13 #4
Asta’s heart leapt and trembled. Why did he have to be so perfect? ‘Don’t say that! You have to go to Pillar.’
‘I know you’ve given up hope,’ he said, raising a hand in defense against the argument she hadn’t made yet, ‘but you could still get in.’
‘Felix! Please stop torturing me.’
‘I’m serious. And if we’re there together, couldn’t we . . .’
For a moment, Asta was tempted by the hope in his voice. She let herself slip back into the dream that she had been entertaining since they dropped their applications into the mailbox together.
But for the first time, she actually considered what it would be like to be at the Pillar School with Felix.
‘So what if we do? It won’t work. If the instructors give me a good grade or recruiters are interested in me, I’ll never know if it’s because of me or because I’m your girlfriend.
I don’t think I could stand not knowing.
’ He didn’t realize, sometimes, how people acted around him.
Felix grinned. ‘That does sound really nice, though, right? My girlfriend.’
Asta wasn’t so sure. In all her fantasizing about her and Felix, she hadn’t stopped to think that being with him would make her someone’s girlfriend. The word made Asta feel antsy. She wanted to be with him, but she didn’t want to be ‘his’ anything. There were things she had to do first.
Asta stooped down and picked up a small, flat piece of rock from the ground. It had a dry leaf of lichen on it. ‘Take this.’ She thrust the rock into his hand.
He looked at it, puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘It’s a placeholder.’ She searched for the words.
‘I want to kiss you again, Felix. So much. So many times. As many times as I can. But I have to do this first. You go to Pillar. It’s only two years.
By the time you’re done, I’ll be a rider.
Maybe I’ll even have qualified for Silverscale.
And then, on graduation day, I’ll come find you, and you can give this back to me.
And then it’ll be you and me. Side by side.
’ Felix wrapped his fingers around the rock.
Asta lifted her hand to his cheek and looked into his hazel eyes.
She leaned toward him for one last kiss.
But Felix lifted his hand, still closed around the rock, and placed the heel of his fist on Asta’s shoulder, holding her back.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll wait for you. But if I kiss you now, knowing I can’t kiss you again for two years, it might kill me.’
So Asta drew back again, and they mounted their dragons in silence and went home.
‘There you two are,’ Sofia Seraphin said when Asta and Felix came in from the stables. Her voice was lilting and cheerful. ‘Look who’s here.’
Asta’s parents stood in the grand foyer with Mr. and Mrs. Seraphin, as tense as rabbits in a dragon pasture. Seeing them, Asta was reminded of how she had stormed out of the party, the things she had said. She would have a lot of apologizing to do.
Sofia came over to Asta and took her by the shoulders, planting a dry kiss on either cheek. ‘Happy birthday, dear.’
‘Thank you, Mrs. Seraphin,’ Asta said.
Peter Seraphin cleared his throat, and they all looked at him. ‘We have a present for you.’
Asta didn’t know what to say. ‘You didn’t need to get me anything,’ she muttered.
‘Of course we did,’ Mr. Seraphin said. He tugged imperiously on the lapels of his sport coat. ‘Carmine. He’s yours.’
Asta’s head lifted. She looked from Mr. Seraphin to Mrs. Seraphin to Felix. ‘Wait, what?’
‘Who is Carmine?’ Asta’s mother asked.
‘I can never keep them straight either,’ Mrs. Seraphin said, like she was confiding a great secret in Maeve.
Mr. Seraphin gestured in the direction of the stables. ‘Carmine was one of a troubled brood a few years back. We might have lost all of them if it weren’t for Asta.’
Linden could not contain his dismay. ‘You’re giving her a dragon?’
‘I hope that’s alright,’ Mr. Seraphin said. ‘Oh, dear. You weren’t planning on giving her one yourselves, were you? But no matter. It’s never too early to start your stable, Asta.’
‘We don’t keep dragons,’ Asta’s father said. ‘Asta.’ His tone sounded a warning. He wanted her to refuse the gift.
Asta looked Peter Seraphin square in the eye. ‘You really mean I can have him? Like, he’d be mine?’
‘He’s always been yours,’ Peter said, beaming with the pleasure of his own benevolence.
‘We don’t keep dragons,’ Asta’s father said again. ‘We don’t . . .’
Peter Seraphin waved away the other man’s concern. ‘Carmine can remain here until Asta is ready for him. There’s no rush. Only a few more weeks until the move to Pillar, right?’
Asta found herself suddenly choked with emotion. Everything that she and Felix had just said to each other started to replay itself in her mind. They would be apart for two years. Two years!
Finally, Asta’s mother broke the silence. ‘She was waitlisted.’
Sofia wrinkled her brow. ‘Oh, but she should have heard by now.’
Asta didn’t know what to say, how to explain to her own parents and to the Seraphins that Pillar didn’t matter anymore. She was going to do this on her own.
Felix saved her the trouble.
‘I was thinking,’ he said. The adults all looked at him.
His parents, with faces open and full of expectation; Asta’s, grim and wary.
‘If Asta doesn’t get in this year, I could defer.
Take a gap year, you know? We can train more, maybe even be support crew at Silverscale for Tomas – that would look really good on her application, and it would be good for me, too. We could go together next year.’
The Seraphins looked at each other in horror. As one, they began to pelt Felix with objections.
Asta just stared at him. ‘You can’t, Felix,’ she whispered to him under the strained voices of his parents. ‘It’s Pillar.’
‘Try and stop me,’ he whispered back.
‘Asta,’ her mother said, extending a hand to her daughter, ‘we should go.’
Asta left with her parents. They could hear the shouting begin as soon as they shut the front door.
The letter came on Thursday morning. As soon as she read the words – fall admission, full scholarship – Asta ran out the front door, leaving the letter on the kitchen table.
She found Felix casting illusions behind the stables. When she told him the news, he threw the illusion into the air, where it blew apart in a sparkling shower like fireworks.
They would go together after all. And when they graduated – Asta having signed with some prestigious house and on the road to Silverscale, Felix ready to race for his family – Felix could give her back the rock that they had sworn on, and they would finally have everything they wanted.
When Asta got home, hours later, the letter was still there on the table, but underneath it, folded neatly, was a riding jumpsuit made of the same heavy canvas as the coveralls Papa wore in the barn, a little flame sewn into the cuff of one of the sleeves.