Standing, Tamra steadied herself. She limped closer to the cage—her old wound was really throbbing now. The sand shifted around her feet, slowing her. She saw Raia pop up and hurry to her, ready to help, but she shooed her away. In front of the lion, she unwound her scarf and shifted her tunic so that her tattoo showed. “Do you know what this is?” she asked the kehok. “It’s a picture of the victory charm. If you race and you win, you win this charm. If you race and you win, you will break the cycle. You will be reborn as human. You won’t be a kehok anymore. If you race and you win, you have a second chance. You will have your freedom.”
The lion was watching her. She didn’t know if he understood any of it.
“Running away from us . . . it won’t make you free, because you bring who you are with you. The only way to be free of your fate is to race.” She tapped her tattoo. “If you race with Raia, you win this. Your freedom.”
“Does he understand?” Raia whispered.
“One way to tell,” Tamra said. “You need to ride.”
“I’ll die!” Raia said. “You saw how I failed!”
How could Trainer Verlas even think she was ready to ride him? She hadn’t even made him stop, let alone come back.
“That’s the thing,” Trainer Verlas said, approaching the cage. “I don’t think you did fail.” Padding back and forth within the narrow cage, the lion was watching her. “I think he ran in part because he wanted to, and in part because you wanted to. If you run together, you with him, perhaps he’ll understand.”
“But you can’t be sure.”
“I’m sure we don’t have a better choice.”
This was crazy.
“I’ll keep him from killing you.”
Raia thought of how the others had warned her about Trainer Verlas and said she breaks riders, not racers. She thought of the problems her trainer had already had in controlling the kehok, and she remembered the rumors she’d heard about last year’s final championship race. Could she trust her trainer?
Do I have a choice?
Of course she did. You always have a choice. It was just that the other option was terrible.
Raia took a deep breath. There was one question she needed answered before she’d do this. “What happened in the final championship race last year?”
Trainer Verlas halted. It was obvious it was a question she’d heard before and just as obvious it was one she didn’t want to answer. But Raia needed the answer. It wasn’t curiosity or because she wanted to gossip or anything like that.
“My rider lost control.”
“Just like that? He’d survived every other race, but in the final one, close to winning everything he wanted—”
“Yes. It was too much. All of it. He wanted too much, and it consumed him.”
“You mean—”
“You’ve heard the rumors. It was just as bad as they say. His kehok killed him before anyone could make it through the track’s psychic shield to intervene. But it wasn’t rage. It wasn’t destruction. It was hunger.”
“You’re saying his kehok ate him?”
“I said ‘consume.’ I meant it literally.”
Raia shuddered. That was a terrible way to die.
“He was still screaming when the kehok began. It didn’t wait for him to die.” Trainer Verlas’s eyes were fixed beyond the cage, beyond the horizon, as if she wasn’t seeing any of the desert at all. Her jaw was locked, and Raia was grateful she didn’t have the memory that her trainer was reliving. “It was my fault. I should have seen the danger signs—when the race council reviewed his case, they agreed I should have known. Some argued I must have known and had proceeded anyway, because I wanted to win more than I wanted my rider to survive. I was fined for negligence, nearly barred from racing. But the truth is that I didn’t see. I wanted to win so badly too that it blinded me—which is almost certainly worse.”
Raia licked her lips. They were gritty from the sand. She tasted the dry dust—the desert had its own taste, oddly peppery and a bit like old paper. She felt hyperaware of everything as she stared at Trainer Verlas’s face. “What were the danger signs?”
“To race, you must focus on the moment. Your aura must be steady, concentrated on the present. If you lose who you are, if you lose why you are doing what you’re doing in that moment, then it’s