Asta pushed her back harder into the fence, almost as if she was trying to burst through it. She had the overwhelming urge to run back to the stables, climb on Carmine and run away. What was she supposed to say to this man, this too familiar stranger? Should she ask after his parents or his little sister, Monika, who had been four when Asta last saw her? Should she ask him how he was feeling about the races this week? If he was nervous? It all seemed so absurd.
A shriek from the stands behind them cut through her thoughts.
They turned around. Four teenagers with black-and-gold scarves bearing the crown of the Seraphin crest were pressing themselves against the fence from the other side, their fingers latched on to the wire.
‘Felix! Felix Seraphin!’ they cried. One of them had actual tears streaming down her face.
Felix straightened and switched on his public-facing smile. The sight of it turned Asta’s stomach.
‘Hey, guys,’ Felix said. Even his voice sounded weird, all smarmy and self-satisfied. ‘You here to watch me win?’
They all laughed and cooed and assured him they were.
‘Well, so long as no one plays dirty, I think you’ll get your wish.’ He glanced at Asta. There were blades in that look, and Asta’s face flushed. ‘Speaking of which, do you all know Asta Ekenberg?’ He laughed as the teenagers cast a cursory and dismissive glance at Asta. Their eyes were drawn back to Felix like iron to a magnet. ‘Well, that’s okay. She does mostly local stuff. No reason you would have heard of her.’
Asta’s insides turned to ice. The Felixes she used to know had been many things, but never purposefully cruel.
He gestured to the other side of him. ‘This, however, is Yixin—’
‘Wang! We know,’ the crying girl said. She had recovered somewhat and dabbed her nose on the cuff of her shirt. ‘She was the private Seraphin vet last year and the year before when your cousin Tomas was still racing.’
‘But this year, she’s an official Silverscale vet,’ added a lanky kid with Felix’s colors painted on his cheeks, eager to get a word in with his hero.
Yixin laughed and clapped her hands approvingly.
Asta looked over at Yixin with a sudden and unexpected wash of jealousy. Had Peter Seraphin pulled strings to get Yixin her promotion? Probably he had. That’s what he did for the people he liked. Not that he dispensed these favors out of the goodness of his heart. It behooved the family to have friends at every level of the sport. It was the only reason he learned the names of all his stable hands and gave glowing recommendations to anyone who worked for the family, even for a single season. Peter Seraphin wasn’t a magnanimous man, though he didn’t mind people thinking so; he was strategic. That’s how he stayed the king, and Felix was just the same.
Asta took it back. She wasn’t jealous of Yixin. Asta felt bad for her. She must know by now how things worked in that family. She must realize that the Seraphins’ friendship lasted only as far as it served their interests. Asta had learned this the hard way.
‘Oh, wow,’ Felix said to Yixin. ‘I think we found the experts here.’ He turned his empty smile back on the fans. ‘We need to hire you to write the family history.’
His fans giggled and grabbed excitedly at each other and assured Felix that they could totally do that.
Ask me for some stories, Asta thought, if you really want the truth about the Seraphins. Felix could smile and preen for the fans all he wanted, trying to make them feel special just by being around him. But he was a Seraphin, through and through. The only things he cared about were titles, money, and adoration: that’s what the Seraphins lived and died for. Whatever they did to get those things, it was just part of the game. Well, she could play the game too. Felix had always underestimated her. That error in judgment was about to bite him in the ass.
‘I’ll see you guys later,’ Asta said to Gem and Yixin. Felix was still talking with his fans, his arm propped on the fence so that he took up most of the narrow ledge between the pits and the stands. Asta had to squeeze around him to get by. She caught the smell of him again as she brushed close. It was absolutely unfair that he could screw with her mind like that without even trying.
‘Five thirty,’ Gem called after her. ‘At the room. Don’t be late. We’ll go over to the dinner together.’
Asta gave him the thumbs up.
Felix turned from his fans to glance at Asta, and his face momentarily dropped its swagger and the fake smile. There was the old Felix again, and it made Asta dizzy with longing for something she knew was gone. He looked like he was going to say something, but his fans were shoving rolled-up notebooks at him through the fence, and he had to get to work signing them. Asta walked away, keeping to the far side of the pits, balanced precariously on the ledge to avoid the heavy machinery still rolling up and down the track. At last, she reached the raceway gate and fled, her thoughts in chaos.
By the time she was halfway back to her housing unit, Asta found that her mind had begun clearing. It was easier to think without Felix standing right next to her. She stopped short in the middle of the avenue that cut through the Horizons complex. She was being ridiculous. Screw nostalgia for the Felix she used to know. That was not a feeling she could ride across the finish line. She had no intention of opening up old wounds now. She had not worked this hard and come this far only to let herself drown in regrets. She had not spent the past three years training her ass off for the chance to apologize to Felixorto forgive him. She had not come here to make nice with Felix. She had come here tobeathim.
The Ekenberg Farm
5
The Ekenberg Farm had been the Ekenberg Farm for generations. Seasons came and went, sleepy cattle wore paths into pastures, neighbors traveled back and forth to town on the gravel road that ran beside the lower fields, and the Ekenbergs worked their land. Even as other farms around them were getting carved up and sold off, the Ekenbergs remained where they were and did what the Ekenbergs had always done.
They were such a constant that folks in Medley used the old farm as a landmark when giving directions. ‘Go past the Ekenberg Farm, and it’s the first house on your right.’ Or, ‘Head east like you’re going out to the Ekenberg Farm, but take a left at the fork.’ The Ekenbergs were the sort of people you could count on being there, decade after decade, for centuries on end.
Until Asta.
Asta had been something of a mystery to her parents from the start. When Asta’s cousins were visiting from the city, they adapted quickly enough to the early mornings of farm life, but Asta, despite the fact that she had been born on the farm and grown up there, stayed curled in bed as long as she could to avoid going out to do her chores. Her poor mother spent many a morning wrestling the girl into her overalls and barn coat with Asta slumped over her shoulder, sleepy and unwilling. Mama would hand her over to Papa, who would drag her to the barn and set her to work, only to find her a few minutes later, leaning against a tractor wheel or a hay bale, snoring away.
‘Uh oh,’ Papa would tease, shaking her shoulder. ‘Looks like the sleep monster got you again. Come on, Asta girl. You’re not getting out of it that easy.’
