Page 47 of This Dark Descent
Ari looked away. “If you win the Illinir, Damien promised to get me one.”
Mikira’s head dropped back against the stall, her mouth parted in astonishment. “Rezek’s going to find out. He’ll use it against us. All of us.”
“He’s not. Damien will make sure of that. He’ll keep us safe.”
“Do you really think he can?” Mikira lifted her head, staring at the crusted wound on her arm.
“I do.” It was only when she said it aloud that she realized the truth of it: she trusted Damien Adair, but more than that, she’d begun to trust herself. As soon as she was feeling better, she intended to discover just how far her power went. She would keep them safe herself.
Mikira scrubbed a hand across her face with a groan. “I hope you’re right. And, Ari?” Ari met her gaze, and Mikira smiled. “I know a little of what it’s like to keep secrets like that. Yours is safe with me.”
The words wrapped Ari like a warm cloak, and she too smiled. “Comeon.” She brushed her skirts free of hay before offering Mikira a hand up. “The boys are probably lost without us.”
Mikira took her hand with a derisive snort. “I’m sure Reid found something to complain about just fine. Maybe he found a speck of dust on his desk to lecture.”
“Yes, but who is Damien going to stare at pensively and overanalyze? He knows Reid far too well already.”
Mikira groaned. “I swear he can see straight into my soul.”
Ari laughed as they stepped out into the rapidly falling night. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s not that bad.”
“That’s because you like flirting with danger.” Heat flushed Ari’s cheeks, earning a playful elbow from Mikira. “I knew you liked him!”
“I find him interesting,” she mumbled, uncertain about the blossoming warmth in her chest. It was a foreign feeling, though not an altogether unwelcome one, and it’d been growing. Over the last few weeks, she’d learned more about Damien than she felt she had any right to: she knew he was a scholar, a man of numbers and figures. She knew how rarely he shared his smile, and how often he sought a stiff drink. She knew that as serious as he could be, he was full of passion. He cared for Reid, and his house, and he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
“It’s a new feeling for me,” she continued, not sure what she intended to say. She’d never described this out loud before. “At first, I thought relationships just weren’t for me, as I’ve never felt attracted to anyone before. But I’m starting to realize that I just need to get to know them first.”
Mikira tilted her head. “You need an emotional connection to have a physical one, you mean?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“I get that,” Mikira replied thoughtfully. “I just want someone to sit on the porch and watch the horses with.”
Ari smiled. “That sounds nice.”
Mikira clapped her on the back hard enough to make Ari start. “Good luck! That man is like a locked vault.”
Well then, she would just have to find the key.
BY THE TIMEMikira finished recounting everything that had happened in the race, Ari was simply glad that she and Atara had made it out alive. She’d heard stories about the dangers of the Illinir, but she hadn’t thought about what a toll it must take on a rider, not just to have their life at risk, but to watch people die so brutally around them.
She’d only seen death once in her life, and it was with her always.
“Atara still almost won it for me, though,” Mikira finished in a rush. “She shot past the competition like—ow!”
“Would you hold still?” Reid snapped. He was halfway through sealing her wound with a row of tidy stiches Ari’s mother would have been proud of, though Mikira’s gesturing made it difficult for him to aim.
Mikira glowered back at him. “You’re literally stabbing me right now.”
“I will stab you if you don’t sit still. How did you get so much bloody dirt in this? Did you roll around in the mud?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must not have been paying attention when I wasriding for my life from an enchanted fire.”
“Whenever you two are done.” Damien’s cool voice cut through the argument from the desk, where he was sifting through a pile of messages that’d been delivered for him earlier. He held up a blood-red envelope between two fingers. “It appears the racer who came in the fiftieth spot in today’s race is no longer able to compete. Mikira has been invited to take his place.”
Mikira paled. “Is he okay?”
Damien tossed the letter onto the desk. “It’s Rezek.”
