12 #2
Asta wondered if they would notice her down here.
Probably not. They were not the kind of people who looked down.
They wouldn’t have noticed her back in Medley, either, except that Felix kept bringing her into their house, to their table, out into their fields, until they could not ignore her any longer.
‘I have to hand it to you,’ said a voice at Asta’s elbow.
Asta lowered her gaze from the VIP deck.
It was the other rider who had addressed her.
Asta glanced at the lanyard. Leia Oppel.
Asta had committed the stats of all her competitors to memory.
Leia Oppel rode westerns for the Longs, an old family racing house that, like the Gameiros, had passed their heyday and now hovered in the middle of the rankings.
She was fast on the jumps but a slow starter.
Asta vaguely remembered that there had been some sort of scandal around her a few years ago, but the details were fuzzy.
‘Hand what to me?’ Asta asked.
‘Whatever you’re doing, it’s working,’ Leia said, and placed a news reader, the size and shape of a school notebook, into Asta’s hands.
The pictures and words on the device had the faint sparkle of magic to them.
Asta had seen the advertisements for the readers, and though it was an extravagance far outside her budget, she had to admit it was pretty nice.
She looked at the screen. At the very top was a picture from the opening ceremonies. The side of Asta’s face was in the foreground of an angled shot that focused on Felix, his cocky smile beaming at her. The headline read, ‘REUNITED AS RIVALS!’
She skimmed the article. It was patchy on the details and full of inaccuracies.
Superstar rider Felix Seraphin’s estranged childhood sweetheart had entered the Silverscale Grand Prix as an unaffiliated rider.
Would the distraction cost Seraphin his rightful title?
Asta’s name did not appear at all until halfway into the article.
She might have preferred to be left nameless.
There were all sorts of odd inventions. Small things like Essie being Carmine’s dam, not his half-sibling.
Or the fact that Asta had been a hired hand on the Seraphin Estate, which was certainly news to her.
She was aghast at the insinuation that she had been to blame for Felix’s poor performance in an exhibition race last year, despite the fact that she’d been halfway across the country at the time.
Their torrid romance had supposedly ended when she’d made Felix choose between her and his career.
And when he had chosen racing, she had taken her revenge.
The accident. The illegal move that she had pulled, the article explained, quoting an anonymous source, had nearly killed him.
He escaped death, but even so, it almost ended his career.
She had gotten away with a slap on the wrist and had now unofficially aligned herself with the lowlife of the racing world, the Bruce family.
Pikki’s fingerprints were all over this piece.
She just couldn’t let Asta live in peace, could she?
At the bottom of the article was a picture from Asta’s encounter with Felix this morning at the exercise grounds, not two hours ago.
The photo was taken through the fence. Asta, mounted on Carmine, sneered as Felix berated her from the ground, his face troubled.
Asta stared at the picture, uncomfortable with the story it told.
The description of their impromptu race, though sensationalized, was at least factual.
Both riders had thrown caution to the wind in a tooth-and-nail fight to best the other.
‘Assuming both riders and their dragons advance from their respective preliminary heats tomorrow,’ the article read, ‘the long-shot contender, Ekenberg, may face her old flame and the renowned racing icon, Seraphin, as early as day five of the tournament. Rosters for the semifinals will be reported here as soon as they are released. Subscribe now to be the first to know!’
Asta handed the news reader back, her skin crawling. ‘Half of that is bald-faced lies.’
‘No such thing as bad press, right?’ Leia muttered as she scanned the article.
‘I think that’s just a saying,’ Asta said.
The other rider scuffed her shoe on the ground meditatively. ‘You’re new at this, aren’t you?’
‘I guess.’
‘The thing is . . .’ Leia kicked her chin out at the starting line, now thick with drakes and riders.
‘When you’re out there, it doesn’t matter if people are saying your name because they hate you or love you.
All that matters is that someone is saying your name.
Trust me. Maybe you’re too young to remember, but for a second, about four years ago, everyone knew my name. ’
Asta did remember now. She had watched the race on the televisions in the empty dorms at Pillar.
Everyone else had been here, at Horizons Raceway.
Leia Oppel had been a favorite coming into the Grand Prix.
The future of racing. The next Tess Curie.
But she had choked in the prelims, barely making it to the semis.
And then, in her semifinal heat, she’d lost control of her dragon: it had flamed a rider with a direct blast and attacked two other dragons, laming one of them and causing a cascade of accidents on the course.
Leia had pulled her dragon out of the fray and finished the race in spite of a hefty time-delay penalty.
The catastrophe to the field had been so bad that finishing was all that was needed to qualify.
Leia had advanced to the final race where she was greeted as a villain, the crowds shouting at her and booing.
‘I didn’t care,’ Leia said, ‘that people were saying my name like it was a dirty word. At least they knew my name.’ Leia flipped the darkened news reader back and forth between her hands.
‘But then everyone moved on and forgot about me.’ She shook her head, as if to chase the memory away.
‘Look, I’m not proud of what happened, but that day gave me something I’ve never had since. ’
‘I don’t care if people know my name,’ Asta said. It troubled her that she didn’t know if that was true or not. ‘I just want to win.’
‘People already know your name, Asta Ekenberg,’ Leia said. She gave Asta one last jealous look and walked away.
From the other side of the middle terrain, the horn sounded. A roar went up from the crowd, rushing down on Asta from all sides.
The flag had dropped, and the drakes were off. Asta glanced up at the VIP deck. Peter and Sofia were watching the race through binoculars. Had they seen the article yet? Had they spoken to reporters about her? What would they say if they were asked, she wondered.
Asta had thought, at one point, that Felix’s parents had become somewhat fond of her, in spite of her tendency to distract their son from his homework and his formal training.
Now, she knew it had been something else, not affection.
They had used her in the way the Bruces were using her – to push Felix, to motivate him, to give their golden boy a run for his money.
At least Hummer had told her that was his expectation from the beginning.
Seeing Hummer at his worst last night had shaken Asta.
It had terrified her. But if she was totally honest with herself, it hadn’t really surprised her.
Just like it wouldn’t surprise her when, one day, Nat forgot about her, as if their friendship had meant nothing.
The Bruces had never made her believe that they were anything other than what they were.
The Seraphins had. And that’s why their betrayal had hurt so much. She had not seen it coming. She had thought – with Felix, with his parents – that there had been something more there. Something real. But all they wanted was to control her, to use her. Their son, their family, always came first.