62. Fortitudo

fortitūdō ~inis, f.

1. strength

2. fortitude, bravery

The next morning, Rax Istra-Velrayd stares at his crimson helmet with half a hangover and a girl’s voice ringing in his head.

“When you black out in the saddle, do you see things? Someone else’s memories.”

Rax knows better. He’s done a good job of hiding it by looking handsome and vapid and obsessed with fucking around, but he knows people. He’s bad at keeping the books, arranging the shipments, running the errands—whatever the fuck else it is his parents do as nobles—but he’s good at riding. At knowing riding. It’s the way she moves; she heaves Heavenbreaker around like it’s the end of her, like she’s covered in splinters and being forced to move through it. He knows Lithroi isn’t helping her with it—he’s just pushing her into the cockpit over and over again. Mirelle thinks it’s madness. Helmann called it beautiful. But Rax knows better; it’s pain. He can’t let it end like this. There was no one there for him when it was happening, and he refuses to let it happen again to someone else.

“When you black out in the saddle, do you see things?”

It sounded like nonsense two months ago, but it’s all he has to go on now. He sees people’s memories in the dream and nowhere else. The saddle is for riding, not seeing. He knows what happens to overloaders—comatose forever, like Sev, used like lifeless baby factories forever. He knows his parents won’t hesitate to use him like that, and he knows he’s close to overload after all these years, but he’s going to reach her with the only thing he’s good at, the only thing she seems to care about—riding.

He stretches his hand in his rider’s suit, tight material flexing with his tendons. Chest smooth—no handkerchief for the first time in a decade. He has to lose himself in the nerve fluid, get closer to the steed—see these memories like she does. He has to forget he’s him.

Sunscreamer waits outside the training arena, its beaked helmet pointed out at the stars like a crimson bird of prey.

Rax walks under the whitewood cross over the hangar door, praying.