‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll wait for you. But if I kiss you now, knowing I can’t kiss you again for two years, it might kill me.’
So Asta drew back again, and they mounted their dragons in silence and went home.
‘There you two are,’ Sofia Seraphin said when Asta and Felix came in from the stables. Her voice was lilting and cheerful. ‘Look who’s here.’
Asta’s parents stood in the grand foyer with Mr. and Mrs. Seraphin, as tense as rabbits in a dragon pasture. Seeing them, Asta was reminded of how she had stormed out of the party, the things she had said. She would have a lot of apologizing to do.
Sofia came over to Asta and took her by the shoulders, planting a dry kiss on either cheek. ‘Happy birthday, dear.’
‘Thank you, Mrs. Seraphin,’ Asta said.
Peter Seraphin cleared his throat, and they all looked at him. ‘We have a present for you.’
Asta didn’t know what to say. ‘You didn’t need to get me anything,’ she muttered.
‘Of course we did,’ Mr. Seraphin said. He tugged imperiously on the lapels of his sport coat. ‘Carmine. He’s yours.’
Asta’s head lifted. She looked from Mr. Seraphin to Mrs. Seraphin to Felix. ‘Wait, what?’
‘Who is Carmine?’ Asta’s mother asked.
‘I can never keep them straight either,’ Mrs. Seraphin said, like she was confiding a great secret in Maeve.
Mr. Seraphin gestured in the direction of the stables. ‘Carmine was one of a troubled brood a few years back. We might have lost all of them if it weren’t for Asta.’
Linden could not contain his dismay. ‘You’re giving her a dragon?’
‘I hope that’s alright,’ Mr. Seraphin said. ‘Oh, dear. You weren’t planning on giving her one yourselves, were you? But no matter. It’s never too early to start your stable, Asta.’
‘We don’t keep dragons,’ Asta’s father said. ‘Asta.’ His tone sounded a warning. He wanted her to refuse the gift.
Asta looked Peter Seraphin square in the eye. ‘You really mean I can have him? Like, he’d bemine?’
‘He’s always been yours,’ Peter said, beaming with the pleasure of his own benevolence.
‘We don’t keep dragons,’ Asta’s father said again. ‘We don’t. . .’
Peter Seraphin waved away the other man’s concern. ‘Carmine can remain here until Asta is ready for him. There’s no rush. Only a few more weeks until the move to Pillar, right?’
Asta found herself suddenly choked with emotion. Everything that she and Felix had just said to each other started to replay itself in her mind. They would be apart for two years. Two years!
Finally, Asta’s mother broke the silence. ‘She was waitlisted.’
Sofia wrinkled her brow. ‘Oh, but she should have heard by now.’
Asta didn’t know what to say, how to explain to her own parents and to the Seraphins that Pillar didn’t matter anymore. She was going to do this on her own.
Felix saved her the trouble.
‘I was thinking,’ he said. The adults all looked at him. His parents, with faces open and full of expectation; Asta’s, grim and wary. ‘If Asta doesn’t get in this year, I could defer. Take a gap year, you know? We can train more, maybe even be support crew at Silverscale for Tomas– that would look really good on her application, and it would be good for me, too. We could go together next year.’
The Seraphins looked at each other in horror. As one, they began to pelt Felix with objections.
Asta just stared at him. ‘You can’t, Felix,’ she whispered to him under the strained voices of his parents. ‘It’s Pillar.’
‘Try and stop me,’ he whispered back.
‘Asta,’ her mother said, extending a hand to her daughter, ‘we should go.’
