4 #3
They all laughed and cooed and assured him they were.
‘Well, so long as no one plays dirty, I think you’ll get your wish.
’ He glanced at Asta. There were blades in that look, and Asta’s face flushed.
‘Speaking of which, do you all know Asta Ekenberg?’ He laughed as the teenagers cast a cursory and dismissive glance at Asta.
Their eyes were drawn back to Felix like iron to a magnet.
‘Well, that’s okay. She does mostly local stuff. No reason you would have heard of her.’
Asta’s insides turned to ice. The Felixes she used to know had been many things, but never purposefully cruel.
He gestured to the other side of him. ‘This, however, is Yixin—’
‘Wang! We know,’ the crying girl said. She had recovered somewhat and dabbed her nose on the cuff of her shirt. ‘She was the private Seraphin vet last year and the year before when your cousin Tomas was still racing.’
‘But this year, she’s an official Silverscale vet,’ added a lanky kid with Felix’s colors painted on his cheeks, eager to get a word in with his hero.
Yixin laughed and clapped her hands approvingly.
Asta looked over at Yixin with a sudden and unexpected wash of jealousy.
Had Peter Seraphin pulled strings to get Yixin her promotion?
Probably he had. That’s what he did for the people he liked.
Not that he dispensed these favors out of the goodness of his heart.
It behooved the family to have friends at every level of the sport.
It was the only reason he learned the names of all his stable hands and gave glowing recommendations to anyone who worked for the family, even for a single season.
Peter Seraphin wasn’t a magnanimous man, though he didn’t mind people thinking so; he was strategic.
That’s how he stayed the king, and Felix was just the same.
Asta took it back. She wasn’t jealous of Yixin. Asta felt bad for her. She must know by now how things worked in that family. She must realize that the Seraphins’ friendship lasted only as far as it served their interests. Asta had learned this the hard way.
‘Oh, wow,’ Felix said to Yixin. ‘I think we found the experts here.’ He turned his empty smile back on the fans. ‘We need to hire you to write the family history.’
His fans giggled and grabbed excitedly at each other and assured Felix that they could totally do that.
Ask me for some stories, Asta thought, if you really want the truth about the Seraphins.
Felix could smile and preen for the fans all he wanted, trying to make them feel special just by being around him.
But he was a Seraphin, through and through.
The only things he cared about were titles, money, and adoration: that’s what the Seraphins lived and died for.
Whatever they did to get those things, it was just part of the game.
Well, she could play the game too. Felix had always underestimated her.
That error in judgment was about to bite him in the ass.
‘I’ll see you guys later,’ Asta said to Gem and Yixin.
Felix was still talking with his fans, his arm propped on the fence so that he took up most of the narrow ledge between the pits and the stands.
Asta had to squeeze around him to get by.
She caught the smell of him again as she brushed close.
It was absolutely unfair that he could screw with her mind like that without even trying.
‘Five thirty,’ Gem called after her. ‘At the room. Don’t be late. We’ll go over to the dinner together.’
Asta gave him the thumbs up.
Felix turned from his fans to glance at Asta, and his face momentarily dropped its swagger and the fake smile.
There was the old Felix again, and it made Asta dizzy with longing for something she knew was gone.
He looked like he was going to say something, but his fans were shoving rolled-up notebooks at him through the fence, and he had to get to work signing them.
Asta walked away, keeping to the far side of the pits, balanced precariously on the ledge to avoid the heavy machinery still rolling up and down the track.
At last, she reached the raceway gate and fled, her thoughts in chaos.
By the time she was halfway back to her housing unit, Asta found that her mind had begun clearing.
It was easier to think without Felix standing right next to her.
She stopped short in the middle of the avenue that cut through the Horizons complex.
She was being ridiculous. Screw nostalgia for the Felix she used to know.
That was not a feeling she could ride across the finish line.
She had no intention of opening up old wounds now.
She had not worked this hard and come this far only to let herself drown in regrets.
She had not spent the past three years training her ass off for the chance to apologize to Felix or to forgive him.
She had not come here to make nice with Felix. She had come here to beat him.