Page 4 of The Mirror and the Curse

When the first Sangiovese Stakes announcement boomed over the barn’s sound system, Eddi suddenly wished time would slow down. Was she really ready for this? Was White? The Stakes was seven miles shorter than the Cup race she’d won as a rookie, but Ruggero had been an experienced racer. This was White’s first major race and her second. Despite months of training, they were a pair of greenhorns. If only her dad could be with her during the mount-up! She wouldn’t even object if Jakinda came with him.

But none of the other riders had family present, so she shoved nerves and loneliness aside and went about her business. Aitor boosted her onto White’s back, and she tucked her legs beneath his folded wings. Most of the entrants wore confining wing nets as a precaution, but Eddi only used them on White when their use was legally required. Her horse’s trust was a precious and fragile thing, never to be held lightly, and the respect went both ways.

As the entrants lined up in the stable’s central aisle according to their assigned numbers, the bustle of preparation reduced to an expectant hush. Before Eddi was quite prepared, the Sangiovese Stakes theme music played, and the first entrant stepped into the open.

“Wow. Sounds like quite a crowd out there,” the rider behind Eddi remarked. He had an unfamiliar accent. She glanced over one shoulder to see a bright white smile in a brown face. His horse was . . . unusual. A wiry dun with dusty wings and random white patches. She gave the rider a polite smile and faced front, but with no regard for the formality of the moment, he addressed her, “Your horse is mighty fine, Purple Princess, but never underestimate the Jackrabbit.”

Amused despite herself, Eddi lifted one hand in acknowledgement, then focused on wrapping her left hand in the leather straps on White’s saddle band, adding hanks of his mane, a trick she’d learned from a friend long ago. Once again, a wave of melancholy swept over her. “I wish Kai could see me ride you today,” she told White. “I think he’d be proud of how far you’ve come in nine months.”

And of how well she had implemented Kai’s training methods.

When her father gifted the winged horse to Eddi for her eighteenth birthday, Snow White had been a shaggy, rawboned colt with ungainly feet and wings, full of fear and distrust and untapped potential. Over the past nine months, with good feed, exercise, careful training, and steady affection, Eddi had brought him a long way. The young horse had grown even taller and packed on muscle, but at four years old he was still an adolescent. Although her father predicted he wouldn’t last the distance at a major race, Eddi knew White had a vast store of untapped stamina.

The real problem? She had never seen him give a race, or anything else, his all-out effort.

The next twenty minutes passed in a blur. Eddi and White joined the post parade to the starting field, found their number spray-painted on the grass, and waited while the other entrants took their places. She wrapped her right hand, closed her visor, took a sip from the straw leading to a water bottle in her pack, and prepared for the jolt of White’s powerful take-off, trying to ignore the horses around them.

“We can do this, White,” she murmured. “You can win it.” Almost . . .almostshe sensed his response to her words. He could understand her speech, she was sure. Except when she wasn’t.

The crowd hushed. White’s muscles tensed, and the starting gun blasted. The crowd’s exuberant roar quickly faded as White’s great wings propelled them into the sky and levelled out over the rolling hills of Vetricia.

Time and space became a blur. Eddi lived in each moment of that race, guiding White with slight shifts of her weight, occasional leg pressure, and even words. She knew he couldn’t hear her voice through her helmet, yet he always responded—sometimes even to her thoughts.

“Atta boy! Halfway home and flying strong.”

Green hills rushed past below as White overtook and passed that patched-dun horse. When had he gotten ahead? By Eddi’s reckoning only two horses now remained ahead of White.

The Sangiovese Stakes covered twenty miles in a long irregular oval along the ocean shore near the summer palace. For years Eddi had dreamed of flying in this prestigious event, and now here she was, getting into position to take the lead!

As she leaned over White’s neck while he banked a turn, loose ends of the purple and yellow ribbons braided in his mane kept tickling her face.Wish I’d ripped them off before the post parade.

Two figures glimmered in the sunlight ahead. “We’ll catch ’em, White!” she shouted with an added whoop, and he responded with a burst of speed. Somehow, he’d heard her. No one could convince her otherwise.

A flash of bronze wings identified the lead horse as Ruggero, with Fidelio aboard. Behind him flew a bright red chestnut with coppery wings—Raquel Cambout’s Tirador. Those two had shot out to an early lead in the first mile, setting a hot pace. But could they hold off White to the end? Eddi intended to prove they could not.

An inlet of sparkling blue water flashed below, then the golden beach. Eddi had memories of playing there with the youngest three princes when they were children. Did Fidelio remember?

Now White flew over rolling hills, some topped with fine villas, others striped with grapevines. It was time to make their move. When Eddi pressed her calves into her colt’s solid sides, his responding surge of power almost startled her. “Do it, boy!”

Extending his nose, ears pricked forward, White pursued Tirador, and the space between them quickly closed. “Woohoo!” Eddi shouted in delight and wonder as her horse pulled even with the red stallion, looked him in the eye, then left him behind. Imagining the burn of Raquel’s furious glare between her shoulder blades, Eddi grinned. These days, defeating Raquel was her primary goal in any endeavor. Winning the race would be the whipped cream plopped atop her triumph.

And it was possible. Only Ruggero flew ahead of White now. Eddi could make out Fidelio’s long body hunched over the horse’s withers and neck, his lanky legs wrapped around its barrel. She and White followed them around the final pole—a magical projection in the sky that marked two miles to the finish line. If both horses sustained this pace, White would overtake and pass the leader within a mile, and then? On to the finish line.

White’s first major race, and he was killing it!

Dad would be so proud.

That is, he would be if he wasn’t too busy yakking with King Stephano and sipping fine vintages to watch the race.

Or, if the wine didn’t distract him, her stepmother would tell him Prince Zorion had a fever or stomachache and needed his father’s attention. Anything to keep the king from following his only daughter’s first major race.

Focus, she told herself. This was no time to go off on personal woes.

But even as Eddi collected her thoughts, White’s wings lost a beat, then another. The sudden deceleration made her stomach flip. Panic tightened her chest.

What was that funky smell?

“White, we can do this! Don’t falter now. We’re nearly there!” Eddi pressed his sides, tugged his mane, even bobbed up and down in the effort to regain his attention. But he kept shaking his head and snorting.

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