as the heat slammed into her, and Trainer Verlas yanked her backward, pulling her away. No! My lion! She fought her, trying to get back to the fire.
And then she saw a dark shadow in the middle of the fiery red, and her lion leaped out of the heart of the flames. He landed in the sands and let out a roar.
Fire licked over his metal body, and he shook, shedding sparks in every direction. He then ran toward her. She opened her arms.
“Stop!” Trainer Verlas commanded.
Come! Raia called.
He lowered his head as he ran past her, and Raia jumped. She grabbed on to his mane and swung herself up onto his back. He kept running. His metal body was hot, just short of searing her hands, but there was no way she was letting go.
Reaching the end of the racetrack, he didn’t slow. Instead he leaped over the gate. Faster, she thought. Away! He ran through the camp, past the other riders and trainers and kehoks, and then beyond the crowds gathered to watch the next race.
He kept running into the desert beyond.
Only when she had control again, when the fear wasn’t coursing through her veins stronger than blood, did he slow.
“You could have run away,” Raia said. “I told you to. But you ran toward me. To save me.” Leaning forward, she hugged his neck.
He came to a stop, and she slid off his back. She stood in front of him.
He regarded her with his golden eyes.
“You wanted to protect me,” she said.
He inclined his head.
“My parents tried to kill you. And I don’t know why. It doesn’t even make sense—the more I win, the more gold for them—unless that was just another twisted way to try to control my future? By taking you from me?” She wrapped her arms around his still-hot neck. “No one will take you from me.”
Unless we do win, she thought. If they won the victory charm, he’d be killed and reborn as a human baby. He wouldn’t know her or remember any of this, and he wouldn’t be her lion anymore. “I’ll visit you, when you’re human again. I can be your crazy aunt Raia who once won the Becaran Races.”
He rolled his golden tongue out of his mouth and, like a mother cat, licked her cheek. It felt like sandpaper against her skin. She laughed.
“You know, we could just leave. Run away, you and me. No one would ever catch us, or hurt us, if we ran far enough and fast enough.” As she said it, she knew she didn’t want that—to never see Trainer Verlas again, to always be living on the run, to be afraid again.
He sat down and curled his tail around himself, as if he didn’t plan to run anywhere.
“You don’t want to do that,” she said. “You want to go back?”
He nodded his head.
So do I, she thought. They can’t make me run away again. I choose to run, on the racetrack, toward the finish line. Not away from anything. “You understand everything I’m saying, don’t you? And everything that’s going on?”
Another nod.
“Do you . . .” She licked her lips. It was a crazy question, but she had to ask it. “Do you remember who you were?” No one remembered their past life. It wasn’t possible.
He hesitated. Shook his head. Then nodded. Then tilted his head to the side.
“You’re not sure? But you might? You were Emperor Zarin, emperor of all the Becar Empire.” She held her breath, studying his face. His golden eyes were fixed on her. “Your brother was Dar, who is now the emperor-to-be. He can’t be crowned until you’re found, but if you’re found as a kehok . . . The brother of a kehok can’t be emperor. The emperor-to-be’s only hope is if you win and are reborn.”
He began to trot past her, back toward the racetrack. He then stopped and looked at her, as if he wanted her to follow. She ran to catch up to him. “Do you remember him? Your brother? You called him Dar.”
He pawed the sand. Yes? Did that mean yes? She climbed onto him, and he began to walk at a steady pace, not slow but not hurrying either. Saving his energy for the next race?
“You want to race?” she asked him. “You want to win?”
He did keep walking implacably toward the racetrack. She wondered if she’d imagined it when she thought he understood her. Maybe she’d wanted that so badly that she convinced