‘No, hey,’ she said, pulling her underthings on. ‘That’s bullshit. You can change your mind. They don’t own you.’ The Bruces, the Seraphins– what difference did it make? All these old families ate their offspring whole.
Felix slumped down into one of the armchairs by the door. Asta pulled a footstool over and sat across from him, her hands on his knees. Her eyes traced the scars, still dark on his skin.
‘Felix,’ she said, squeezing his thigh so that he looked up at her. ‘I know I don’t have any right to tell you what to do with your life. After what I did to you—’
Felix stood up and strode away from her. ‘Please stop saying that. You don’t understand, Asta.’
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘The accident.’ Felix had his hands on his head.
‘What are you talking about?’
His eyes were darting back and forth, like he was searching for the words. ‘I didn’t remember anything at first, you know.’ She watched his profile as he spoke, illuminated by the soft light that filtered through the heavy curtain drawn over the window. ‘People told me what happened– that you cut me off, and Essie fell because of it. I just didn’t understand why you would do that.’
Asta’s stomach clenched with guilt. ‘I didn’t mean to. I swear to you, Felix. I thought we had cleared you by then. I was sure of it. I guess I must have—’
Felix kept talking as if she hadn’t said anything. ‘I couldn’t figure out why you hated me so much. I told myself that it couldn’t possibly be about your scholarship. Why would you be mad at me for giving you what you wanted? I convinced myself that you must have been using me all along to get ahead.’
‘What?’ Asta stood up, her heart beating hard.
‘That was the only thing that made sense. That was why you didn’t want to date while we were at Pillar. Because you never wanted to be with me. You just needed me so that my parents would pay for your spot.’
‘I didn’t even know about that!’ Asta was getting mad now.
‘I thought maybe you were lying, that you did know.’
‘Felix, are you serious?’
He looked at Asta, sorrow in his eyes. ‘I needed it to make sense.’
From the stable side of the building, a dragon bugled into the evening and another answered. Asta waited for Felix to go on. He came back to the chair and sat, stretching his bad leg out in front of him and rubbing at it.
‘It hurt so much, thinking about what you did, because I was only at Pillar for you.’
Asta swallowed. ‘What do you mean you were there for me? You were always going to go to Pillar.’
Felix shook his head. ‘I wanted to tell them. Back when everyone thought my cousin Tomas was going to be the one to take us all the way. I was going to tell them that I wanted to go into magic. But then you started talking about Pillar, and I decided it wouldn’t be so bad if you were there.
‘After the accident, I just stopped caring anymore. As soon as I could ride again, they started putting me in tournaments, trying to make sure I qualified, because it was pretty clear by then that Tomas wasn’t performing up to expectations. It was all on me.
‘My leg was killing me half the time. Still does, actually, when the weather’s bad or I don’t rest it. But I couldn’t disappoint my family. Without you, what else did I have left?’
Asta stood over him, stunned and still. That speech that he had given on the opening night– that had been a story for himself, not anyone else. It was him who needed convincing that all that pain had been worth it, that it was still worth it. That he had overcome it just like his parents expected him to. But he hadn’t.
If it hadn’t been for her, Asta thought, he could have been happy. Listening to him talk, it felt like her heart was crumbling into dust.
‘I didn’twantto believe it. I kept asking people if that was really what happened– that you had cut me off– and they all said yes. They told me to stop asking.’ He paused, his breath short. ‘Then, about a year ago, I started seeing a counselor. I had to talk tosomeoneabout the accident. And talking about it, I started remembering things. My counselor helped me put the pieces together.’
Felix took a deep breath and let it out, like he was working up his courage to jump off the side of a cliff. ‘There’s something you should know.’
Asta could feel that something terrible was coming and sat down hard on the stool.
His voice came out as thin as tissue paper. ‘You didn’t cut me off.’
‘What?’ Asta’s mind was reeling.
Tears stood in Felix’s eyes. ‘I thought it was your way of telling me you were sorry.’
