*We can run?*
“Sure.” The snow was deep enough she didn’t think the mare would want to run for long.
The mare gave a funny hop that almost tossed her out of the saddle. When she regained her balance and looked around to see what the mare had reacted to, she realized the hooves were standing on air just above the snow.
*Now we can run.*
That was all the warning she got before the mare took off in the direction of Halaway. They galloped, they cantered, they wove around trees, they jumped over shadows on the snow just because the mare wanted to jump.
“We can go over the bridge,” she said when they reached the creek and the bridge that separated the land belonging to the SaDiablo family seat from the village.
The mare just snorted, bunched her hindquarters, and used Craft to help her fly over the creek and land lightly on the other side.
Jaenelle Saetien laughed and shouted, “Well done!”
Pleased with herself, the mare slowed to a walk when they reached the edge of the village.
Jaenelle Saetien dismounted and the two of them walked side by side for a minute before she stopped. She unclipped the reins from the halter, carefully looped them as she’d been taught, then attached them to a ring on the saddle.
“I’m going to be visiting a while. Why don’t you go back to the Hall so you don’t stand out here in the cold?”
*No more running?* the mare asked.
“Not today.”
The mare trotted off, heading toward the Hall. She would get there eventually, when she was ready for a rubdown and a meal.
Jaenelle Saetien walked into the village.
There were paddocks at the Hall’s stables like you would expect to see around any place that had horses, but they weren’t used in the same way. Each stallion in residence had his own paddock, where he romanced his chosen mares, and there was a paddock for the youngsters. That was more like a large playpen than anything else to keep them out of trouble—and out of Mrs. Beale’s kitchen garden. But the kindred horses roamed the estate, usually returning to the stables in the evening.
In the same way that Beale and Helene assigned chores to the staff working in the Hall, the stable master assigned horses to stay nearby for any human who wanted to go out riding. So you never knew who would go riding with you, although the horses did have their favorite humans. The stallion who was an Opal-Jeweled Warlord Prince preferred her father and often refused to consider anyone else for his rider.
That was fine with her. Warlord Princes were bossy at the best of times. One that didn’t have hands tended to use his teeth to grab and tug you where he wanted you to go, and arguing with something that outweighed you by that much was futile most of the time.
Halaway was a pretty village. Being so close to the Hall and under her father’s watchful eye, it couldn’t be anything else. Delora had made disparaging comments about her being stuck in a little village for days and days and days, and Jaenelle Saetien hadn’t disagreed with her because she didn’t want Delora and Hespera to think she was a rube. But Halaway was a comfortable place. It didn’t bustle like the city, and maybe it didn’t have the best of the best shops, but it had everything people needed.
She’d been tired of the village children she had grown up with, had played with and gone to school with. She’d wanted—needed—something exciting, something different. She’d wanted—needed—to be around people who had never met, let alone known, that Queen she couldn’t begin to compete with. From the moment she’d met Delora at a party when they were still children, she’d wanted to be part of the dazzle the other girl made happen so effortlessly. Wasn’t that what aristos did? Dazzle everyone else?
Except . . .
Daemonar’s comment that he didn’t like her anymore had hurt. A lot. But, somehow, hearing that comment had made her hear other things that she had ignored—or made excuses for. Like Hespera calling Titian a fat bat all the time. Titian wasn’t fat. Her bones weren’t showing through her skin and she didn’t have a caved-in belly that looked like someone had scooped out her insides, but she wasn’t fat.
They said they were only teasing, and if a girl’s feelings were hurt, it was her own fault. But meanness was meanness. Wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure she would ever be sophisticated enough to participate in that kind of teasing. But if you weren’t doing the teasing, then you were on the receiving end. Weren’t you?
She could admit to herself that she’d been upset—all right, she’d been bitchy—when Papa wouldn’t let her add her friends to the girls invited to the party at the town house. Then Titian had said, “Why would I want people who call me a fat bat to come to my Winsol party?”
Words that hurt. Meanness disguised as teasing.
But Delora wasn’t like that. She cared about people. And she’d be hurt if she knew what other people called her group of friends.
The truth was, the girls who had come to the party, the girls Titian and Zoey had befriended at school, weren’t rubes or dregs or the ballast the school needed to stay afloat financially. They were interesting. They didn’t make snide comments about how someone dressed or said someone wasn’t aristo enough to deserve notice. They were just . . . happy. They were from aristo families, but they were happy. They talked about horses; they talked about books; they talked about art. Titian and Zoey had found several copies of an old play or drama or something no one had heard of, carefully preserved in a trunk in the attic.
They had drawn names out of a hat to decide who would play the characters and who would be the audience. They had giggled and moaned and thrown themselves into the parts—and sometimes had to stop for several minutes because they were all laughing too hard to read the next lines.
They’d had fun. And if a few of the girls had been a little wistful about the boys’ party being out-of-bounds, it wasn’t because they wanted to spy on the boys as Hespera had wanted her to do; it was because they wanted a minute to talk to Beron, who was very handsome and a rising star in the theater.
It just seemed that everything had spun out of control at home since she’d been included in Delora’s select group of friends. When she was around Delora, she felt justified in feeling angry about not being given a second dress for a dance. Wincing at the cutting remarks Delora’s friends made about everyone they deemed inferior, she’d felt mortified by the behavior of some members of her family—and humiliated by the truth about . . . that woman. She couldn’t even say the word “mother” anymore, and she thought there might be something wrong with that. Maybe.
She blinked and sucked in a breath when she realized someone was walking beside her.
“You were doing some hard thinking,” Mikal said.
She shrugged. “It was nothing.”
He cocked his head and kept looking at her. “You sure?”
She wanted to ask if he knew about that woman, but she wasn’t sure she could stand the shame if he did know. And if he didn’t, he’d figure it out from her questions. “I’m sure.”
“You going someplace in particular?”
“I’m going to visit Manny.”
“Stop by Tersa’s cottage when you’re done. We’ve got two puppies in residence.” His grin came and went. “One is Uncle Daemon’s new special friend. For Breen, it was love at first sight, and the Sceltie Queens said she had to come here to live because she was barely weaned and she kept trying to run away in order to find him. The other pup also requires extra attention. He’s friendly enough, but he’s . . . sad. So they’re staying with Tersa and me until Uncle Daemon sorts out whatever needs to be sorted out and can stay home for a while.”