Page 50 of This Dark Descent
Reid shifted uncomfortably. “Staring at me isn’t any better. We haven’t got all day.”
“Maybe I like staring at you.” She said it with the express purpose of getting under his skin, but the last thing she expected was the blush that filled his pale cheeks, or the thoughts that spurred to mind at the sight of it. At first, she hadn’t thought of him as handsome, but the more she looked at him, the more the piercing blue of his eyes and the sharpness of his features grew on her.
Muttering under his breath, Reid fled from the barn with a backward call of, “I’ll be on the track when you’re ready to actually do something productive!”
Grinning, Mikira led Atara out into the gray morning sunlight just as Ari descended the final steps to join them. She twisted her curls atop her head with a cerulean kerchief, then offered Mikira a flask of tea from her satchel.
“You’re a goddess.” Mikira took the container and gulped the hot tea.
Ari laughed as they approached the track. “Damien said you were looking for me?”
Mikira held one of her sheathed knives out to Ari. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you can tell me if these are enchanted?”
Ari took it, turning it over in her hands. “I definitely sense magic, but I’m not experienced enough to identify one enchantment versus the other. Give me a few days to do some studying, and I’ll try again.”
She handed the knife back and joined Reid by the fence as Mikira led Atara onto the track, where several other jockeys were running their horses. At a look from Reid, they departed out the rear gate.
Ari scratched Widget under his chin where he lay across the top of the fence. “You should know I also enchanted her to sense danger, and to never get lost. Other than that, golems are obedient by nature, but I can’t guarantee her temperament or behavior otherwise. The longer they’re alive, the more they become their own creatures.”
“Then I’ll figure her out like any other horse.” Mikira laid a hand on Atara’s neck, and the horse’s tail swished. She knew Iri like the back of her hand. How the horse ran, the way he took jumps, how he liked to be brushed extra hard behind his right ear. Over the next few days, she needed to learn the same about Atara. It was the only way to keep Ari’s secret, and for her to win.
“She’s not quite like any other horse,” Ari warned. “Golems are highly intelligent. Atara can understand you more than any normal creature, but if you truly want to command her, you will need to learn the Kinnish words.”
“Command, as inforce?” Mikira’s stomach squirmed when Ari nodded. The idea of taking Atara’s free will away, of using magic to control her, didn’t sit right. Besides, the horse’s instincts were sharper than her own—she had to learn to trust Atara, not control her.
“I’ll manage without the commands,” she said, drawing the reins over Atara’s head. “Here goes nothing.”
Placing her foot in the stirrup, she hoisted herself into the saddle, her injured arm twinging in complaint. Atara pawed at the ground.
Reid lifted his pocket watch. “Let’s see what she can do.”
Mikira already knew. Barreling along at breakneck speeds during the race had been both enthralling and terrifying. But this was different. Here her life wasn’t in danger. It was just her and Atara.
Drawing a deep breath, Mikira nudged Atara.
The horse shot forward.
Mikira lifted up with a yelp, fisting her hands in Atara’s mane as the horse flew around the track in record time. By the time they slowed to a walk at the end, the horse wasn’t remotely winded. In fact, as she tossed herhead, flowing mane rippling in the breeze, Mikira could have sworn there was a challenge in her dark eyes. She wanted to run.
Laughing, Mikira directed her to where the others waited. Ari grinned, an expression that lit up her entire face, and Reid—he was staring at her strangely, his expression so open, so natural, that he almost looked like another person entirely.
Then he seemed to get ahold of himself, and his scowl returned. “You’re going to have to learn to control her.”
Mikira grinned and let Atara loose.
AFTER THREE DAYSspent on the track with Reid and Atara, Mikira finally began to feel as if she understood the horse. There was a playfulness to her that belied her austere appearance. She nipped at Mikira’s hair every time she dismounted to get water and spent too long talking to Reid, and when she went to climb back into the saddle, the horse danced around just out of reach until Mikira gave her an apple. But the moment she was back in place, the mare abandoned herself to the race and they flew.
Damien brought in several of his family’s jockeys to simulate real racing conditions, and it quickly became clear that Atara’s aggression didn’t show only when Mikira was threatened. She tossed her head at the other horses and even snapped when they pressed her into the inside fence, but nothing more so long as Mikira wasn’t in any real danger. Mikira had also begun to read her tells. A flick of her right ear, and she was thinking about snapping. A shift in her gait meant she was readying to throw her body into the horse beside her. In time, Mikira would be able to anticipate and compensate for the horse’s quirks.
The night before the ball, she and Reid went for a walk on the grounds. Atara strode alongside them, exploring the trail with childlike curiosity.She sniffed at flowers and munched at grass, poked her head into trees and eyed holes in the ground in hopes they’d offer up their secrets.
Things of particular note she brought back to Mikira and dropped at her feet, like a cat delivering a hard-won mouse—long-stalked flowers with bright blue petals, a crimson ribbon that’d gotten caught in a bush, a pinecone painted with vibrant moss.
Mikira had tried to thank her and set them aside, but Atara had stared at her with such a complex look of confusion bordering on disappointment that in the end, she’d tied the ribbon to the end of her braid to give to Nelda and carried the flowers. She made Reid hold the pinecone.
The Adair estate had nearly fifty acres of land, most of it rolling hills dark with lush woods and hidden crystal lakes. Their trail traced the edge of one forest where the gathering fog threaded through the trunks. Mikira closed her eyes and breathed the scent of wet bark deep into her lungs. She listened to the sound of a gurgling creek nearby and the softclumpof Atara’s hooves in the damp earth. Even the chill air on her skin felt right.
For once, she could forget the worries hanging over her and believe, if only for a moment, that everything was going to be okay.
