hours on end. Even now he was lost in the Racari at his desk, scribbling translations as he had been for the last several days since the third race.
Healing Atara had set off his curiosity, but all it’d done was make her more uneasy. Though she’d continued to wear her Saba’s necklace as he’d suggested, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very, very off. Everywhere she went, she felt the press of eyes, the inescapable feeling that something was always just out of sight. Her mind felt foggy and distant, her thoughts elusive things.
More than once, she caught herself wondering what would happen if she simply tore the necklace away and gave herself to the thing in the dark.
The wind howled, beating against the windows and tearing branches off trees. She let the sound soothe her. She liked to think of the power of the storm, to listen to it remake the world as it pleased. It felt a lot like the look in Mikira’s eye when the crowd had found her after the race—it’d changed everything about her, down to the way she’d held herself. She might not be able to enchant herself, but she had her own kind magic now.
Ari dropped the book onto a pile of others and went to pour herself and Damien a glass of whiskey, marveling all the while at how she couldpossibly feel comfortable enough to fix herself a drink in another person’s home. It was a small act, but it was the act of someone who belonged, and that was something she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to.
“I think you might be obsessed.” She set his glass beside him, sipping her own. The various flavors shifted over her tongue, a pleasant burn trailing down her throat.
He glanced up distractedly, then turned back to the book, before realizing what he’d done and looking up again. “My apologies. My sister says I tend to lose myself in things.”
Mention of Shira sent a twinge of unease through Ari, though Damien claimed she had no designs on becoming heir. There were so many moving pieces circling around them: the Illinir, Damien’s bargain with Rezek, the Ascension to determine the next Adair heir, her troubling magic. She worried that sooner or later, one of them would come crashing down.
Damien glanced at the clock on the wall. “Is it really that late already?” He ran a hand through his hair and stood. “I have something I meant to give you earlier.”
He retrieved a flat white box from his room and held it out to her. She took it, curious, and set her glass on the desk. She ran her fingers along the black silk ribbon encircling the box. Foiled gold lettering repeated the same word over and over again:Sinclair,Sinclair,Sinclair.
It was a shop on Ettinger Street she’d only heard of in name, never thinking she’d have the chance to possess something from it.
“Open it,” Damien said softly, so she did.
Inside rested a dress of the most magnificent design she had ever seen. With careful fingers, she lifted it from the box. Black silk unfurled, sleek and glossy as a panther’s coat bathed in moonlight. Feathers of a deep crimson red gathered just below the waist and up along the sheer layers of black fabric that formed the bodice. Several trailed down the side, embers of color. They bobbed and shifted, like petals upon a pool of night.
“It’s beautiful,” Ari breathed.
“It’s for the Kelbra ball. I thought you might want to come tomorrow night.”
Once, that idea would have terrified her. Even attending the last race had been more public an outing than she’d had in a long time. But now the idea of stepping into that ballroom with Damien, Reid, and Mikira at her side only enthralled her.
