22 #4
How had she been so stupid? Suddenly, she understood what he had been trying to tell her for so long – not just this week, but ever since Pillar. Since Medley, even. All those fake smiles. All those hours casting illusions when he was supposed to be practicing his jumps. A thousand, thousand clues.
‘It does suck for you, doesn’t it? Not just the attention. You hate all of it.’
She had been so focused on herself that she hadn’t thought it was possible for someone to have her dream and not want it. But of course, he didn’t want it. He never had.
Felix blinked quickly, and Asta didn’t need any magic bonds to know that tears were stinging his eyes. ‘Whatever. It’s okay,’ he mumbled.
‘Fuck that. It’s clearly not. Why do you do it?’
Felix squinched his eyes closed. ‘My family needs me. There has to be a champion in every generation. Otherwise, the Seraphins don’t work.’
‘But you did that already. Last year. So, now you can stop, right?’
Felix was silent.
Asta tried another tack. ‘I know she’s a girl, but why can’t your sister take a turn? She’ll be old enough to race in a few years.’
Felix shook his head violently. ‘Absolutely not. I’m not doing that to Monika. I won’t let them have her, too.’
‘Fine. But I still don’t get it. You did your part. Why not walk away?’
Felix rolled to the edge of the bed and put his feet on the ground, then stood up. Every movement looked so slow and tired. ‘I can’t, Asta. I made my choice.’ He grabbed his undershirt and shorts from the ground and put them on. He tossed Asta hers.
‘No, hey,’ she said, pulling her underthings on. ‘That’s bullshit. You can change your mind. They don’t own you.’ The Bruces, the Seraphins – what difference did it make? All these old families ate their offspring whole.
Felix slumped down into one of the armchairs by the door. Asta pulled a footstool over and sat across from him, her hands on his knees. Her eyes traced the scars, still dark on his skin.
‘Felix,’ she said, squeezing his thigh so that he looked up at her. ‘I know I don’t have any right to tell you what to do with your life. After what I did to you—’
Felix stood up and strode away from her. ‘Please stop saying that. You don’t understand, Asta.’
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘The accident.’ Felix had his hands on his head.
‘What are you talking about?’
His eyes were darting back and forth, like he was searching for the words.
‘I didn’t remember anything at first, you know.
’ She watched his profile as he spoke, illuminated by the soft light that filtered through the heavy curtain drawn over the window.
‘People told me what happened – that you cut me off, and Essie fell because of it. I just didn’t understand why you would do that. ’
Asta’s stomach clenched with guilt. ‘I didn’t mean to. I swear to you, Felix. I thought we had cleared you by then. I was sure of it. I guess I must have—’
Felix kept talking as if she hadn’t said anything.
‘I couldn’t figure out why you hated me so much.
I told myself that it couldn’t possibly be about your scholarship.
Why would you be mad at me for giving you what you wanted?
I convinced myself that you must have been using me all along to get ahead. ’
‘What?’ Asta stood up, her heart beating hard.
‘That was the only thing that made sense. That was why you didn’t want to date while we were at Pillar. Because you never wanted to be with me. You just needed me so that my parents would pay for your spot.’
‘I didn’t even know about that!’ Asta was getting mad now.
‘I thought maybe you were lying, that you did know.’
‘Felix, are you serious?’
He looked at Asta, sorrow in his eyes. ‘I needed it to make sense.’
From the stable side of the building, a dragon bugled into the evening and another answered. Asta waited for Felix to go on. He came back to the chair and sat, stretching his bad leg out in front of him and rubbing at it.
‘It hurt so much, thinking about what you did, because I was only at Pillar for you.’
Asta swallowed. ‘What do you mean you were there for me? You were always going to go to Pillar.’
Felix shook his head. ‘I wanted to tell them. Back when everyone thought my cousin Tomas was going to be the one to take us all the way. I was going to tell them that I wanted to go into magic. But then you started talking about Pillar, and I decided it wouldn’t be so bad if you were there.
‘After the accident, I just stopped caring anymore. As soon as I could ride again, they started putting me in tournaments, trying to make sure I qualified, because it was pretty clear by then that Tomas wasn’t performing up to expectations. It was all on me.
‘My leg was killing me half the time. Still does, actually, when the weather’s bad or I don’t rest it. But I couldn’t disappoint my family. Without you, what else did I have left?’
Asta stood over him, stunned and still. That speech that he had given on the opening night – that had been a story for himself, not anyone else.
It was him who needed convincing that all that pain had been worth it, that it was still worth it.
That he had overcome it just like his parents expected him to. But he hadn’t.
If it hadn’t been for her, Asta thought, he could have been happy. Listening to him talk, it felt like her heart was crumbling into dust.
‘I didn’t want to believe it. I kept asking people if that was really what happened – that you had cut me off – and they all said yes.
They told me to stop asking.’ He paused, his breath short.
‘Then, about a year ago, I started seeing a counselor. I had to talk to someone about the accident. And talking about it, I started remembering things. My counselor helped me put the pieces together.’
Felix took a deep breath and let it out, like he was working up his courage to jump off the side of a cliff. ‘There’s something you should know.’
Asta could feel that something terrible was coming and sat down hard on the stool.
His voice came out as thin as tissue paper. ‘You didn’t cut me off.’
‘What?’ Asta’s mind was reeling.
Tears stood in Felix’s eyes. ‘I thought it was your way of telling me you were sorry.’
‘What was my way of telling you?’
Instead of answering, Felix conjured a glittering illusion in the middle of the room. Asta turned to look at it. It was the race.
She was there on Carmine, flying underneath Felix and Essie.
Pikki was following behind. They were nearing the buoy.
Carmine let loose a burst of flame, but when he came out of the cloud, Essie was riding on his haunches.
They were doing the Double Decker. They rose together over the final obstacle like a winged hydra, holding the formation all the way to the finish line. They were magnificent.
‘But that’s not what happened,’ Asta said quietly.
‘I wanted to believe that you had forgiven me. That you were sorry. Because I didn’t think you had a right to be mad. When I saw you down there, I told Essie to drop . . .’
The illusion restarted. They approached the buoy. There was a burst of flame. Carmine and Asta streaked up and over the false ladder on their way to the win. Essie and Felix toppled from the air.
‘. . . and you weren’t there.’
Asta groaned and leaned forward, putting her head between her knees. Her whole narrative of the past three years – everything she knew about that day and what it meant about the person she was – was shattering to pieces.
Suddenly, Asta lifted her head, her eyes sparking with anger. ‘If you knew I didn’t do it, then what the hell was that jackass move at the exercise grounds?’
Felix let go of the illusion, and it dissolved into light.
He attempted a sheepish smile, but it faded quickly when he saw the look on Asta’s face.
‘It was all so confusing. Even when I got here, I didn’t know what actually happened – I wasn’t sure, anyway.
When I saw you, I just . . . reacted. I’d been mad at you for such a long time, Asta.
Everyone had convinced me that you tried to kill me.
The only thing I knew without a doubt was that I dropped, thinking you’d be there, and you weren’t. I felt betrayed.’
The words cut through Asta, flesh and bone. ‘You felt betrayed?’
Felix tugged at his undershirt. ‘Yeah, kinda. I did one thing wrong, and you just gave up on me. The next thing I knew, you were training with the Bruces, which I figured more or less showed the kind of person you were. It’s not like I ever heard from you after that.
You never apologized. Nothing. One mistake – one favor that you took as some kind of insult – and you were gone. ’
Asta had no words. The irony of it was too much. Assuming she had forgiven him, Felix had thrown himself from the sky. Assuming he could never forgive her, Asta had flown away.
The dragons had quieted in the stable, but there was a gentle, steady movement coming through the wall, as if Essie were on the other side twitching her tail against the wall in her sleep.