at herself, as if it were her fault that the black lion had broken out. “Plus, I have more motivation now.”
Raia watched the lion pace in his cage. She knew what that felt like—this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to run away. When she was first chosen as an augur, she’d made it to the end of the garden before her father hauled her back inside. Six months into her training, she’d tried again, and her family had sent her to live at the temple full-time. She hadn’t tried to run from there. She’d realized if she succeeded, she would have to return home. “I couldn’t bring him back.”
“We’ll work on it.” Trainer Verlas sank down onto the sand, and Raia saw how strained she looked. Sweat was beaded on her forehead, staining the edges of her scarf.
Raia hurried to the front of the cart, found a canteen, and brought it to her.
Trainer Verlas drank a few swallows. “Been pushing myself lately. Body doesn’t obey the way I think it should.” She smiled wryly. “It won’t listen to my commands, at least not anymore. There’s a certain irony in that.”
“I did everything you said. I focused on what I want. I want my freedom so badly that it hurts. I can’t want it any more badly than I already do.” Raia sank onto the sand next to her. “But it’s not enough.
“I’m not enough,” she whispered.
“You are enough,” Tamra said briskly. “You’re just not ready.” No self-pitying nonsense on her watch. It was a waste of the here and now.
Looking out across the desert, Tamra considered the problem. The wind blew across the dunes, swirling the sand as if it were dancing, and Tamra remembered the first time she’d raced the sands, just her and a monster. It had felt . . . like power, like her blood was replaced by wind, like she was as strong as the river, like she was as unstoppable as the sun. She wanted Raia to have a chance to feel that.
Raia was right: she did have the fire. Tamra could see it in the way she held herself and hear it in the timbre of her voice, so why wasn’t that enough for the kehok? If any of her paid students had displayed half that kind of desire, they would have had their kehoks squatting at their feet like obedient puppies. Maybe it wasn’t Raia, then. Maybe it was the lion. Certainly it had taken every ounce within Tamra to draw the lion back—she had surprised him, and that moment of surprise had allowed her to override his will. She’d never met a kehok so difficult to control.
Beside her, Raia was hugging her knees to her chest. She looked, for a moment, like Shalla, and her disappointment felt like another of Tamra’s failures. This is my fault, Tamra thought. I promised her the moon. “We’ll find a way to make it work.”
“In two weeks?”
“Yes,” Tamra said firmly, though she wasn’t sure how. “You will be free. I promise.”
That seemed to reassure the girl a little.
Feeling as if a weight had settled on her, Tamra glanced at the cage to see the black lion kehok staring at her with his unreadable golden eyes. He was still and silent, alert and watching—which was very un-kehok. A thought occurred to her. “What exactly did you focus on?”
“How badly I want to be free.”
And the lion had run.
Huh.
Usually it didn’t work like that. Kehoks responded to commands fueled by need, but they typically didn’t respond to the underlying need itself. But this kehok wanted his freedom too. He’d broken out of his stall and killed another kehok for that very purpose. . . .
She felt an idea worming inside her. It was a risky, unusual idea that went against much of what she knew about kehoks.
But then again, everything about this situation was risky and definitely went against what she knew.
To win a race, rider and racer had to share a singular purpose. Typically that was imposed on the racer by the rider. What if, though, Raia and the lion could share the same purpose? What if instead of trying to stop his bid for freedom, they could make him understand that racing was his way to freedom?
It was a complex concept for any kehok to grasp, and she didn’t know if it was possible for any kehok to be intelligent enough to understand the ramifications of the reward that awaited the grand champion. But this