Free Furyborn by Claire Legrand Page B

her bare hands.
    She laughed, a torn sound. What was happening to her? Her body was a bonfire, spreading out and out, and she couldn’t stop it.
    She dropped the reins, instinct screaming at her to reach for a weapon, and though she found only empty air, her palms crackled with heat. Blind and desperate, she threw her hands at the Borsvall attackers. An invisible force flungthem to the ground. Their horses ran free, crazed with fear.
    Rielle looked around, dazed. The quaking world behind her, fanning out along Maliya’s path, was a spiderweb of fissures. Her mind felt similarly ruptured, like her power had knocked loose all her edges.
    Where was Audric? She searched wildly through the smoke and dust.
    “Rielle!” A familiar voice.
    Audric, on foot. She musthave knocked him off his horse as well, and now he was limping. She kicked Maliya into action. Audric stepped back from her approach. Something terrible fell across his face.
    What did he see?
    A thick black arrow zipped past her.
    Rielle yanked Maliya around, turning her so hard she could feel the cut of the bit in her own mouth. She bore down on the man who had shot at her. He facedher, reaching for another arrow.
    He nocked it. He took aim not at her, but at Audric.
    Rielle cried out for Audric to move, urged Maliya forward to get between him and the archer.
    Maliya took a few faltering steps, and then something beneath Rielle gave way. She looked down. Her horse was a raw, pulpy mess—drenched with blood, patches of her gray coat charred black and smoking.
    The horror of it struck Rielle in the gut. She dropped the reins and leaned back in her saddle. She had to get away from this terrible thing beneath her. Where had it come from?
    Maliya’s hindquarters sagged and buckled; Rielle fell hard on her side. She crawled, frantic, clawing at the dirt to get out of the way.
    Another arrow from the Borsvall assassin—but not aimed at Rielle, nor at Audric.The arrow pierced Maliya between the eyes; her screams fell silent. The wreck of her lay there, steaming.
    Rielle huddled on the ground, the scent of Maliya’s burned flesh thick in her nose. A distant part of her mind still searched for Audric, but when she tried to rise to her feet, her body wouldn’t cooperate. Heaving, she pushed herself up and retched. She was covered in dirt and blood—herown and Maliya’s.
    The clang of metal against metal crashed through the air. Swords.
    Audric.
    Frantic, Rielle searched through her dimming vision for a weapon of her own, something one of the Borsvall men had dropped. Even a rock would do.
    Oh, God help her, her poor horse.
    What had she done?
    She wiped her bleeding palms on her shirt. The earth still vibrated, as though anarmy ten thousand strong was marching on the capital.
    “Stop it,” she whispered, for she knew it was all her doing—the horse, the falling rocks, the rifts in the earth.
    She had lost control, after everything Tal and her father had tried to teach her. She’d only wanted to show them she could be trusted, that she deserved a life outside the temple and her own lonely rooms.
    And now herfather would hate her even more deeply than he already did.
    Everyone on the course had seen.
    What was she?
    She slammed her hands into the ground, heedless of pain. “Stop it!”
    A roar, a swift burst of wind. Suddenly everything was hot.
    She heard the distant sounds of screams from the race grounds. Someone was speaking over the amplifier.
    She looked up.
    Her crawling hadbrought her to the highest point of the pass. In front of her lay a downward slope, then the Flats. The finish line, spectator boxes clustered around it. The capital—the roofs of the seven temples and of Baingarde, the king’s castle, gleaming in the sun.
    Twin trails of fire stretched from her hands down toward the city like long, hungry tongues.
    Rielle staggered to her feet, exhaustionrocking her. Audric shouted in warning. Rielle turned to see one of the remaining Borsvall men