CHAPTER ONE #2
Gottyk lay down, sinking deeper into the warm metal mess. His pointed snout was buried inches deep, his eyes and pronged white horns the only remaining visible features of his head. He looked much less like a racing dragon with his feet tucked under him and his tail flicking lazily at his bedding.
I may not have wanted to be a keeper, but it wasn’t because I hated the work. Being around Gottyk, taking care of him – that wasn’t the problem. That glorious orange beast with big brown eyes and a soft heart was never the problem.
‘Lena Paldon, late again.’ It was Huwin Thorne, Gottyk’s real rider.
He was the problem.
I glanced over my shoulder. I didn’t like giving Thorne attention, but a predator I could see couldn’t ambush me. He stood in the doorway to his rider room, an offshoot of Gottyk’s aviary.
If the portrait out in the corridor was Huwin Thorne, then this was his shadow.
He still had the same lithe athletic frame, but his limbs hung loose now.
His light brown hair was still thick and pushed back in the style of his heyday, but it wasn’t enough to pull attention away from his gaunt face.
The bags under his eyes were dark, worsened by his pale skin losing the healthy glow it once had.
Thorne’s scowl lines had also grown deeper beyond his years, his attitude clearly deteriorating along with his looks.
A thirty-seven-year-old rider shouldn’t have looked this far past his prime.
Whatever he’d done away from the circuit during his four-year retirement had him looking ten years older and whatever had drawn him back to the sport had made it my problem.
I left Gottyk to rest, opting to abandon the sanctuary of his stall, skirting around Thorne to draw his attention away. He was hard enough on the sweet dragon when he raced, it didn’t need to extend into downtime too.
‘You really are a sorry excuse for a keeper, aren’t you?’ He prowled over, looking more like his old self when he was stalking prey. Incredible to watch when he raced, chilling to experience in person. ‘I don’t know why they bother letting you work here. When I first saw you I thought I knew.’
His shoulder clanged against the lockers where I was collecting my belongings. The canvas of my bag went taut under my grip as he leaned in.
‘But no amount of curves can make up for a bad attitude in a woman.’ My nose wrinkled as his breath hit me. ‘Especially when they’re hidden away under a baggy jumpsuit.’
His gaze raked down my body. I locked in on the weave of the canvas fabric in my hands, suppressing the shiver itching along my spine. The moment I reacted and gave into his taunts it would only get worse. That’s how I’d ended up with so much attention to begin with.
So I kept my head down. My gut churned. He wasn’t even bigger than me. Thorne was from an era of racing when size equalled speed. Both of us were barely five feet tall and with the way I trained and the way he didn’t it would be even odds. I’d thought about it plenty of times.
If I won though, I’d still lose. He was washed up now, but twelve years ago he’d earned the most points of all riders that season, making him a champion.
It didn’t matter that ever since he’d come back to the sport he’d been underperforming.
He’d missed briefings, been rude to the press and didn’t live up to his own legacy, but nostalgia kept the sponsors around.
A dragonkeeper, a woman dragonkeeper, kicking the crap out of a moneymaker wouldn’t go down well. If he ever tired of making me miserable all he had to do was complain to our boss and I’d be gone.
He continued to stare at me with his hollow eyes. His ego was waiting. I wanted to do it. I’d spent ten years competing, fighting and rising to every challenge I’d faced. I’d met each one and revelled in it. All but one.
I closed the locker door, slung my bag over my shoulder and walked away. ‘See you tomorrow.’
My biggest failure five years ago had been the most important one. I’d trusted my instincts and lost my career because of it. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake and lose the scraps I was lucky to have.
‘Dumb bitch.’
The words hit me in the back as I walked away. It was all I could do to not flinch. To not spin around and hit back with fists.
Instead, the heavy double doors of the aviary banged shut behind me.
I walked down the quiet tunnels, not seeing where I was going.
I was far away in my mind, back to the sky where I’d been happy.
Not to earlier that evening, but to five years before.
Back when I’d been the one racing. Before I’d lost my one opportunity to make it.
My journey home from work was buried under bittersweet dreams of what could have been. Not just taking Gottyk out for a warm-up, but racing him.
I wove through the throng of people at the train station, the copper rails smooth under the floating carriages as I boarded, but in my mind I could see his horned head bobbing ahead of me as we danced through the canyon circuit.
The conductor checked my ticket. The crowd roared for us as we flew past, their cries gone in a second as we shot by.
I walked along the streets of the suburbs, passing squat homes made from the same golden sandstone as the cliffs. I finished in first place, lifting the trophy over my head.
By the time I reached the cobbled lane that led to my sister’s house, I’d nearly won the Volitant Chroma Championship.
The houses here had been painted white, their thatched roofs and ivy-coated walls quaint and unassuming. Voices floated down the street, overflowing from the open windows of my home and over the hedge of the small garden.
I paused, sighing as I left my fantasy behind.
I had to make a choice – whether to sneak in through the front or back.
The weather was nice, so most people would be in the garden until way past the arcanite lanterns coming on.
The front though opened into the kitchen.
The centre of the home. Also full of people.
I tightened the straps of my bag, jogged the last leg of the lane and jumped at the trellis that framed the front door. The weather-worn wood groaned in protest and the ivy clogged my hands as I hauled myself up.
My bedroom window was ajar, left on the latch to let some air through the tiny house on a stifling summer day. Perfect for removing the breaking from breaking and entering. I unhooked the latch, swung the window open and scrambled inside.
After some impressive squatting and twisting I got my boots firmly on to the chest of drawers by my window. I grinned, I’d managed to avoid everyone.
‘I heard you running down the street.’
I toppled backwards and thudded to the floor, my elbow singing its complaints. I used to be able to fall safely on instinct – it had been too long since I’d trained that reflex.
Cam was lying on my bed to my right, feet propped up on the footboard and tossing one of my Victrolia dragon replicas up into the air.
Despite us being in our twenties, and despite her being more of a mother to me than any actual parent had been, she still managed to fulfil her role as annoying older sister.
‘Then I saw you climbing up the wall from the kitchen window,’ she continued, ‘and wondered if you were having a heart attack from all the heavy breathing.’
I scowled at her. ‘Liar. I’m not that bad.’
She tossed the dragon replica at me. I snatched it out of the air. It was a scale model of Ascil, a green dragon that had flown for Victrolia, the best team in both Chroma and Forge racing series. Not only a championship winner, but from a Decennial year and flown by the greatest rider of all time.
‘Maybe not, but there’s always room for improvement.’ Cam dragged me back from my mind’s favourite place to wander. ‘You could do with more training.’
I rolled my eyes and sat up cross-legged. She knew I’d kept up strength and reaction practice as much as I could. The scuff marks on my bedroom walls attested to that.
Most big sisters nagged their siblings over normal things like … I wasn’t even sure, but it definitely wasn’t over training, stealth or concealing wyvern eggs in quaint coastal cottages.
Still, she was the only example of a sibling I had.
‘What’s bugging you?’ asked Cam, watching me from her lounging position.
Even as the height of summer approached she wore long dark trousers and thick boots.
She conceded to short sleeves, but I was pretty sure that was to remind everyone how much her right hook would hurt.
She was a taller, bulkier, grumpier version of me.
‘Nothing.’
‘Liar.’ She was delightful.