THE LEGACY

PROLOGUE

Prologue

The camera light blinked red. Walter Smith adjusted his collar, calm, like a man used to interviews. Behind him the stable sat quiet in the afternoon sun, and somewhere out of frame a horse whinnied.

"Mr. Smith," the reporter said, "you've just won the championship. What's next for you?"

Walter smiled, though he looked tired. "There's only one thing left," he said. "The Hoof's Tournament."

A murmur went through the small crowd behind the reporter. The Hoof's Tournament wasn't just a race — it was the hardest event in the sport, and no champion had ever won it and the title in the same year. Riders had been badly hurt training for it. Walter meant to be the first to manage both.

"Some say it's cursed," the reporter said. "Three riders seriously injured in the last decade. Are you afraid?"

"Fear's part of the job," Walter said. "You don't get rid of it. You just don't let it hold the reins."

He glanced past her, toward the parking lot, where a car had just pulled in. A young girl climbed out, laughing at something her mother said.

"That's my daughter," he said. "Raya."

"Big day for the family, then," the reporter said, smiling.

"Every day's a big day when she's around." He never got to say more than that. Someone from his team called him toward the stables, and he gave the reporter an apologetic wave and jogged off.

It was the last interview Walter Smith ever gave.

Three weeks later, the night before the Hoof's Tournament trials, his phone rang at 9:47 p.m. It was Raya. She turned ten the next day, and he'd promised he'd be home in time to blow out the candles. She wasn't calling to wish him luck. She was calling because he was still at the stables, the cake was going stale on the counter, and her mother kept checking the door.

Afterward, people said Walter seemed distracted. He was seen pacing near the east stable, where his horse, Thunder's Mark, was kept. He told his trainer he needed five minutes alone. He didn't come back.

They found him at dawn, collapsed near the paddock fence. No visible injury. The official report said cardiac event, cause undetermined. But the stable hands talked about hoofprints in the mud that didn't line up with anything, and about a horse that wouldn't settle for days afterward. Across the city, a ten-year-old girl sat in front of an uneaten cake, convinced that her phone call was the last thing her father ever heard.

She kept that thought to herself for four more years