I land with a shudder, heartbeat in my ears.
The stats load on my visor.
Second place.
Yoris beat me. Again.
By two-tenths.
I slam my fist into the control panel hard enough to jar my knuckles.
“You should ice that,” Swan says, catching up with me in the locker room. “Before you bruise up and Captain thinks you got in a brawl with your instrument panel.”
“It was worth it,” I mutter, yanking open my locker and stripping off my flight suit with too much force.
He leans in the doorway, arms crossed. “You’re not mad you came second. You’re mad she saw you come second.”
I freeze.
Swan grins. “It’s not hard to read you, man. You fly like a meteor, but when Nova’s in the tower, you fly like you’re trying to write poetry with afterburners.”
I shove my towel at him. “You done?”
“Almost. Yoris said something while you were stomping out of the bay.”
I turn. “What?”
Swan grimaces. “Something about you thinking with the wrong joystick.”
Heat rises up my spine like a flashfire.
“He say it to my face?”
“Nope. But loud enough for the hangar crew to hear.”
That’s it. I start moving.
Swan blocks me, palms out. “No, Kaz. I get it. He’s an ass. But you deck him and it’s your rank on the line.”
I grind my jaw. “He’s always baiting me.”
“Because you let him. Don’t give him what he wants.”
I breathe through my nose, try to reel it in.
Yoris isn’t the enemy. But today? He’s pretty damn close.
The mess hall smells like rehydrated stew and burned hopes. I push my tray through the line without tasting a thing. None of it matters. My brain’s still in the sky and my stomach’s still at her porch steps.
I scan the hall without meaning to.
And there she is.
Nova. Sitting with another instructor. Not a threat—just a lanky Alzhon with silver skin and too many lapel pins. She laughs at something he says, head thrown back, hair gleaming in the low light.
It guts me.
She’s not looking at me. Not sparing a glance. I’m invisible again, the cocky pilot who got a little too close.
