CHAPTER TWO #3
He wasn’t a bad public speaker, yet every time I came into these larger team meetings I found myself drifting away.
I watched the counterpart team across the aisle.
To say I was jealous was an understatement.
Bach was by far the better rider, his six championships over Thorne’s one made that clear, but there was something far more personal in their differences too.
‘Each rider will have their own strategy today. Even if the luck of the draw starts them at the front of the pack, there’re eight others out there to get between us and that podium.’ Moss was completely serious, but he was dreaming if he thought Thorne had a chance to finish in the top three.
Bach’s strategist was showing him the briefing notes as Moss brought up a cast of the circuit, a colourful projection of the canyon in miniature.
Bach nodded, listening to him. It was a low bar, but even that went far and above the no-show of Thorne.
The rest of his team sat in what I could only assume was companionable silence.
Even Josie, the only woman aside from me, was sitting with them …
not just near them. She was a keeper too.
As far as I knew all the women in Volitant were keepers, worked in the hatcheries or as part of the press teams. Josie had been here longer than me though, and had the fortune of working for Bach the whole time.
I was staring at the back of her head, her long, silky dark hair tucked behind her ear, decorated with a bunch of piercings, when the man next to her caught my eye.
My stomach dropped. He’d been there when Thorne had yelled at me. Seeing him look away and ignore it … it didn’t leave any room for a delusion that I was a part of this team.
Hoping for a distraction I turned my attention back to Moss. He was going over the layout of the circuit next. The casting augment projected the image on to the blank wall behind him. My mouth twitched upwards. I didn’t need a map to know my way around there.
The diagram was labelled, numbers and letters sticking out from the beautiful image and ruining it entirely. Papers were passed among the team, one finally reaching me at the back. It listed the corresponding data for each corner of the race.
‘Very few changes to the circuit this year.’ Moss stepped in front of the cast as he spoke. The lake basin start line projected on to his shirt. ‘A single route through the canyon until the three-way split for the short, medium and long. The arsenals here have their indicative percentages shown.’
The numbers, the deltas and the data all blurred together.
Still, I didn’t need the numbers to fly this circuit.
I’d watched this race every year since I was five years old, not to mention the casts of older races too.
Thanks to Cam we had a casting augment at home that had every Volitant race cast available.
Naturally, I’d watched the race from every single angle several times over, mostly from the point of view of Bach thanks to the casting orb embedded in each rider’s helmet.
All I had to do was close my eyes and I was there.
The racing line, the most efficient path through the circuit, was like a tug on my chest, leading me through the gaps between the steep cliff walls.
Where the circuit split into three routes I could take any of them, coming out right behind the start line to do it all again.
When I opened my eyes again the briefing was concluding. I went from the top step of the podium back to reality. It never stopped being disappointing.
I grabbed at the paper filled with numbers and stared at it as the rest of the Kiestral team filtered out of the room. Bach laughed as he passed. My eyes flicked up, drawn to his presence. He was facing away from me, smiling at something Josie had said.
The other keeper glanced at me as she walked past. She had a poise to her that made me feel clunky in comparison, which didn’t happen often.
She wasn’t an athlete, so I could easily have taken her in a fight, but there was an intense air to her, similar to Bach’s.
That was where the comparison ended though.
Bach was short like me, whereas Josie was tall and willowy.
Her rich brown skin had warmth to it, contrasting Bach’s pale white face that I’d seen burn in the sun when he’d flown for Volitant Forge in the north.
Not that I was obsessed, it was merely a byproduct of following his career even when he’d been part of the other race series. Obsessed would have been following him to the northern continent from race to race. I didn’t have the money for that even if I wanted to.
My chair scraped back against the stone floor as I stood, the room now empty of the Kiestral race team. I slid the paper back on to the desk, my charade over. My feet remained in place, despite the need to return to the aviary.
Everything I wanted was all around me, yet I was stuck, unable to take it for myself.
My chest felt cold, no longer warmed by the angry fire Theo had stoked earlier. That was how far I’d let myself fall. Not even he could wake me from my living nightmare for long.
Finally my feet moved, taking me towards the aviary where Gottyk was waiting. Where I would inevitably see Thorne again. Where I would do the same as I had every race for a year and a half.
Where I would die inside just a little more.