Daemon gritted his teeth and held the mare still.

Dark Dancer came up to the ditch fast, his black tail and Jaenelle’s golden hair streaming behind them like flags of glory. As they approached the ditch, he checked his speed and made a wide, easy turn back toward the center of the field where the small jumps were placed. He took the little wooden jumps as if they were brick walls, high and showy, and as he cantered toward them, Daemon heard Jaenelle’s silvery, velvet-coated laugh of delight.

She turned the stallion to circle the field again. Daemon urged the mare forward and they circled at an easy pace, side by side, with Wilhelmina and Andrew following.

As they reached the beginning of the circle, Jaenelle slowed Dancer to a walk. “Isn’t he wonderful?” She stroked his sweaty neck.

“He’s been a little more ambitious when I’ve ridden him,” Daemon said dryly.

Jaenelle’s forehead wrinkled. “Ambitious?”

“Mm. He’s wanted to teach me to fly.”

She laughed. The sound sang in his blood. She turned toward him then. Beneath the high spirits her eyes were haunted and sad. “Perhaps he’d like you more if you talked to him—and listened.”

Daemon wanted to say something light and cheerful to take away the look in her eyes, but there was something about the way the stallion suddenly twitched his ears and seemed to be listening to them that pricked his nerves. “People talk to him all the time. He probably knows more of the stable lads’ secrets than any other living thing.”

“Yes, but they don’t listen to him, do they?”

Daemon kept quiet, trying to steady his breathing.

“He’s Blood, Daemon, but just a little. Not enough to be kindred, but too much to be…” Jaenelle made a small gesture with her hand that took in the mare and the ponies.

Daemon licked his lips, but his mouth was too dry. He remembered Cook’s story about the dogs. “What do you mean, kindred?”

“Blood, but not the same. Blood, but not human. Kindred is…like but not like.”

Daemon looked up. A few fluffy clouds floated in the deep blue autumn sky, and the sun shone down with its last warmth. No, the physical day hadn’t changed. That’s not what made him shiver. “He’s half Blood,” he finally said, reluctant to know the truth. “Half Blood, half landen, forever caught in between.”

“Yes.”

“But you can understand him, talk to him?”

“I listen to him.” Jaenelle urged Dancer into a trot.

Daemon held the mare back and watched the girl and horse circle the field. “Damn.” It hurt. Dark Dancer was a Brother, and knowing that hurt worse than knowing about the human half-Bloods Daemon had seen over the years who were too strong, too driven, and too aching with an unanswered need to fit into the life of a landen village yet were still left standing on the other side of a great psychic ravine from where the weakest of the Blood stood because they weren’t strong enough to cross over. But humans could at least talk to other humans. Who did this four-footed Brother have? No wonder he took such care with her.