‘None of your business.’ Asta felt her face go red, remembering Nat pulling down her zipper and how, despite her best efforts, Asta had been thinking of Felix. Asta bent to place her helmet on the ground.
Felix, of course, saw the blush, and when she straightened, she saw that an obnoxious grin had spread across his face. ‘Maybe I should have ditched the interviews after all. Whatever you were doing, it sounds like more fun.’
Asta drew her braid over her shoulder, but she worried that playing with her hair made her look insecure and pushed it behind her again. ‘Nat knows how to have a good time. She could teach you a thing or two.’
‘Oh, “Nat”, is it? So, you’re chummy.’ There it was, again. The stiffness. The hint of jealousy. Not jealousy, she reminded herself. Rivalry. Professional dislike. There was nothing to be jealous of. She and Nat were not a thing. She and Felix were not a thing. There were no things. There was no jealousy. They were competitors. That was all.
The dragons’ reunion had calmed to an occasional loving nip back and forth. Ready to stretch her legs, Essie took off for the track and Carmine lolloped behind her.
Asta cleared her throat. ‘Sure, we’re friends. We’ve been training together since I left Pillar.’
Felix rubbed at the stubble that had grown out overnight. His voice was flat, guarded. ‘Yeah, I heard you’d hooked up with the Bruces.’
Asta blushed again before she realized that wasn’t what he meant. She needed to get her mind out of the gutter.
Felix kicked at a splinter in the ladder with the toe of his boot until it flew off into the dirt. ‘There are better ways, Asta. To get what you want.’
‘Don’t—’ Asta nearly choked on the word as it came out. What the hell did he know or care about what she wanted? She didn’t have the patience for one of Felix’s infuriating lectures, as if he knew a damn thing about struggling for your dreams. When Felix wanted something, he asked Mommy and Daddy, and they gave it to him. If Carmine hadn’t been off frolicking with his sister, Asta would have walked away right then and not looked back. ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’
Felix put his bad leg up on the ladder and leaned over it, inspecting his brace, flexing and adjusting it. ‘I’m just saying that you had other options.’
Asta huffed an incredulous laugh. ‘What options? I abandoned everything my family ever wanted for me when I left the farm. I left Pillar with no money, no degree. I didn’t haveoptions.’
‘What about me?’ When he lifted his face, Asta was shocked to see actual hurt there.
‘Whataboutyou?’
‘You could have come to me.’
Asta was stunned. ‘Felix.’ She shook her head at him in disbelief. ‘In what world were you an option?’
He glared at her, his eyes filled with accusation. ‘I could have been, but you never even reached out. You just disappeared.’
‘I didn’t disappear, Felix. I was expelled.’
The dragons had finished their lap. Essie climbed the false ladder in a single leap and perched on top of it, turning with small cat-like steps on the peak before she ran back down again. Carmine came to Asta and put his head against her chest so that she would tickle underneath his frill.
She could still feel Felix’s reproachful eyes on her.
‘Asta—’
She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Felix wanted to remind her of the past, of her guilt. But she couldn’t let him. If she held on to that stuff, it was going to slow her down. And she couldn’t let anything slow her down. Especially not him. She pushed Carmine’s head away, making him snort and whine.
‘Don’t say it, Felix. Whatever it is you want to say, just don’t. You don’t know how hard I’ve fought to get here.’
Felix’s laugh was so condescending that Asta nearly strangled him right there. ‘Everyone’s worked hard to get here.’
‘No!’ She had surprised him with the vehemence of her objection. ‘Stop it with that shit. You don’t get it. Whenyoumake mistakes, it’s a life lesson, a stepping stone to your grand victory. Some of us live one mistake away from disaster.’ Asta thought about the race at West Granger. That could have been the end for her. If she hadn’t snapped out of it and finished that race, she wouldn’t have had the points to qualify for Silverscale. There would be no Grand Prix waiting for her. There’s no way she could have afforded to race on her own for another season. It would have been over. ‘Some of us don’t have the luxury of a comeback.’
‘Luxury?’ Felix’s hazel eyes flashed hot with lightning. ‘I guess I should thank you for theluxuryof blowing my leg all to hell.’
Asta shook her head, frustrated that her words weren’t saying what she wanted them to. ‘I’m not trying to say—’
‘I don’t knowwhatyou’re trying to say.’ Essie came to Felix’s side, made tense by the sharpness in his voice. Smoke curled from her nostrils in hazy ribbons.
Asta could feel the conversation spiraling into dangerous territory. ‘Would you just listen? Hummer said something—’
‘Hummer Bruce! Are you kidding me?’ Felix was definitely angry now. She saw it in the way he shoved his jaw forward and shifted his weight between his feet.
