With a slight tug on the reins and a light squeeze of her knees, Briar takes off along the dirt trail. Like her cloak, his mane billows in the crisp air, and if it weren’t already wrapped around her, she’s certain it’d fly away. One by one, she ducks underneath the low hanging branches, keeping her eyes focused on what awaits at the other end.
The trees begin to grow taller and, along with them, the branches. Delicate flowers of various colors bloom all around her, signaling she’s getting close. With a giant leap, Briar’s hooves leave the forest behind before landing in a grassy meadow. It’s both strange and comforting being able to see for miles and miles, with only a faint shadow of the Vaekith Mountains protruding from the skyline.
Briar slows down as Cerylia pulls on the reins. Once he comes to a complete stop, she dismounts, then feeds him a few sugar cubes and strokes his mane. She pulls the hood of her cloak over her head and slowly turns to face the endless expansion of tall grass and rolling hills. Reins in hand, she and Briar trudge through the meadow with no aim and no purpose other than to walk . . . and to think.
About halfway into their third or fourth circle around, she stumbles upon some lovely blue and purple wildflowers. She plucks a few from the ground, admiring their simplicity and beauty, but just as she’s placing them in her pocket, she hears the pounding of hooves in the near distance. Briar seems to sense the incoming intrusion as well because his ears twitch and he kicks against the ground, breaking up the dirt underneath.
“Shhh,” Cerylia soothes. She pats his nose, then the side of his face, but neither do much to comfort him. Seeing as they’re on the outskirts of the meadow, near the edge of the forest, she decides to secure the reins around a nearby tree. The sound of hooves grows louder, then stops altogether. With caution, she steps in front of Briar so that half of her body is in the woods, the other half visible to whoever’s out there. For some reason, she feels a slight urge to shout and reveal herself—but something tells her to keep quiet.
Relief washes over her as a familiar jade cloak rides in on Penny, her warm-natured and docile Percheron. Opal clearly spots her from a distance but, strangely enough, doesn’t trot over to her. Instead, she remains completely still in the middle of the field.
With slight hesitation, Cerylia swallows her pride and loosens the reins from around the tree. She mounts Briar and they cautiously approach Opal and Penny. Briar stops just past Penny’s head so that she and the queen have no other choice than to look each other directly in the eye.
Opal speaks first. “When I saw Briar missing from the stables, I figured you’d taken him.”
An odd thing to say, seeing as Briar is her horse, but Cerylia ignores the girl’s condescending tone. “Yes, it’s a lovely morning for a ride. I was surprised to find that you hadn’t taken him out already.” She almost adds that she knows Opal hasn’t ridden Briar since they’d last spoken, but thinks better of it. “How’s Penny?”
Opal gives the queen a wry smile. “I think you know the answer to that. Like I mentioned last time, I’m partial to Briar.”
Cerylia narrows her eyes. “Did you come here for a reason, Opal?”
“Yes.” Her expression darkens. “I need to speak with you.”
“About?”
For the first time in a long time, Opal seems uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “The last time we spoke, I—well, I believe I know what it is you wanted to ask me . . . what you were thinking.”
Surely she hadn’t been that transparent. The idea had only formed in her mind just moments before their last conversation. She hadn’t hinted at or mentioned inverting back to that day—at least she thought she hadn’t. “Care to divulge?”
Opal’s grip tightens. “I know you want me to take you back to the day of Aldreda’s death. I know you want the opportunity to kill her before Arden can—to get vengeance for Dane, for what she did all those years ago.” She takes a deep breath but doesn’t say anything further.
“Wouldn’t you?” Cerylia feels her own grip go rigid, her shoulders tensing. “It isn’t just about Dane.”
Opal tilts her head, curious. “What else is it about, then?”
Her question is met with a deafening silence. The queen averts her gaze, looking to the sky to keep her rage from surfacing.
Opal doesn’t ask a second time. “I cannot invert and take you back, Your Greatness. I cannot allow you to redo what has already been done.” She shakes her head. “We’d be risking too much.”
Cerylia shoots her an icy glare. “In what way exactly? How would we be risking too much?”
“The Mallum,” Opal whispers. “For starters, I’d lose my abilities and . . . ”
“And what?”
With a knowing look, she says the one thing Cerylia never expected to hear. “And you’d lose yours, Your Greatness.”
BRAXTON HORNSBY
BY THE TIME they reach the stables on Sardoria grounds, only one horse remains. Braxton follows Xerin inside, watching in amusement as he throws his hands in the air. “There were at least three when I last checked!”
Braxton gives him a slap on the shoulder, then walks over to the only full stall. He reads the text aloud on the iron nameplate. “While I hop on ol’ Whitley here, looks like you’ll be shaping into a horse after all.”
Xerin mutters something indiscernible before opening the empty stall next to Whitley. “We’d better make this fast. I’m guessing Cerylia’s out riding now. She likes to go in the mornings.” Braxton’s about to ask him how he knows this, but Xerin seems to read his mind. “I’ve flown over a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of things. Trust me when I say that the queen likes to take her horses out before dawn, and she usually goes northeast to a nearby meadow.”
“Is that the route we were going to take?”
Xerin nods. “Instead, we’ll take a slight detour, head south. Once we’re a little ways into the Roviel Woods, well past the meadows, we’ll head north again before turning east.”
When he doesn’t say anything else, Braxton gives him an affirming nod, even though he’s not familiar with the area—or their travel plans, for that matter.
Xerin places his hand on the horse’s side. “For lords’ sakes, turn around, would ya?”
“Oh, right,” Braxton says as he averts his gaze. The inside of the stable flashes yellow, and when he looks back, there are two horses instead of one. “Perhaps you should have left your stall open,” he says with a laugh, but when Xerin gives him a harsh nudge on the shoulder that nearly knocks him off his feet, Braxton’s no longer smiling. “It was only a joke. Take it easy,” he says, swinging the gate to Xerin’s stall open.
Xerin sways his mane and trots out, hardly giving Braxton a chance to mount his horse and follow. Fortunately, Whitley is a calm, even-tempered creature, and he finds himself following Xerin’s hoof-prints in no time.