66. Sanitas

sānitās ~ātis, f.

1. health

2. sanity

From the velvet seats of a private box, Mirelle watches Synali von Hauteclare remove her helmet slowly. The lights of the medic steeds paint her skin in ruby. She looks horrible—hair sweat-drenched, lips ragged, every attempt by the makeup artist to cover her pockmarks now smudged in sweat. No grace. No decorum. Only struggle. Only a girl close to overload.

Older riders don’t bleed silver nearly as much as she does.

Something wrong with her steed.

With Hellrunner, too.

Grandmother often said curiosity ill befit a noblewoman—it was the downfall of Eve and the bane of wise men. Rax’s obsession with Synali forced Mirelle to dig curiously for what exactly he saw in her. She’d exhausted every SCC log on Hellrunner years ago, but the logs on Heavenbreaker went back just as far; 354 years ago, the A3 that would later be known as Heavenbreaker was registered. It was the same exact year Hellrunner’s A4 was activated and the same year House Ressinimus took control as the Station’s first king. Heavenbreaker’s logs, however, contained more information than Hellrunner’s; they’d been found together in a nearby asteroid field—remains of the War teleported by the enemy along with the Station. Only Hellrunner had been immediately repurposed and activated; Heavenbreaker disappeared off the logs for upward of three hundred years, only reappearing again when Astrix vel Lithroi bought the rights to the steed, named it, and began tuning it as a teenager. Hellrunner’s riders never lasted long—Heavenbreaker’s might not, either.

Whatever Heavenbreaker is, it could be just as powerful as Hellrunner. Just as dangerous, and in the hands of a traitor. Lithroi has won. Again. Another of her family will die. Perhaps it was always meant to be this way—perhaps God wanted Mirelle to be the one to end the mad dog’s killing spree all along.

The seat beside her is empty; Rax never showed. She knows that if he had, his hands would be white-knuckled on the armrests, eyes riveted to the blown-up hologram in the center of the arena, to the murderer’s haggard face.

Mirelle quashes the squirm in her chest. Marriage is not for love. Childhood is for love, for flings, for emotions, and she’s assuredly no longer a child. Marriage is part of the game—it’s not a choice but a duty. She’s seen it happen to other noble girls; there will be children, there will be affairs. There will be hatred, disgust, and at best, harmonious indifference. No matter how many books she’s read of the War—of the knights who swore themselves to each other before launching to fight, of the muttered promises in the final moments of their courageous lives to love each other until eternity—she knows it’s impossible for nobles to marry for love.

So why, then, does the mere idea of Rax staring at the murderer eat away at her?

“And that concludes the match, folks! Synali von Hauteclare takes the win with a projectile lance strike! Her Highness has acted rashly on the field before but never quite like this—I’m sure the steedcrafters will be swarming to figure out how she made those lasers! We’re getting reports the princess is sound, if a little put off at her loss. We’ll have more updates as they come—”

The crowd cheers wildly, the chants of “Synali, Synali, Synali” like demons teething on Mirelle’s very soul. She stands, pale cape tumbling to the floor and spreading the full winged-lion emblem, and her voice cuts cold into the dark, empty box.

“It seems I will be her next opponent.”