Page 10 of Fire to the Stars

Claire takes the reins and gives them a quick, firm flick. Not hard—just enough to make him perk to attention.

“You need to set limits or they’ll walk all over you,” she says. “Isn’t that rule three of the dragon-hunting guidelines?”

“Rule two.” I flex my stiff hand. “I don’t get along with horses.”

Claire swaps Lucy for her saddlebags. “You prefer dealing with dragons?” She laughs.

I lower my pack and roll my shoulder. Micah’s skull stares back at me. When I carted his dragon form to the cavern, one smoking growl from him spooked the horses. One of them nearly kicked my head off my shoulders to escape. I haven’t touched a horse since.

“I don’t prefer dragons,” I say. “I understand them better.”

“How so?”

“Dragons are predictable. They act on greed. That’s what makes them turn.”

She plucks the halter and lead rope from my pack.

“Come here, ma chérie,” she says, soothing the mare andslipping the muzzle through the halter, then buckling it over the bridle. Gods,no. She plans to lead my horse while we ride.

“You’re not ponying me,” I say.

“You strike me as a tense rider.”

“I’m not tense.”

“You’re clenching those reins so tightly, your hand is shaking.”

I relax my grip. Bad enough that Claire and I need horses to reach Ravinfort by nightfall. Now she’s suggesting I let her treat me like a child?

“Better to relinquish control than get bucked off, no?” she says, placating me with a smirk.

“I’m the hunter, which means I should be the guide. I admit I’m not the best rider, but anyone can pull on the reins.”

“How reassuring. It’s for your own good.”

“It’s humiliating. I’m a grown man.”

“How old are you, Abel?”

“Eighteen in four months.”

“A February baby! Why, you’re only five months younger than me. I’m agrown womanas of September, you know.”

I smack my face and groan, realizing a second too late that her question was rhetorical. I sound like Micah when he insisted he was old enough to decide he didn’t want to be a slayer. I sound like I’mseven.

A challenge sparks in Claire’s cherry-brown eyes.

“Mount from the ground.” She pats the mare’s neck. “If you can do that, you can ride by yourself.”

The story of the Dames Blanches is purely anecdotal, but it represents a crucial point: Greed has a way of hiding in plain sight, so long as we call it something else.

—Sermon onThe Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des Étoiles), Part II: The Book of Dark Days

Chapter Four

Claire

He needed a leg up.