The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [71]
Ian Privett, from a few steps away, says, “Kate Connolly, who do you see standing beside you? A woman takes our blood. A woman grants our wishes. But the blood on that rock is men’s blood, blood of generations. It’s not a question of if you want to be up there or not. You don’t belong up there. Now stop this. Come down and stop being a child.”
Who is Ian Privett to tell me anything? This, too, reminds me of Gabe, telling me to stop being hysterical when I didn’t think I was being hysterical at all. I think of Mum on the back of a horse, teaching me to ride, so much a part of the horse herself. They can’t tell me I don’t belong up here. They might force me off no matter what I say, but they can’t tell me I don’t belong.
“I’ll follow the rules I was given,” I say. “I’m not following something unwritten.”
“Kate Connolly,” says the man in the vest. “There has never been a woman on that beach and you’re wanting us to make this the first year for it? Who are you to ask for that?”
By some unspoken signal, the man who’d held out his hand for me to come down starts up the stairs; they will take me down if I won’t come.
It’s over.
I can’t really believe that it’s over.
“I’ll speak for her.”
Every face turns to where Sean Kendrick stands a little apart from the crowd, his arms crossed.
“This island runs on courage, not blood,” he says. His face is turned toward me, but his eyes are on Eaton and his group. In the hush after he speaks, I can hear my heart thudding in my ears.
I can see they’re considering his words. Their faces are clear: They want to be able to ignore him, but they’re trying to decide how much weight you give the words of someone who has cheated death in the races so many times.
As before, in Thomas Gratton’s truck, Sean Kendrick says nothing more. Instead, his silence draws them out, forces them to meet him.
“And you say to let her ride,” Eaton says finally. “Despite everything.”
“There’s no everything,” Sean replies. “Let the sea decide what’s right and what’s wrong.”
There is an agonizingly long pause.
“Then she rides,” Eaton says. Around him, there’s head-shaking, but no one speaks out. Sean’s word holds. “Give your blood, girl.”
Peg Gratton doesn’t wait for me to stretch my hand out any farther. She snakes forward and slices my finger, and instead of pain, there’s a searing heat that runs all the way up to my shoulder. The blood wells and drips freely onto the rock.
I have that feeling again like I did before, when Sean Kendrick was up here; my feet are rooted to the rock, part of the island, and I’m grown up out of it. The wind rips at my hair, pulling it out of my hair band and whipping the strands across my face. The air smells like the ocean breaking up across the shore.
I lift my chin again and say, “Kate Connolly. Dove. By my blood.”
I find Sean Kendrick in the crowd again. He’s turned as if he’s going, but he looks over his shoulder at me. I hold his gaze. I feel like everyone in the crowd is watching this moment, like to hold Sean Kendrick’s eye is to promise something or to get into something I’m unsure of, but I don’t look away.
“By their blood, let the races begin,” Peg Gratton says to the night and to the crowd, but they aren’t watching her. “We have our riders, let the races begin.”
Sean Kendrick holds my gaze a second longer, and then he strides away from the crowd.
Two weeks until the races. Everything starts tonight. I can feel it in my heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SEAN
The next morning finds the island ghostly quiet. Though the frenzy of last night seemed to suggest that training would begin in earnest today, the stables are still, the roads silent. I’m happy for it; I have a lot to get done in the next twenty-four hours. I cast a glance toward the sky; a dimpled quilt of cloud hides the sun, and below it, smaller clouds race by, in a hurry to get on their way. I’ll know better how long I have until the storm gets here once I see the ocean.
In the eerie quiet