The Price of Blood and Honor by Elizabeth Willey

Author:Elizabeth Willey [WILLEY, ELIZABETH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473224681
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2025-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

15

PRINCE GASTON TOOK A LANTERN ON a pole from a rack and lit it while the groom saddled Solario and brought him from his stall. The horse snorted when he scented his master, and Gaston stroked his sleek neck and nose. He led Solario out of the stables, into the snow-whitened yard, and mounted. His road was north, into Herne’s Riding. At an ancient standing stone, he would pass onto the Road and make his way toward Montgard.

The wet snowflakes swirled like comets under the lights of the Palace ways. Gaston passed through three gates, was saluted briskly by the guards at all, and settled with Solario into a frame of mind for the long, dark, damp ride through the forest before he could pass onto the Road. The cold and wind were nothing to him; the horse ignored them as well, being Gaston’s animal and having absorbed something of his nature in the service. At the end of its short chain, the lantern bobbed and swung, covering the white road before them with a cycle of shadows and wan light. Solario was a horse accustomed to getting from here to there rapidly; he cantered smoothly, comfortable with Gaston’s weight and light hand on the reins.

The snow thickened and deepened by the time that they had passed the seventh marker from the Palace and they were well into the forests Herne maintained, his lands on which he permitted others to ride and hunt, or not, at his whim. Herne, Gaston knew, was in the Palace, but his gamekeepers might be patrolling the road, or might not on such a foul night—they’d liever keep to their fires and ales. The snow was less wet than it had been in the city, the flakes clumps of white crystals, hexagonal colonies covering the road and black trees with a flawless coat hiding color and irregularity.

He glanced from side to side as he went, out of habit, and it was this habit which caused him to register a standing stone he knew well, the Moonstone of the Wood, which was also a Gate to the Road and a Nexus itself under some conditions. Not tonight’s; the Moonstone had a white side windward and a heightening cap. The crescent graven into its blackness was half-limned with snow. Gaston’s eyes looked at the stone in his swaying light, followed the light to his left to look there, and then snapped back to the right.

Solario, feeling his master’s knees close on him, picked up his pace; Gaston drew on the reins, though, having tensed with startlement.

He could not have seen what he thought he saw, yet—it would do no harm to be sure.

A single twitch and leg-pressure set Solario turning carefully in the road. He walked the horse back to the stone and pulled up.

It was really there, not an illusion made of a fallen branch and the light and snow. The Prince frowned, dismounting. An arm, white under white, a bulk of body behind it heaped

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