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ESSA

T wo weeks passed, slow and sweet as dripping honey.

Death remained my constant companion, a specter hovering always in the corner of my mind, growing larger as the final challenge date approached. And yet so many small joys filled my hours that the dread of that final showdown felt small in comparison.

By day, I spent my days training, Kit’s arms around me, Othura beneath me, our skills and strength growing with each flight. I’d been riding since Othura and I had bonded when I was ten years old, but as I worked with Kit, I saw that no one had ever taken me seriously as a Skrathan. Aunt Dreya had taught me enough to keep alive and avoid embarrassing my family, but no more. And though I’d been a willing pupil, I’d never truly applied myself to practicing what she’d taught me. What was the point, when others would always be so much greater than I was?

But now, my life hung upon my ability to fly and fight. And Kit trained me as if that life were precious indeed. In Kit’s eyes, I saw burning a desire that mirrored my own—a desire to live, and rise, and conquer. And there was something else in him, too… a strength and a calm. I felt it his body, pressed against my back, when we rode through the sky together; I felt it in his arms as they held me even through the most dangerous maneuvers. Feeling how relaxed he was made me realize how tense I had been in comparison. How terrified. But his calm, his confidence, his fearlessness—they must have been contagious, for I felt them filling me, too. And with every flight, my skill as a rider grew.

I began to fixate on tiny moments between us. His hand on mine as he guided my lance. His fingers on my waist as he pulled himself up behind me on the saddle. The moment in mid-air when I turned to tell him something funny and he pushed my hair back out of my eyes.

I still felt deep down that I would be doomed when the day to battle Laynine came. And my thoughts ran with obsessive frequency to the pleasure I might enjoy while I was still alive. Pleasure with Kit...

Such things were forbidden to a princess. We were to be pure when the day of ascension came and we took the throne—that was what the noble houses demanded of any new queen. Purity.

And yet…

But what if I never lived to wear the crown?

Should I die without knowing the pleasure of love?

The question haunted me. Each meal Kit and I shared, each ride we took on Othura, each walk we took about the countryside, it was there—a sweet and growing tension.

Don’t be a fool. Even if he weren’t your enemy, he has someone back home, I reminded myself.

And yet for now, for this fleeting season, I couldn’t help feeling that he was mine. I had only to order Rohree to bring him to me and he was there, my prisoner, my teacher. He spoke with passion about how I might improve my riding, adjust my tactics. How I might win. Become Irska. Become queen one day. It was like he wanted me to win, needed me to win. And his ferocious belief was almost enough to make me believe, too.

And yet he seemed distracted at times. I’d find him gazing off into the distance, chewing his bottom lip, as if listening to some distant voice only he could hear. He’d show up with disheveled hair, or looking like he hadn’t slept.

“He’s a writer. He probably stays up late working on his article,” Dagar said once when I mentioned it.

“No! He’s up all night dreaming of you, I’ll wager,” Pocha teased.

He smells of dragon, was all Othura would say on the subject—an enigmatic statement which I took to mean Othura felt the same way about him that I did, that despite coming from URA, deep down, he was one of us. A poet with the soul of a Skrathan, born on the wrong side of the world. I had only to lock eyes with him to know it was true. He did smell of dragon. And it was a sweet, sweet smell.

The other riders whispered about us behind cupped hands. The court watched us with stony faces whenever Kit and I attended royal feasts. Even Ollie seemed on-edge about our growing friendship, his usually jocular, supportive air now peppered with warnings.

Remember, he’ll have to leave soon, Essa.

Remember, he’s not one of us, Essa.

Remember, he’s an enemy.

Several times, I saw Braimar up on the castle walls as Kit and I walked past below, watching us like a crow. Since his dragon’s injury, his long green hair had become a mad tangle. His clothes were soiled. Once, he even shouted at us from atop the wall, a snatch of sing-song-rhyme: Rider and the writer, he wants to get inside her, bloody, bloody, bloody, they all fall down. Then he cackled, staring down with eyes like burning coals.

“He’s gone mad,” Ollie had said when I told him about it. “All the riders are talking about it. His dragon is flying again… but for Braimar to be bonded with two minds and lose one of them? It’s hard to say how that might affect a man. I can only hope he recovers. The Skrathan need his strength. He’s still the number two rider, after all. And he was a good man, once.”

Perhaps that was true. But I looked back on our romance, and all the tender feelings of first love and first disappointment that came with it, with a cold disdain. How could I have loved Braimar when the world contained a man like Kit?

I should not think such thoughts, I reminded myself.

But always my thoughts came back to it: Kit and me.

The ball… Each day drew us closer to it. I chose a dress of sprite-woven fabric that shimmered in the light like a waterfall of gold. I had it altered to fit me. I took more pains in choosing my jewelry and my shoes and my hairstyle than I’d ever taken over such frivolous things. And as I lay in bed at night, I imagined what I would do with my enemy poet at the end of that longed-for night. And what I would let him to do me.