22. Nihil

nihil, n. indecl.

1. nothing; not anything

A man waits for me outside the tourney hall’s shower chamber. Correction—a boy, with platinum hair and a smirk I can’t look at.

“Congrats on the win.” Rax Istra-Velrayd’s voice rumbles. “That was a pretty remarkable maneuver at the end there.”

Patronizing ass.

I shuffle past him with throbbing ribs and a sneer on my lips, my hair wet from the post-match shower and my left leg still numb. It’ll regain feeling eventually like all steed injuries, but not fast enough to avoid Rax catching up to me in two easy lopes.

“Seriously. If I lost a leg in my first official match ever, I would’ve freaked out way more than you did—”

“A blessing I’m not you, then.” I cut him off. Pain screams, but I won’t let it into my voice. No weakness, especially in front of him. He laughs—laughs, all smoke and hot sugar—and gets directly in my way, walking effortlessly backward as I move forward.

“They’ve teamed us up, you know,” he insists. “For the triumvirate conferences.”

I ignore him, staring straight over his shoulder and willing him to trip on some crack in the marble.

“They’re, like, little rooms where three riders get together and debrief about their last couple of fights to the media. I guess they thought we’d mesh together well, since we’re some of the youngest in the Cup.”

I crack marginally, “‘We’?”

“Yeah.” He grins. “You, me, and Mirelle.”

The idea of Mirelle and me sitting at the same table makes my skin crawl. Suddenly, Rax stops walking, and I’m too distracted—I crash into his chest, and in my post-match fatigue, I can’t stabilize. I tip backward, but he catches my arm and pulls me into him. His heat leaks through his breast coat and into my thin silk tunic, and like reflex, my head snaps up to go for his eyes—

The first time I look directly at Rax’s face, it’s like floating in space. Weightless, suspended in time. He is beautiful—to say otherwise would be a lie. The line of his proud nose and fine brow remind me of a tree: unbreakable, flawlessly arched, in perfect contrast to the softness of his mouth. His eyes really are redwood, a brown so light they burn red, framed by lashes a deer would envy.

Neither of us breathe. I hate his stare. All the parts of myself I hate—all my softness I lost, all my naïveté I sacrificed in the name of revenge—it all feels exposed at once in his eyes.

I dislodge us with a hiss. “Don’t touch me.”

Rax’s startled face melts into an incredulous smile. “Holy shit—it really was you, wasn’t it? In the practice arena that day. We had that little competition, and you ripped the dummy apart.”

Why does he look so genuinely happy to see me? I’m misinterpreting. He’s trying to disarm me—faking his enthusiasm to put me at ease so he can get away with any number of things. A feeling of total certainty grips my gut: the more I talk to him, the longer I’m near him, the more danger I’m in. I don’t know why or how, but I know it, like I know something is in the saddle with me.

I press past him and continue down the hall.

“Wait, Hauteclare! Hold on!”

He jogs around in front of me and holds out a handkerchief, the delicate lace sort embroidered with little flowers. Handkerchiefs are intimate things for nobles. I know he and Mirelle slept together by the way he treated me four months ago in her suit. He wants to bag another Hauteclare, does he?

“I will never sleep with you, Rax Istra-Velrayd. Waste your time elsewhere.”

The towering sinew of him goes still. I sidestep and continue down the hall. Sputtering echoes around the marble, then a brass-click whirl of his boots.

“It’s not a— It’s tradition. Riders wear a handkerchief under their suits, over their hearts. They say it keeps you safe.”

“And they say you’re one of the best,” I fire over my shoulder. “But all I see is a fool.”

The carved angels watch from the ceiling as I storm away. Rax doesn’t try to follow me this time.

It seems the fool can learn after all.

A bouquet of white roses waits for me in my room at Moonlight’s End.

Father’s favorite flower. The roses we spoke of when I first met him. Rage swells in my chest, but I force it down; House Hauteclare wants me angry. Anger is easy to prey upon. The robot-dog hasn’t stopped growling at the bouquet since I walked in, its posture stiff and on point, like it’s trying to…warn me?

Dravik knocks on my door then—two soft raps.

“Come in,” I say, and tap my vis to dislodge the bio-lock. He opens the door, cane tapping across marble.

“I believe the flowers are a gift from House Hauteclare for winning your first match.” Dravik picks out a rose, inspecting it closely. “Did you know? Pre-War peoples communicated by sending flowers. White roses were a symbol of purity—purity as in the bloodline House Hauteclare maintains. They want to remind you of your place as a bastard. Twelve flowers was considered the perfect number with which to show your affection, but they’ve sent two dozen. Even that has meaning.”

“What would that be?”

The prince snaps the gold-brushed stem of his chosen rose without a flinch, a bead of blood smearing as the thorns resist. “‘I’m thinking about you constantly.’”

“It’s a message,” I determine.

“It’s a threat.”

Not a single one of them came forward and confessed, but now that I’ve won my first match…now they speak. With teeth.

It was hopeless, wasn’t it, to expect any of them would seek atonement.

“Can you smell that?” Dravik asks. My nose works faintly through my misery—a sour-apple scent. “Fairfax venom. It produces a fruit smell on contact with hemoglobin in the blood.”

I look at the blood on his finger, and my stomach lurches. “The thorns are poisoned? Are you—”

“Don’t fret for me. I’ve been inoculated with doses of the court’s most commonly used poisons since birth. Fairfax is, quite literally, child’s play.” He chuckles at his joke, smile fading. “However, it would kill you in a matter of minutes. That was their plan, I suppose, but it’s rather clumsy in its execution—more of a warning than a true attempt on your life.”

I’m silent. Quilliam sniffs from the shadows of the doorway. “Master, I suggest we dispose of them before they can harm the young miss.”

The prince nods, and Quilliam starts a fire in the hearth with withered whitewood branches from the garden. Dravik turns, offering me a thick gardening glove. “Shall we?”

Together, we throw the white roses into the fire one at a time. When it’s done, Dravik holds out his hand, Mother’s redwood pendant in his cushy palm.

“You should know, Synali, that none of what happened was your fault.”

I take the pendant and hook it around my neck. “I didn’t do anything to stop it, either.”

“Miss,” Quilliam starts, voice cracking from the corner. “You’re too young to—”

“Too young to do anything,” I finish. “But just old enough to be murdered.”

The petals curl black in our silence.

My nightmare that evening is like hazy mesh—the assassin’s dark hood in the doorway, projection dagger in hand, eyes blue like mine… Why that blue? Who is he? What could I have done to stop him? Why did I survive but Mother did not?

I jolt awake, sweating cold and staring up at the frilled canopy until three a.m. reality solidifies around me. The vis is the perfect distraction, choking on dozens of articles about my “unorthodox” win. Experts with professional-sounding suffixes analyze my every move; talk shows debate the legality of my finisher even though it’s long been declared valid by the referee. Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare is a guest on one such talk show, all waterfall brown hair and smooth voice, her lace breast coat like ivory, her white to my black. A chessboard, and they struck first. Her voice is strong, confident.

“I simply find it strange that all anyone speaks of is her third round. It’s the remarkable lack of expertise in the other two that stands out the most to me.”

“Are you saying she’s unskilled, milady?” the host asks. Mirelle smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“I’m saying every other rider is better. We’ve trained ruthlessly for years, poured our hearts and bodies and very God-given souls into riding. The Supernova Cup is a place for perfection—an unproven newcomer simply doesn’t belong with us.”

The audience applauds. Everything she says makes perfect sense. I despise it.

“Rumors have been circulating of riders threatening each other this tourney,” the host insists. “Would you care to comment on that?”

“With the nature of human competition, some friction will inevitably occur. Yet I can attest that the noble Houses always think of fairness and honor first. If we did not, grand tourneys like the Supernova Cup wouldn’t exist at all.”

I swallow a scoff. The scar on my chest “attests” to the noble Houses’ “fairness.”

“Would you have a word for this newcomer Synali, then?”

“Yes. I look forward to our meeting, as one Hauteclare to another.” Her smile says everything she doesn’t: the stiff corner of her lip, letters—the flicker of her eyelashes, punctuation. Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare has been waiting to fight me since the day I rode her steed. She’s my family. She’s waiting for me.

She won her first match today, and Rax won his.

Rax.

The thought of his heat on my body in the dark of three a.m. isn’t right. The way I stare at his winning smile on the vis feels like a poison entering my bloodstream. He is them. I am us. I cannot think of him like this—not now, not ever. I know lust, and I know the things it does to people. It made me, and in the brothel it remade me. Lust is a knife, and with every second I think of Rax with my fingers wandering, I allow him to wield it against me. For any other girl, he is cream and honey. For me, he is simply a nonstarter, an impossibility. One of us has to annihilate the other.

My eyes catch the seven marble circles I carved into the wall.

I shove out of bed and pad through the silent pre-dawn manse, rider’s suit pulled on with haste. I exist for one purpose now—to ride. To win. To die when it’s over, and rest.

“I’m saying every other rider is better.”

The bunker door slides open. Heavenbreaker’s nerve fluid never needs to fill the saddle—it’s always filled, no decon required, no electricity to connect us.

It really was you, wasn’t it? In the practice arena that day.

When I slip into the saddle, the gel silence and silver spirals seem to make the world outside disappear. My steed—Astrix’s steed—welcomes me like a bored hound, everywhere and excited and irrepressible in our shared mental doorway.

“synali”

Heavenbreaker, I think back.

“ride again? go fast?”

Yes. Until the end.