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While Numair did not physically lead her through the entirety of the labyrinth that was the royal palace—a tour such as that could have lasted the whole the day—he did show her the areas of it likely to be of interest in her daily life. The sections of the palace frequented by persons of the Arrendons’ status included several residential wings, a library, three solariums, a gymnasium, and dozens of other gathering spaces—reading and gaming and dancing rooms, and one that... She stopped, something about the room disturbing to her.
“What is this?” It was laid out almost like an art gallery, wide doors opening onto a long room filled with pedestals, the objects they held covered in glass cases.
“This is my uncle’s...personal collection.”
She frowned, drawn into the room despite herself. There was no visible theme among the items. Random jewels and accessories, paintings and books, weapons and armor. Too many more things to even list. They were not all beautiful, not all ugly. They did not appear to be from the same era or region. The only thing they had in common was Clare’s inability to shake the sense that they were all missing something. That they had all once been something more than the simple objects they had now been reduced to. It felt, oddly, like being in a graveyard.
“Your uncle has odd tastes.”
“He has very specific tastes,” Numair countered. “Can we move on? I don’t like being in here.”
She nodded and followed him out of the building, to the exterior courtyard. The palace grounds had as impressive an array of offerings as the interior did, from sporting courts and riding arenas, to private gardens and walking paths. It was all glittering and beautiful and so far outside her frame of reference that she found herself blurting out, “You just…grew up in all of this?”
It was a stupid question to ask. Of course he had. The only thing her question did was invite ones about her own childhood in return.
He shrugged. “Not entirely. I spent a good deal of my youth with my mother’s people. I didn’t permanently reside in Veralna until I was older.”
The answer made her realize how little she knew about the royal family’s structure. There was Alaric, there was Numair, and there was the first prince of Faelhorn, though she’d yet to hear anyone mention him. Alys had said Numair’s mother was dead. Presumably his father was too. She’d heard no mention of Alaric having a single living relative aside from his nephews.
It made her curious, but she didn’t ask. Instinct told her these were answers best discovered on her own.
She found her feet heading unerringly in the direction of the stables. “Go riding with me?”
“Where would you like to go?”
She started to say “anywhere” but realized it wasn’t true. “I want to see something magnificent. Something that makes men feel small.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “Men, but not you?”
She smiled back. “But not me.”
He didn’t deliberate long. “I think I can manage that.”
Clare leaned forward in the saddle, feet pushing lightly into the stirrups to make her float the seat, doing her best to aid Kialla as the mare doggedly climbed her way up a mountainside so steep Clare had ceded all control over direction to the horse ages ago. On a loose rein, Kialla bobbed and weaved, picking her way up a hard-packed dirt path littered with sharp rocks, Hellack and Numair following behind.
“Are you sure this is safe for her?” Clare wasn’t all that concerned for herself, but a broken leg was all-too-often the end of a horse, and Clare couldn’t bear that thought. The desert rider she’d stolen her equine knowledge from had spent her life riding flat lands.
“She’s fine. She’s having fun,” Numair assured her, and since only one of the two of them was Deirdren Blessed, she had to take his bloody word for it.
The path they traversed was a zigzag thing, cutting back and forth in between sharp, jutting rocks the height of her body. She couldn’t help but feel as if they wove between spikes on the back of some ancient creature.
Her thighs ached but she refused to admit it or call a stop because, as Numair had said, Kialla did seem to be having fun. Like all she’d wanted out of life was a challenge, and now that she had one, she was determined to own it.
The mare wound her way around the last stone, eyed the two-foot incline from the path to the worn-flat top of the mountain. She gathered herself, muscles bunching, and hopped onto it, swinging her hindquarters around and sidestepping to allow Hellack room to follow. Kialla breathed heavily, nostrils flared but head held high as she looked back at the long path they’d cut up the mountainside, and loosed a high, shrill whinny.
“Yes, yes,” Clare murmured, stroking the side of her neck, “all the kingdom is yours.”
The top was narrower than she’d expected, less than a hundred feet across. Clare spun Kialla around and walked to the opposite edge, where a vertical cliffside dropped to the ocean below.
Except directly across from where the path ended, an outcropping extended from that cliff face. It was wide where it first broke from the mountain top, then narrowed as it pushed out. Its surface was covered in overlapping layers, like scales.
She slipped off Kialla and walked to the side of the outcropping, where she could see that its top formed the broad forehead of a massive face that narrowed to a snout, its great jaws partially open, revealing fangs the length of her body.
Numair came up beside her, stopping just outside that invisible boundary of space he seemed to intuitively know the edges of, the point where she didn’t like people coming closer unless she’d invited them. “Welcome to the namesake of Firedrake Mountain.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“She?”
