Page 106 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Amusement was probably written all over my face when I glanced between the two of them. “You stepped here? Did it not go well?”

Enora scoffed and parroted back, “Did it not go well?”

I fixed Jasper with a look, and he just shook his head. “Nora got well acquainted with the inside of one of the planters out on the walkway.”

“Go a little hard on some drink after the pyres, or…?” I chuckled, glancing back at the princess, but she just rolled her eyes and set about wiping the sweat off her brow with her filthy arm. “Right then. I can walk you back, or you can take my steed, and I’ll step with Jasper. I thought you both rode here, so I did the same.”

“Don’t be stupid. You and I can just ride together.” Enora stilled and cast me a look full of judgement. “Wait…you can fly, can’t you? Why did you ride here?”

“Because I don’t take to the skies during the day.”

A simple answer I delivered a little cooler than intended. I really did not feel like discussing any of those cursed semantics at that moment with Enora, even less than I wanted to ride with her.

It was a discussion better suited for post-marital bonding.

“Right…” Shockingly, Enora left it there, but she sighed and glanced around the stadium. “Is there a spigot or something I can rinse off at? I didn’t exactly have time to change or wash up this morning”—she shot Jasper a scathing look that left me with a lengthy list of questions—“and I feel disgusting.”

That, at least, was incredibly considerate of her, considering the sheen of sweat muddled with dirt and paint flecks that covered most of her visible body. A body I was going to spend the next hour in incredibly close quarters with.

“Just through those and the hall to the right,” I said as I gestured to a set of doors opposite us. “Go wash up. I’ll meet you outside, I guess.”

Enora headed towards them without another word, and Jasper had vanished into mist when I turned back to him. How incredibly convenient.

While I waited outside the stadium for Enora to freshen up, it felt like a prudent time to have a quick heart-to-heart with my incredibly ornery steed, Apollo.

“I know you’re…particular,” I whispered as I ran my hand up the bone plate of his muzzle. “But I’d rather appreciate your cooperation with this, alright? She’s a little…well, she’s actually a lot loud, but she’s going to be around…permanently, with you and me, so we both have to get used to that.”

Apollo’s crystalline eyes closed, and he snorted as he tossed his head, sending tendrils of irritating dyrehorse mucus towards me that I narrowly dodged.

I sighed. “I mean it, okay? And she’s going to think you’re striking, so do not let that go to your boney⁠—”

A loud gasp had me going stiff as an iron bar, and Apollo’s eyes snapped open.

“What is that?” came Enora’s awestruck, breathy voice as I glanced back to find her just feet away, jaw slack and hazel eyes wide.

I’d thought she’d find Apollo magnificent; he was an admirable specimen of his breed, after all. But I had possibly overlooked the fact that she wouldn’t even know what to make of him. The odds that a Grimmorian dyrehorse had made it all the way to Odessa were damned near impossible.

From the bone carapace that decorated his muzzle and head to his luminescent blue eyes and ink-black coat, he was probably unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

“This,” I said, “is Apollo. He’s a dyrehorse, and a rather fine one at that.”

Enora was silent for a long moment, glancing between Apollo and I, before a wide grin dimpled her cheeks, and she took a couple of steps towards us.

“He’s incredible,” she breathed with her hand hovering tentatively just in front of her. “Can I…?”

I moved to the side with a sweep of my hand, casting Apollo a hasty bit of pleading side eye as I did.

He chuffed and lowered his head as Enora approached him.

As I assumed a well-versed rider like herself would do, she brushed her fingers slowly up Apollo’s nose while she muttered a quiet greeting to him, clearly not sure what to make of his built-in armor.

“Is this…natural?” she asked without even looking at me. “Part of him?”

And Apollo—as both a blessing and a shock—shut his eyes and nuzzled into her touch.

“It is.” I stepped in to give him an appreciative scratch behind his ears, fringed with silky-black hair. “Their plates are quite small and soft when they are born but grow quickly, as they do. He has similar plates on his legs too, underneath those wraps.”

Enora’s attention drifted to where thick gray wraps were bound around Apollo’s forearms and cannons, and ink-black feathering spilled out around his hooves. She shook her head and let out a huff of disbelief, but she moved right into smoothing her hand over the muscular pillar of his neck. “We’ve got incredible horses in Odessa, you know? Ones for pleasure riding, ones for work, ones for long travel, but this…”