Page 4 of This Dark Descent
But the alternative was death.
“Very well,” her father said, and something broke in Mikira. That grim persistence, the one that drove her out of bed each morning and forced her to keep working the ranch, to keep trying, began to crumple like a post rotted through.
He descended the stairs.
“No!” Mikira lurched, barely aware of her sisters grasping her from behind and pulling with all their might. “Father, please, don’t go!” They had lost too much to the Kelbras already. Given too much of their lives to them. They could not have him too.
But he didn’t stop.
She broke free of her sisters’ hold as their father climbed into the coach. The constable thrust an arm into her chest as Rezek closed the door.
“Open it!” She pounded her fists against the wood. The constable jerked her back; her fingers wrapped around a knife hilt.
“Kira!” It was Nelda’s voice that snapped her back to herself, to the sight of the barely concealed fury on the constable’s face. He could arrest her for drawing a knife on him. All it took was a word.
Slowly, she sheathed the blade. Forced her rigid fingers from the hilt and her eyes to Rezek, who made a low tsking noise. “Temper, temper.”
“Please.” She nearly choked on the word. “Please let him go. I’m begging you.”
Rezek’s head tilted. “You don’t look like you’re begging.”
Everything inside her seized against the insinuation, but she forced down every ounce of refusal and dropped to her knees with her head bowed.
“Please.”
She felt his gaze like a sword at her throat. Felt Ailene and Nelda watching from the doorway, as powerless as she was, as her family had always been before the Kelbras. There had been a time when her family’s prestige might have made Rezek hesitate before doing this, a time when her father had friends in high places. But those days were long gone.
“Despite your family’s constant attempts to paint me as a villain, I’m nothing if not fair,” Rezek drawled. “I’ll make you a deal.”
She rose tentatively to her feet. “A deal?”
“If you can win the Illinir, I’ll free your father and enter an official pardon for his crimes. I’ll even forgive your family’s debts.”
He might as well have challenged her to a duel; she was far likelier to win that. Every Illinir, one hundred racers entered, and far fewer emerged. She probably wouldn’t even survive, and yet…
“If I lose?” She hated how much fear bled through everything she said.
He smiled. “I get the ranch—and everything in it.”
The Rusel enchants had once been mounts for everyone from the old Ranier kings to the city’s best racers, and Rezek had been after them for years—a gift to present his illustrious father. Which made this deal too good to be true. Rezek finally had the leverage to get what he’d always wanted. Why make this offer when he could just trade her father’s life for the ranch?
He was up to something, something more than just securing their enchants, but Mikira didn’t have the luxury of figuring out what.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said with an offhanded air. “Your horse can’t be an enchant.”
“You can’t—That’s not—” She bit back her words as Rezek’s eyes widened. That was a look she knew too well.
“Yes?” he prompted.
She hated him for this, for always twisting the rules against them. She’d never survive the Illinir on a normal horse, let alone win. Each of the four races was specifically crafted to challenge a different type of enchantment, from spike-filled pits that opened beneath horses’ hooves to illusions designed to make them go mad, and that said nothing of the dangers of the other riders.
If she refused Rezek’s terms, her father would become a servant directly under the Kelbras’ thumb without hope of reprieve. But if she won the Illinir, the prize was invaluable: fame, fortune, and a boon from the king himself. One that would grant her anything within the king’s power—a new stock of enchanted horses, an enchanter license for her father, a ranch in a district other than the Kelbras’. The money alone would enable their freedom, but the boon would give them so much more.
“Do we have a deal?” Rezek offered her his hand.
She lifted her head. “I want it in writing.”
Rezek may have a constable in his pocket and all the wealth and power that came with being the prince’s favorite, but even a Kelbra couldn’t break an official contract. It was the precarious base upon which Veradell’s house of cards was built, the cuffs with which the elite bound each other.
