22 #2
Felix was low in his saddle, making himself small against the wind. His leg brace flashed in the sun. Asta could hear him shouting to Essie. But his shouting wasn’t working. Essie was beginning to fade. Asta could feel herself gaining.
Should have let me lead through the chute, Asta gloated. But there was no time to revel in the success of her little ploy. It was time to climb.
The finish line was elevated fifty feet off the ground on a frame that had been constructed over the start last night.
‘Up, Carmine, go!’ Asta adjusted herself in the saddle, and his wings powered them upward. Asta held nothing back.
But just as they crossed the finish line, a Stryke-colored blur streaked past. The crowd screamed with excitement. Whatever Asta had saved for the finish, Basma had saved more. Had Carmine triggered the finish beacon first? Asta couldn’t be sure.
Throughout the stands, bright illusion pyros, the kind purchased by spectators from the stalls outside, sprayed showers of glinting, glimmering light into the air.
Carmine glided down to the track and jogged himself to a stop. Asta brought him close to Basma.
‘Great race!’ Asta called over the uproar.
Basma raised her mirrored visor. Her eyes crinkled with a smile. ‘You too, hotshot!’ She shook her head, but she was still smiling.
The other racers had finished now, and all eyes turned to the screens for the final ruling.
Felix drew up beside Asta and waited with her in silence.
He stripped off his helmet. His cheeks were flushed, and heaving breaths lifted his chest. The wind fretted playfully at his sweat-damp hair.
Asta had to force her eyes back to the screen.
The cameras were switching from one racer to another, getting close-ups of them cheesing for the crowds or slumped in their saddles, despondent. A camera came over to Felix and Asta. Felix leaned over in his gyroscopic saddle and grabbed Asta’s hand. He lifted it, and the stands went nuts.
‘That’s for you,’ he yelled to her. ‘They love you.’
Asta pulled off her own helmet. ‘They love you,’ she corrected. ‘I’m just the window dressing.’
Felix dismounted and approached Asta and Carmine. He bowed at the waist, arms above his head, as if he was a devotee before the altar of his goddess. The sound of cheering, which Asta thought had reached its peak, rose higher still.
‘You’re so dumb,’ she shouted over the noise. He turned and was now bowing to Basma, who played the beauty pageant queen, laughing at herself. As she waved, the screens changed. Basma’s face was at the top of the display. She had won the heat by a fraction of a second.
Asta felt a pang of envy as she watched the realization hit Basma’s face and her smile turned to a cry of triumph.
It was a petty feeling, and Asta tried to push it away.
It was just the semifinals. Basma, Asta, Felix, and the two riders behind them – including Soroko and Marigold, who had recovered from their fall on the mountain and placed fifth – had all qualified for the finals. Still, the disappointment rankled.
Felix was at Asta’s side, gazing up at her.
He offered her a hand down, which she took.
Her left leg could barely hold her weight, and she leaned on Felix, her arm across his shoulders.
Between Carmine and Essie’s bodies, they were mostly hidden from the crowd, as if they had stepped into their own private room.
‘You okay?’ he asked, his eyes searching her face, compelling the truth from her.
‘Not really,’ she admitted. Everything was falling apart – her body, her career, everything she knew about herself.
And at the same time, her best friend had been returned to her, and tomorrow they would race the Silverscale Grand Prix.
It was too much all at once, filling her heart and emptying it so fast that it left Asta raw.
The sound of the celebrating crowds washed overhead.
Asta laughed ruefully. ‘Guess they don’t love me anymore. Now they love Basma.’
The triumphant music of Basma’s victory lap was playing – soaring and bold, like a hymn to some winged god.
Felix smiled and bent his face close. ‘Well, I’ve always loved you,’ he said into her ear. ‘Always.’
She believed him. It was, she saw, what held them together – all the Felixes that Asta had ever known – they had all loved her, in their way.
And all the Astas had loved him back. First, as children.
Then, as dreamers setting out into the world.
Now, as something more – as two people with their feet on the ground and a mountain of pain between them, reaching for each other anyway.
Asta did not let herself think about what she was doing. Dirty from the race, sweaty and greasy, she kissed him. He kissed her back, and despite the roaring of the stands, it was like there was nothing else but the two of them.
All too soon, the world pushed back in. The grooms came for Essie, Torque for Carmine.
There were microphones, cameras, masses of jubilant faces.
Even as she answered the questions being shouted at her, Asta kept looking to Felix, and every time, she found his eyes already on her.
It sent her floating up into the stands.
As the minutes went by and Asta’s reporters finally ran out of questions, she noticed that Felix had begun edging away from the reporters still clumped around him.
Following his lead, Asta excused herself from a conversation with Gem and a trainer from one of the co-ops and drifted toward Felix.
He smiled at her and gave a surreptitious nod to the riders-only gate behind the far turn.
She hesitated only a moment – Carmine was in good hands, she assured herself, and no one needed anything more from her today. She nodded.
They made their escape, weaving through the throngs of fans and press milling about on the track. At the riders’ gate, they showed their badges and disappeared into the tunnel, ditching the last reporters who had tried to tail them.
Outside the raceway, they did their best to hurry away from prying eyes, but the adrenaline of the race had begun to ebb, and they were both limping.
Asta pointed to a Silverscale staff member zipping by in an electric cart. ‘We should hijack one of those. That guy looks kind of scrawny. We could take him, right?’
Felix laughed. ‘Have you seen us? We’re no match for a stiff breeze.’ They struggled on, arguing about their chances.
As soon as the door to Felix’s suite closed, a strange shyness dropped over them both. It had been a long time since they were alone together without the buffer of anger between them.
While Felix drew the curtains, Asta found herself wandering around his quarters – they were exactly like hers, except that the kitchenette was to the left and the bathroom to the right and only one large, neatly made bed stood in the middle of the room.
Asta went to the kitchenette. Felix’s rider illusion was pushed back by the coffeemaker, casting little glints of light in the shadow under the cabinet.
The illusion showed Essie and Felix clearing a fence, with the landing merging into the jump endlessly. Jump. Jump. Jump. Jump.
‘Those poor little things,’ Asta said, almost to herself, sliding the image of Felix and Essie across the countertop, back to its rightful place. She admired the details that had gone into creating the illusion – the movements were precise, the colors vivid.
Felix came to stand across the counter from her. The black marble felt like a canyon between them. She wanted to leap across it.
Felix looked at the little figures. ‘Poor things? What’s the matter with them?’
‘They never get a break.’
Felix took the illusion by its base and flipped it over. He muttered something and worked his fingers, and the magic dissipated into drifting sparks of light. ‘Better?’
Asta studied his face. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. You didn’t have to turn it off.’
‘Are you kidding? I hate those things.’
‘I think they’re cute.’
Felix gritted his teeth. ‘That’s all people want out of magic. Something cute. But it can do so much more.’
Asta came around to his side of the counter and took his hand, running her thumb lightly over his palm. ‘Oh good, I’ve missed your nerdy lectures. Tell me what else magic can do.’
The flush in Felix’s cheeks sent a trembling excitement through her. His eyes were the color of char and earth and sere grasses at the end of summer. Every time she looked at them, it went to her head like a shot of vodka.
He took his hand back to work the magic and began whispering words she could not make out, his lips parted and barely moving. Little flashes of his tongue appeared behind his teeth.
‘It can do this.’ He had conjured a glowing ball of light between his fingers, the size of a marble. The magic in it was dense and complicated, swirling like the surface of a little sun.
‘What is it?’ Asta whispered.
‘Hold it in your mouth.’ He offered the little sun to her lips. ‘It will let me feel what you feel.’
‘Like doctors use?’ No one she knew had ever had the procedure done. It was wildly expensive – only trotted out for the most difficult diagnoses. The force of concentration to power it, as Asta could see, was immense. Felix’s chest was rising and falling with the exertion.
‘Better than that,’ Felix grinned. ‘Just hold it on your tongue. I’ll do the rest.’
She opened her mouth and took the magic from him.
The magic felt hot and effervescent, like she was holding a sparkler in her mouth.
Sharp little bursts traveled through her body – crackling in her chest, her thighs, her hands, her feet – then faded.
Asta felt for the ball of magic in her mouth, but it didn’t seem to be there anymore.
‘What now?’
‘Kiss me.’ Felix stepped closer. This was real. It was happening.
Asta leaned into him and opened her mouth to his. His kiss was sweet and soft. The intensity of it grew, and he ran his hands around her back. Asta’s body tingled in the wake of his touch.