White Pawn by Ingrid Seymour

Author:Ingrid Seymour [Seymour, Ingrid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PenDreams
Published: 2019-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Knight Kelsus might have been all smiles and manners at meal time, but he was a despot the rest of the time. He had the audacity to make us run. Run! Of all things, and in senseless circles, no less.

His Pawns—Breen, Petru, Vinna, and Alben—were practically gazelles, galloping up and down the hills behind the palace, a forest as thick as the hairs on my head. In fact, they were all gazelles, even the other Challengers—Miron and Skender, the pig-looking one—while I was nothing but a decrepit turtle without hopes of ever making it to the finish line.

I pressed a hand against a tree and leaned forward, my breakfast of hard cheese and bacon threatening to reappear.

Today, I’d been a little better than a week ago, but I was still last. My shirt was soaked in sweat, something I would never get used to, and my feet throbbed inside my leather boots. The only good thing was that the blisters on my small toes were healing since I’d finally broken in the boots as Vinna said I would, which suddenly reminded me I had somewhere to be.

I ran away from the trees and into the open. Alben had said I would start sword practice with him and Vinna today, though I didn’t know how I would survive more exercise. Making people get so breathless should be against the law. I was sure my heart only had so many beats to give, and this week’s training had stolen half of them.

Heart thudding some more, I got to the sparring field to the west of the White Palace. I was still only seeing the building from a distance, but in the daylight, its ivory magnificence was dazzling.

The best feature, in my opinion, was the large fountain out front. It was surrounded by white statues of forest nymphs and a labyrinth of perfectly kept hedges and flower beds around it.

“Yeh’re late,” Alben pointed out as I came to a halt in front of him and doubled over, panting. “If yeh’re late tomorrow, yeh will have to go back and run again.”

“What? That’s not fair,” I protested.

Alben raised his thick eyebrows, looking unamused. His demeanor wasn’t friendly at all—not like it had been up to this point. I straightened to attention, another thing I’d quickly learned after Knight Kelsus had made me muck out horse poop in the stables when he caught me smiling at a butterfly instead of listening to him ramble about the proper way to care for my horse, an ugly brown beast he’d assigned to me.

Maybe Alben had finally decided I was a real Challenger, and I could soon take his spot, while he was be sent back home. In the last week, I had learned he was the newest Pawn in Knight Kelsus’s Quadrant, therefore the one I’d have to challenge if I became the top Challenger, a post currently occupied by Miron.

Vinna came over and handed each of us a sword. It was long and thin with a protective hilt for my hand.

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