Page 5 of This Dark Descent
Rezek sighed. “I thought you might.”
He pulled a folded bundle of parchment from his inner jacket pocket and handed it to her. She scanned the contents, which already denoted everything they’d discussed. At the bottom was Rezek’s signature, alongside the imprint of his signet ring—a lion’s head in a pool of white wax. If Rezek were anyone else but a house lord, she’d have asked for a berator to witness the contract too, but a Kelbra’s seal was as binding as any berator’s.
“You have a signet ring?” Rezek asked in a tone that implied he highly doubted they could afford the yearly tax for one. They nearly couldn’t, but without one, the validity of their sales could come into question. A signet ring marked them as verified by the Vault, the bureaucratic arm of the government through which every piece of paperwork in Enderlain flowed. If the product wasn’t up to par or the payment didn’t come through, the berators would step in to mediate.
Veradell was a city built on paperwork, and the berators were its masons.
“Here.” Nelda reappeared panting at her side, proffering a plain iron band with a crest of crossed blades resting on a horseshoe, and a small pad of ink. Mikira took the ring, and Nelda looked Rezek square in the eye before marching back to the patio, where Ailene enfolded her in a tight embrace.
Rezek watched her go with a chuckle that made Mikira’s stomach turn. “I’ll keep your father with me until the end of the Illinir,” he said as she knelt to the ground to dip the ring in the ink and press it to the paper, and then again on the second copy. Her family’s symbol looked sadly pedestrian next to Rezek’s ornate wax seal.
She kept one copy and handed the other back to Rezek. The contract would be filed away in the Vault, ensuring they both kept to their word.
“Until then, Miss Rusel.” Rezek reached a hand toward her cheek. She braced for the cold press of his fingers, but they stopped a hairsbreadth away, curling in. He gave her one final smile before he opened the coach door and sat down beside her father, the constable following close behind. She mustered all the strength she didn’t feel, willing her father to see it.
“I love you.” She mouthed the words silently.
Then the door snapped shut and the coach rolled forward. She watched it go, numb.
Ailene appeared at her side, half-sobbing. “Kira, what have you done?”
“What I had to.” The words came out harder than she meant, but she couldn’t falter, not now. She was the strong one. The sturdy one. If she broke, her family would crumble. If she broke, she wasn’t sure she could put herself back together.
Nelda joined them, wringing her hands. “We can’t afford a normal horse, let alone the Illinir’s entrance fee.”
Mikira winced. First Lochlyn had been drafted because of her foolishness, now their father had been taken. Her sisters had never blamed her for Lochlyn’s death, just like they wouldn’t for this, but she blamed herself. Why was everyone constantly suffering for her mistakes? Why couldn’t she stop making them?
“The first showcase ball is tomorrow night,” she said tightly. “I’ll get a sponsor there, and they’ll provide me with a horse.”
It was a flimsy hope. The showcase balls were meant to match riders with sponsors, but would anyone bother with a racer on an unenchanted horse, even if she was Keirian Rusel’s daughter? Her fingers sought her knives, their worn leather-wrapped handles and bloodstone-set hilts a familiar comfort.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, willing herself to believe her own words.
The night Lochlyn was conscripted was the last night her father ever raced. The last night the Rusel name was spoken with awe and respect.
That name had meant something once; Mikira would see that it did again.
CHAPTER 2
MIKIRA
ALL MIKIRA WANTEDwas to curl up in the warmth of the barn and listen to the horses for a while. Huddled beside the stalls and wrapped in the rich scent of hay, she could pretend that when she walked outside again, her father would be sitting on the porch with a book and a cup of tea, her sisters leaning over his shoulders arguing over which story he would read.
Instead, she was back in the heart of Veradell with Iri for the showcase ball.
The city air always smelled of gunpowder and metal, like a spark would set the whole thing alight. She hated the bellow of steamship horns off the Grey and the constant press of thousands of bodies all around her, hated the way everyone looked at her as if they wanted something from her or else couldn’t be bothered to give her the time of day.
But most of all she hated that everywhere she turned, she was reminded of the war.
Recruiters called for people to sign up outside government-sanctioned buildings. Enchanted lorries sent people scattering from the streets, dead-faced soldiers staring wistfully out the back. It was why she kept Iri to the side alleys as much as possible when she traveled. That, and to tear down all the recruitment posters she could.
Are you able-bodied and of fighting age?read the one in her hands.Join us in the fight for Enderlain’s future.
Below it was a sketch of the white lion Aslir, Harbinger of ethereal enchantments and the Goddess’s right hand. The Council of Lords wanted the people to believe that the war with Celair was Goddess-blessed, but it was a thin veneer for the truth—Enderlain was running out of verillion, and Celair was a verillion rich kingdom. So people like Lochlyn kept dying, while the wealthy paid their way out of the draft through the exemption fee.
By the time she boarded Iri and reached Lady Zalaire’s estate in the Pendron District, Mikira felt like a wildfire that needed to consume, a hunger that only grew as she followed the winding path to the hilltop manor.
Even in her mother’s nicest evening dress, she couldn’t measure up to the finery of the people around her. Everyone was draped in gold and white empire gowns, or tailored jackets and long skirts studded with slices of precious gems—and most of them had arrived in enchanted coaches. It took all she had to ignore the narrowed eyes and wrinkled noses of the lords and ladies she passed as she crested the hill to the estate.
