The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(6)
The stables are connected to the castle, just beyond the kitchens. Two more guards are standing at the doors leading out to the stables. My palms start to sweat as I approach them. Before they can ask what I am doing, I open the door leading out and blurt, “At the queen’s request, I am checking on the horses that will be pulling our carriage to the fire dragon’s lair,” and stride past them with my nose in the air.
“Isn’t that what the grooms are for, my lady?” one of them asks.
“That’s what I said to the queen. If one of you would like to bring it up with her…” I slam the door before I can finish my sentence.
As I had hoped, the grooms haven’t risen yet, and no one is in the stables. I sprint to the tack room and get a bridle and bit, a blanket, and a man’s saddle—no sidesaddle for me today—and carry them to the horses.
The horse lords’ animals are stabled with the royal family’s docile beasts. In the dim light, I pick the horse closest to the exit and quickly start saddling it. It stomps its foot and looks at me, its nostrils flaring. “It’s okay,” I quietly croon. “You’re going to take me to freedom.”
Everything I know about saddling a horse, I learned in a book when I was thirteen so I could steal a ride on my father’s horse. That was three years ago. It takes an excruciatingly long time to remember where all the straps and belts and padding go, and as I cinch the saddle into place, I hope I have done it properly. When the horse is ready, I lead it out of the stable and into the dim light of predawn.
I have picked a stallion—a huge, muscular, glossy tan stallion who is studying me as warily as I am studying him. I guide him over to the mounting stump because there is no way I will be able to mount without a little help. He nods his head and nearly pulls the reins from me as I climb onto the stump. With trembling hands, I grab the pommel of the saddle and slither onto the horse, belly first, until I can get my leg over his hind end. My skirt crawls up to my knees. I grip the fabric and force it down to the tops of my riding boots. Slipping my feet into the stirrups, I lean forward to pat the creature on the neck, but before I can, he puts his head down and sprints, tearing through the courtyard, trampling the azaleas in my mother’s prize flower bed, and past the guards keeping watch at the open front gates.
The momentum throws me backward. I grapple for the reins and wrap them around one hand, using them to pull myself upright again, and then give a firm backward yank to slow the stallion’s pace. But he doesn’t slow. He whips his head from side to side, nearly wrenching my shoulder out of socket, and runs faster. I squeeze my knees together hard and lean forward, pressing my cheek against the animal’s neck. The wind catches my hair and unravels the bun. The horse’s mane whips my face and sticks in my open mouth, so I shut it and pray I don’t fall off.
We are tearing down the main thoroughfare through the city, the stallion’s hooves echoing against the cobbles. There are vendors on the sides of the street, setting up their wares. When I pass, they stop and stare, some of them shaking their fists and yelling at me, but I can’t hear what they’re saying over the sound of the wind rushing past me and the ringing hoofbeats.
A slow smile spreads across my face. I am riding a horse lord’s stallion, astride, careening toward the outskirts of the city. I am going to be free. I will not have to humbly submit to marrying King Marrkul’s heir or risk being fed to the fire dragon. We thunder over the wide stone bridge spanning the Glacier River, and pass from cobblestone to a hard-packed dirt road, from stone buildings and houses to farms and fields. The very air seems to grow brighter, and my body lightens as the stress of my choices lifts from me.
Still crouching low against the horse’s neck, I look south at the rolling hills and green fields that eventually turn into the massive, snowcapped mountains that separate Faodara from Anthar. Southeast, the Glass Forest looks like a distant patch of dark clouds hugging the horizon. I peer over my shoulder for one last look at the castle, squeezed at the base of the dark gray Wolf Cliffs, and almost fall out of the saddle. A black horse is galloping full speed behind me, so close its nose is practically on my horse’s flank. Golmarr glares at me from the animal’s back, his long, dark hair streaming out behind him.
Within seconds he’s beside me, maneuvering his steed so close to mine that our knees bump. He is riding without saddle or stirrups. “Your mother’s men,” he calls, nodding back toward the city. “They’re probably five minutes behind us.” My hands go cold and my legs sting with the memory of being whipped. Golmarr reaches over and pries the reins from my fingers. “Don’t use those,” he yells. “We train them to respond to our bodies instead of bits. The bit just makes him mad.”
I wrap my hands in the horse’s mane.
“You need to stop,” Golmarr says.
Stopping is the last thing I want to do, so I lean forward and silently urge my horse to run faster, reveling in the wind speeding past my face and streaming through my loose hair, in my racing heart and pumping blood. If Golmarr wants me to stop, he’s going to have to make me. Otherwise, I will ride this stallion as far as it will take me.
He calls out a word I have never heard before, and my horse stops galloping. I nearly fly over the animal’s head as my momentum carries me forward. The stallion peers at me and then wanders over to the side of the road, to a patch of emerald-green grass, and starts eating. Golmarr turns his horse around and guides it over to me, and my eyes travel down his long, leather-clad legs and stop at his feet. They are bare.