As El Aran fell to the sand, Valve felt the heat of the bloodmarked grey mare’s eyes on her coal-black skin. You, she said and Valve turned to impart her own piercing gaze upon the High Seer. There was no satisfaction in the black mare’s face, for she knew nothing of foiling the Arabian’s prophecy. Even if she had, she would have hardly cared. As far as she was concerned, El Aran’s trifling was as much her business as El Halin’s. Maslakhat however, knew precisely the magnitude of what Valve had done.

The Arabian spoke again, but before Valve could answer came Orhan.

Maslakhat saw the son of the blind seer approaching first. He snorted quietly, displeased that their timing wasn’t better. Yet neither he nor Valve made any attempt to flee the scene or strike out at him as the realization that his mother was dead filled him with emotion. The two Akhal-Tekes stood shoulder to shoulder and simply looked on stoically. Their nostrils flared with breath; the only sign that they weren’t judgmental stone effigies in the sand.

When Orhan yelled again it was directed at El Halin, but he called her by a different name. How peculiar. Thus Valve turned to face the grey mare and chose this precise moment to answer the High Seer’s question.

“You know who I am, El Halin,” she replied with glacial tact in her voice. The mares had met before after all, under the light of the moon on a night much like this one. Perhaps El Halin’s prophecy should have foretold this moment as well.

Orhan’s despair morphed into rage before their very eyes. He stepped up toward Maslakhat and challenged him, but the golden bay Akhal-Teke did not back down. With his ears flicked backward and his nose wrinkled he tossed his head toward the Arabian.

“It was her,” he said simply. “She has planned this for years.”

Maslakhat was giving the bloodmarked mare an opportunity to claim El Aran’s blood as her own—a token of his continued reverence for her. She had been a powerful friend, and despite Valve’s actions he wanted to do what he could to not make her an even more powerful enemy, if that were even possible.

“Yes,” Valve affirmed, her gaze softening and settling on the stallion. “I’m sorry we were too late.”

VALVE & MASLAKHAT