Up, and down, the only sounds the muffled thumping of their horses and the sighing sands. Their party meandered in a long, snaking line. Guards had been posted throughout, standing with towering poles topped with the khagan’s flag and insignia of a dark running horse. Markers of the general direction toward the oasis. He pitied the poor men ordered to stand in the heat for a princess’s whim, but said nothing.

The dunes evened out after a time, the horizon shifting to reveal a flat, sandy plain. And in the distance, waving and bobbing in the heat …

“There we make our camp,” Yrene said, pointing toward a dense cluster of green. No sign of the ancient, buried city of the dead that Hasar claimed the oasis had grown over. Not that they expected to see much of anything from their vantage point.

From the distance, it might very well be another thirty minutes. Certainly at their pace.

Despite the sweat soaking through her white clothes, Yrene was smiling. Perhaps she, too, had needed a day away. To breathe the open air.

She noticed his attention and turned. The sun had brought out her freckles, darkening her skin to a glowing brown, and tendrils of hair curled about her smiling face.

Farasha tugged on the reins, her body quivering with impatience.

“I own an Asterion horse,” he said, and her mouth curved in an impressed frown. Chaol shrugged. “I’d like to see how a Muniqi measures up.”

Her brows narrowed. “You mean …” She noted the flat, smooth spread of land between them and the oasis. Perfect for running. “Oh, I can’t—a gallop?”

He waited for the words about his spine, his legs. None came.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, arching a brow.

“Of these things? Yes.” She cringed at her mount, restless beneath her.

“She’s as sweet as a dairy cow,” he said of Yrene’s chestnut mare.

Chaol leaned down to pat “Butterfly’s” neck.

She tried to bite him. He yanked on the reins enough to tell her he was fully aware of her bullshit.

“I’ll race you,” he said.

Yrene’s eyes sparkled. And to his shock she breathed, “The prize?”

He could not remember the last time. The last time he had felt so aware of every bit of breath and blood, simmering and thrumming, in his body.

“A kiss. When and where of my choosing.”

“What do you mean where.”

Chaol only grinned. And let Farasha run free.

Yrene cursed, more viciously than he’d ever heard her, but he didn’t dare look back—not as Farasha became a black storm upon the sand.

He’d never gotten to test out the Asterion. But if it was faster than this—

Flying over the sand, Farasha was a bolt of dark lightning spearing across the golden desert. It was all he could do to keep up, to grit his teeth against his barking muscles.

He forgot about them anyway at the blur of reddish brown and black that emerged in the corner of his eye—and the white rider atop it.

Yrene’s hair rose and fell behind her in a golden-brown tangle of curls, lifting with each thunderous pound of her mare’s legs on the hard sand. White clothes streaming in the wind, the gold and silver sparkled like stars, and her face—

Chaol couldn’t breathe as he beheld the wild joy on Yrene’s face, the unchecked exhilaration.

Farasha marked the mare gaining on them, meeting them beat for beat, and made to charge ahead. To leave them in the dust.

He checked her with the reins and his feet, marveling that he could even do so. That the woman now closing in, now riding beside him, now beaming at him as if he were the only thing in this barren, burning sea … She had done this. Given him this.

Yrene was smiling, and then she was laughing, as if she could not contain it inside her.

Chaol thought it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

And that this moment, flying together over the sands, devouring the desert wind, her hair a golden-brown banner behind her …

Chaol felt, perhaps for the first time, as if he was awake.

And he was grateful, right down to his very bones, for it.

44

Yrene was soaked in sweat, though it dried so quickly that she only felt its essence clinging.

Thankfully, the oasis was shaded and cool, a large, shallow pool in its center. Horses were led into the heaviest shade to be watered and brushed down, and servants and guards claimed a hidden spot for their own washing and enjoyment.

No sign of any sort of cave that Nousha had mentioned, or the city of the dead that Hasar claimed lurked in the jungle beyond. But the site was sprawling, and in the large pool … The royals were already soaking in the cool waters.

Renia, Yrene saw immediately, was only wearing a thin silk shift—that did little to hide her considerable assets as she emerged from the water, laughing at something Hasar said.

“Well, then,” Chaol said, coughing beside Yrene.

“I told you about the parties,” she muttered, heading to the tents spread through the towering palms and brush. They were white and gilded, each marked with the prince or princess’s banner. But with Sartaq and Duva not with them, Chaol and Yrene had been assigned them, respectively.

Mercifully, the two were near each other, but Yrene took in the open tent flaps, the entire space as large as the cottage she’d shared with her mother, then turned toward Chaol’s retreating back. His limp, even with the cane, was deeper than it’d been that morning. And she’d seen how stiffly he’d gotten off that infernal horse.

“I know you want to wash up,” Yrene said. “But I need to take a look at you. At your back and legs, I mean. After all that riding.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have raced him. She hadn’t even remembered who’d reached the oasis border anyway. She’d been too busy laughing, feeling as if she were coming out of her body and would likely never feel that way again. Too busy looking at his face, filled with such light.

Chaol paused at his tent flaps, cane wobbling, as if he’d put far more weight on it than he let on. But it was the relief in his face as he asked, “Your tent or mine?” that made her worry—just a tad.

“Mine,” she said, aware of the servants and nobility who likely had no idea she was even the cause of this excursion, but who would happily report her comings and goings. He nodded, and she monitored each rise and placement of his legs, the shifting of his torso, the way he leaned on that cane.

As Chaol edged past her and into the tent, he murmured in her ear, “I won, by the way.”

Yrene glanced toward the sun now making its descent and felt her core tighten in answer.

He was sore but could thankfully still walk by the time Yrene finished her thorough examination. And set of soothing stretches for his legs and back. And massage.

Chaol had the distinct feeling she was toying with him, even as her hands remained chaste. Uninterested.

She even had the nerve to call for a servant to ask for a jug of water.

The tent was fit for the princess who usually occupied it. A large bed lay in the center upon a raised platform, the floors covered with ornate rugs. Sitting areas were scattered throughout, along with a curtained-off washing-up and privy, and there was gold everywhere.

Either the servants had brought it with them yesterday, or the people of this land so feared the wrath of the khaganate that they didn’t dare rob this place. Or were so well-cared for they didn’t need to.

The others were all in the oasis pool by the time he shrugged on his now-dry clothes and they emerged to seek out their quarry.

They’d whispered in the tent—neither of them had spotted anything of interest upon arrival. And in the oasis pool, definitely no indication of a cave or ruins near the bathing royals and their friends. Comfortable, relaxed. Free, in ways that Adarlan had never been, to its detriment. He wasn’t naive enough to think that no scheming or intrigue was now playing out in the cool waters, but he’d never heard of Adarlanian nobles going to a swimming hole and enjoying themselves.

Though he certainly wondered what the hell Hasar was thinking in throwing such a party for Yrene, manipulated into it or no, considering the princess was well aware Yrene barely knew most of those gathered.

Yrene hesitated at the edge of the clearing and glanced at him beneath lowered lashes—a look anyone might interpret as shy. A woman perhaps hesitant to strip down to the light clothes they wore in the waters. Letting any onlookers forget that she was a healer and wholly used to far more skin showing. “I find I’m not up to bathing,” Yrene murmured over the laughter and splashing of those within the oasis waters. “Care for a walk?”