Page 60 of This Dark Descent
“What in the hells?” Her hands tightened about the reins. “I don’t like this.”
Atara tossed her head in frustrated agreement.
As they surged down the straightaway, Mikira caught sight of the bulk of the pack nearly fifty yards ahead in an open square. Then the strangest things began to happen. One man turned his horse with a yelp and galloped past her in the opposite direction, fleeing the race. Another’s horse walked in drooping circles, the rider seemingly unaware. Arabella Wakelin and Alren Zalaire were screaming at each other.
Fools, she thought.What’s the matter with them?
Atara navigated the melee, whinnying harshly at anything that stumbled too close. Mikira searched faces for Quinn’s mask, then cursed herself for doing so. What did she care about the girl? She could die in the damned race for all it mattered.
Mikira frowned. Something felt wrong about that thought.
A pouch flew past her head, striking a wall and spilling blue powder.
Her frustration flared as a shout went up and the road emptied into an open square full of dangling pouches of different colors. Blue and red, yellow and white, orange and purple, they hung from wires strung across the square like festival lights. Riders were ripping them free and flinging them at other racers. They exploded in powders of the same color, their effects immediate.
The yellow powder sent the riders or their horses into a fearful frenzy. The blue glazed their eyes with confusion.
“The powders are enchanted,” Mikira said with slow realization. “The smoke too.”
Mikira swiped a finger through the red powder on her skin. As if it’d simply been waiting for her to recognize it, the simmering frustration bloomed into all-out fury. She wanted nothing more in that moment than to punch something and to keep on punching until her knuckles were bloody and raw even as she understood: she’d been enchanted into anger.
Movement at her side made her duck, and she narrowly avoided a yellow bag that slammed into a man behind her. She thought about seizing one of the pouches, but the square was quickly turning to mass chaos. Where the red pouches struck, anger rose like thorns, and where the fear pouches exploded, horses became unpredictable, lashing out with sharp hooves and bolting wildly. Stopping to fight would only slow her down. All that mattered was getting to the finish line.
She urged Atara toward the road directly ahead of them, and they tore into a wide corner just as something flashed beside Mikira. Atara tried to dodge, but the thing still crashed into her, knocking Mikira from her saddle. She hit the ground hard, the air bursting from her lungs in a pained gasp. Some distant thought warned her she was hurt, but it paled in comparison to the all-consuming rage that swallowed her.
She leapt to her feet with a scream, knives in her hands. Atara had already doubled back to her side, tossing her head wildly.
Two horses blocked their path, two more at their back. One of the riders held the baton that had knocked her from the saddle.
“Back off,” she snarled.
One of the men grinned down at her. His pale skin was free of powder, as was the brown-skinned woman next to him. A hot wire of fury wound its way through her. This had been planned. Whoever these people were, they had skipped the first enchantment, and she had no doubt it was Rezek’s doing. Just because he let her back into the race didn’t mean he wouldn’t interfere.
She tightened her grip on her knives. No matter. If she had to cut her way through them, she would.
The man kicked his horse toward her and brandished low with a knife. She leapt aside, slashing back with her blade to catch him in the leg. His snarl thrilled the enchanted anger in her veins. Another man made a move for Atara, but Mikira put herself between them, the flash of her blade driving the advancing horse back.
Atara moved with her, and Mikira sheathed her blades, swinging back up into her saddle as the woman struck down at her with a dagger. Atara danced away, then lashed out with a hoof that caught the woman’s horse in the knee. The horse screamed and buckled to its forelegs, opening a gap in the street.
She should have ridden through it. Some part of her knew that, but it was drowned by the fury, the frustration, the endless, endless anger. These people worked for Rezek. Rezek had ruined her life. Rezek had driven her into this race, into working with Damien, into cheating and lying and keeping secrets from her sisters. Because of him, she had to sacrifice what was right for what was necessary. To make choices she never would have otherwise and carry the weight of them all on her own.
A baton slammed into Atara’s shoulder.
The mare took the blow with unnatural strength and snapped at the attacker’s leg. The man screamed, jerking his horse back and tearing flesh free. Blood spattered Atara’s snout, dripping stark against the pale stone.
The sight pulled at something, a memory.
Not again.Panic began to writhe beneath the anger, a voice yelling at Mikira to run before it was too late. If she let Atara lose herself to the bloodlust, to the anger infecting them both, they would never win, and who knew what assumptions people would make, what would get traced back to Ari. She knew that she had to turn Atara and go, but she knew it like a childhood memory—it kept slipping away from her, leaving nothing but the desire to run her knives through the other riders.
It’s over, she thought.
A whistle cut the air, and a bay horse galloped toward them, the rider on its back clutching a blue pouch. Quinn grinned at her a second before she let the pouch fly. It slammed into the face of the fourth rider, exploding with blue powder. His eyes glazed over.
Quinn reeled in her horse, releasing a yellow pouch at the man whose leg Mikira had cut. He yelped, shoving the powder away, but the contactwith his skin was all it took. Already his breathing quickened, his pupils dilating. His horse skittered nervously, then bolted when Quinn let out a loud whoop.
The woman whose horse had crumpled mounted up behind the one Atara had bitten. Quinn held up another blue bag. It was all the threat they needed to flee.
Quinn watched them go with a grin, tossing the bag up and down. “I have to say, this one’s turning out to be pretty fun.”
