Chapter 250: Morgana Is Riding Shadowmere

They crossed the yard.

They walked past the well, past the water trough, past the staring faces. She felt the great muscles shift beneath her as he turned his head toward the open gate.

And Morgana started to laugh.

She could not help it. It rose up in her, bright and astonished and wholly unplanned, the first pure joy she had felt in longer than she could remember. She laughed with her head thrown back and her plait swinging and the wind pulling at her collar. "Oh," she gasped. "Oh, look at this."

Shadowmere flicked an ear.

Then he began to trot.

It jolted her. She grabbed for the mane. He picked up speed, an easy rolling trot, the cobbles ringing under his hooves, and her laugh became a startled yelp.

"Easy," she said. "Shadowmere. Easy now, just...."

He gathered himself.

She felt it before it happened, the bunching of the great haunches, the lowering of the head, the tension running through the whole long body like the string of a drawn bow.

"Shadowmere...." Morgana started to say, but before she could finish.

He bolted.

The yard erupted. Somebody screamed. The hens exploded in all directions. Morgana’s stomach dropped into her boots as the world blurred, and the cobbles turned to streaks, and the gateposts rushed at her and past her, and then there was nothing but road and wind and the pounding thunder of hooves.

Behind her, a voice was shouting.

"Come back!"

It was Garrick. His voice was torn open with a terror she had never heard in it.

"Morgana! Morgana, pull up, girl....PULL UP...."

She could not answer. She could not breathe. She lay against the black neck with her face in the mane and her hands knotted in it so hard her knuckles cracked, and the horse ran.

The last thing she heard, as the gate fell away behind her, was the stable master’s boots slapping on the stones, running after a creature that was already gone.

***

*DRAEVEN’S OFFICE*

"My king."

The door of the east study crashed back against the wall.

It struck with such force that a map slid off the desk. Draeven had been standing at the window with his back to the room, a letter in his hand. He turned slowly.

A young man stood on the threshold, wild-eyed and gasping, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He wore the king’s grey. There was mud to the knees of his trousers, and one gauntlet was missing. He had run the whole length of the palace.

Corin.

"Your Majesty," he gasped. "Forgive me, I did not knock, I....."

"Report."

The word was very quiet.

"Lady Morgana," the young guard said. "She....she took the black stallion from the stables. Shadowmere. Garrick told her no one could ride him, and then the horse....he went to her, my king, he went down on his knees for her, and she got up, and she laughed, and then...."

Draeven did not move.

"And then?"

"He bolted." Corin swallowed hard. "Out the lower gate. Into the east road. I ran after them. I took the nearest horse, a grey, but it was no use. The black is faster than anything in that barn. I lost them at the first bend. I don’t know where they are, my king. I don’t know where she is."

The letter fell from Draeven’s hand.

It drifted to the floor and lay there, the lines of ink spread across the pale paper.

There was no sound in the room at all.

Then the temperature in it began to climb.

It happened slowly, at first. The air thickened. The sunlight in the window seemed to take on a faint red tinge. The papers on the desk curled at the corners. A glass of water on the sideboard began, very softly, to steam.

Draeven came away from the window with the slow, even stride of a man who has decided on something terrible.

"You were assigned," he said, "to watch her."

"I....yes, my king....."

"I told Rhen what you were to do. Near enough to protect. Far enough to be unseen." His eyes had gone entirely gold. The pupils were vertical slits. "She was on a horse that no man alive could ride. She was in the open. She rode through the gate. And you let her go."

Corin opened his mouth.

He did not get to speak.

An unseen hand closed on him.

It lifted him off the floor like a doll. His boots left the boards and his heels kicked at nothing, and his hands flew to his throat, clawing at air. Pressure bore down on his chest. His face reddened.

"I did not hear your answer," Draeven said softly.

"M-my king...." The words were a strangled rasp. "She...it was....too fast....I couldn’t...."

"You could not." Draeven pressed.

"I....please...."

The room was suffocating. INFERNUS was a sun in Draeven’s chest, vast and furious and utterly without reason, and the fear underneath it was a thing he refused to look at. Gone. Out the gate. On a horse that no one could stop. Where is she? He reached for her through the dragon, the way GLACIUS reached for her in his brother’s chest, the way NOCTYS hummed with her in his. He reached.

And there was nothing.

A great blank cold nothing, the absence of a bond that had never been made.

His hand curled into a fist.

The door opened.

"What in the seven hells is....."

Kaelen stopped.

He stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his hair wild. Frost was already creeping across the doorframe where his hand rested. He had come at a dead run from the training yard, stripped to his shirt, a sheen of sweat across his collar. His pale eyes took in the scene in one sweep: the heat, the lifted soldier, the steaming glass, the brother at the center of it with golden eyes ablaze.

"I felt it," Kaelen said. "Through the bond. You went white as a sheet. What happened?"

Draeven did not look away from the guard.

"Morgana," he said, very evenly, "is riding Shadowmere."