Asta tiptoed closer to Tess. ‘Who told you that?’ Had Karol guessed? Had Nat? Who had turned him in?
Tess gave her another quizzical look. ‘He did. This morning. He told us himself.’
She left Asta, stunned, on the sidewalk. Without thinking, Asta started hobbling, as fast as her leg would allow, toward Housing Unit 1.
When Felix opened the door of his suite, Asta was standing, breathless, before him. The cold autumn morning had woken up her body, and she could feel that her cheeks were flushed.
‘You told them,’ Asta gasped. ‘You told them it was you.’
Without a word, Felix left the doorframe and padded into his suite on socked feet. He was wearing track pants and an oversized black Seraphin T-shirt. Asta followed, closing the door behind her. She was in her ratty old sweatshirt and the shorts she had slept in, no shoes at all. Between the two of them they barely had one complete outfit.
Felix pulled out the flat little pedestal that used to display his miniature racing illusion before he had turned it off. He handed it to Asta, who turned it, examining it, not at all sure what she was supposed to glean from it.
‘You didn’t tell me what you were going to do with the cord,’ Felix said, as if this offered some sort of interpretation.
Asta looked from the base to Felix’s face.
Felix shook his head. ‘But you didn’t tell me much of anything, did you?’
Asta took a quick step toward Felix. ‘I didn’t tell anyone. It was my problem to solve, Felix. I didn’t want you to get hurt.’
Felix reached for the illusion base, and Asta handed it back to him. He murmured his spell and set it on the countertop. It jumped to life, the image turning slowly, but instead of him and Essie running mid race, it repeated an endless cycle of Asta rappelling down the canyon walls, stealing the beacon, and going back up.
‘I thought, “Was it a trap? Was she working for the Bruces all along?” I kept waiting, all last night, for someone to burst in here and say that you told them I was the one who gave you the cord– that I had made it, and I was powering it.’ He sighed. ‘And then, after a while, I sort of went from being afraid that you had told them to hoping you would. I started thinking maybe this was my chance.’
‘Your chance for what?’ Asta murmured, stunned.
He began to pace, and Asta watched him walk from the edge of the bed to the counter and back again. ‘To get out, once and for all. See, if I went to my parents one-on-one, told them I was done racing, it wouldn’t work– they’d find some way to manipulate me, to talk me out of it, and put me right back on the track.’ Asta knew it was true. ‘But confessing to the board that I had helped you cheat? That would embarrass the whole family. I would be a stain on the Seraphin name– and if there is one thing they cannot overlook, it’s that. They wouldn’tletme race for them again. So I quit waiting for you to do it, and I did it myself. I told them.’
He stopped pacing and looked into Asta’s eyes. The bright morning light was streaming through his windows, reflecting off the tile, and drawing out glimmering flecks of gold in the hazel of his eyes, as if they were filled with magic.
‘You did it,’ Asta said quietly.
Felix’s peaceful expression clouded. ‘But what I can’t figure out is why the hell you didn’t tell me?’
‘I couldn’t,’ Asta whispered, her voice failing.
‘I can’t say you didn’t warn me. “Don’t trust me,” you said. I knew you were up to something. I didn’t know you were going to use me to hand the race to Natalia-fucking-Bruce.’
Asta pleaded with him. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I had to do what he wanted. I had to stop him from hurting anyone else– from hurting you.’
Felix’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.
‘This was the only way.’ Asta could hear the lack of conviction in her own voice. She had stopped Hummer this time, perhaps, but who could stop him now?
Soft sounds of conversation filtered in from the sidewalk. From the stables, the stirring and grunting of dragons.
Asta twisted the tattered red cuff of her sweatshirt around her finger, pulling it so tight it hurt. ‘If I told you, then you’d be complicit.’
Felix’s eyes flashed with frustration. He flicked his fingers, and the illusion on the counter died away. ‘That’s not our deal, Asta. You don’t get to make decisions for me.Youtaught me that, don’t you remember? I told you that I would be there for the hard parts.’
‘But I couldn’t ask you to do this. You would have regretted it. Or you would have stopped me.’ Asta stuffed her hands into the pouch of her sweatshirt. ‘I did what I had to do. And I screwed it up after all– you and me. All on my own. You should have just stayed away.’ She held still, waiting for him to say something.
At last, Felix broke the silence. ‘Here’s the thing, Asta,’ he said, his voice low and clipped.
Asta wanted to clamp her hand over his mouth and stop him from saying whatever it was he was going to say. All these years of loving him, of aching for him, and it was all going to end now, because she had gone and done the same thing he had done to her, the thing that had nearly broken them once already.
She had not trusted him to love her if he knew who she really was: a breakable woman, filled with fear, who could let her dreams become corrupted. She had told herself that she was protecting him, but the truth was, she was afraid that if he knew the real choice before him, he wouldn’t choose her. If only she could stay there with him in that room for a little longer and extend the moment before she truly lost everything.
