Page 22 of Tailwind

‘What do you want?’ I asked, doing my best to temper my annoyance.

She had the audacity to look at me like I was the problem. Then she pushed past me into the cabin.

‘This will do,’ she said as she placed her own bag on the bunk opposite mine. ‘Close the door.’

I froze for a moment, watching her unzip a bag and begin to sort through the contents. It strained at the seams as she did, struggling to contain the contents, while mine sat crumpled on the floor with room to spare.

‘Oh, no.’ I walked over and took the bag from her. It weighed far too much and, to my dismay, she had several. ‘No sleepovers. You have to go.’

Her jaw set as she placed her hands on her hips. ‘I know riders are stereotyped as being dumb as shit, but this is particularly thick-headed of you.’ She took a few steps and shut the door I’d left open, locking it and flipping the lights back on. Then she attempted to grab the bag back out of my hands.

I hung on. She could insult my intelligence all she wanted, but if I was going to be stereotyped as an all-brawn no-brained rider, I’d be damned if I let her win a tug of war. Even if it was over a stupid bag I didn’t even want.

A dangerous spark lit her eyes. ‘I’m not here to braid your hair, Lena.’ Josie bit out the syllables. ‘I’m here to make sure you don’t take us both down in a ball of fire.’

We stood locked with one another for a long moment. The fabric of her bag was taut, each of us gripping it with an iron will.

‘How, exactly, are you planning on doing that?’ I asked. ‘I’m doing just fine by myself.’

‘You call ninth place fine?’ She cocked her head.

‘I’m the first woman to race in Volitant – ever. And I did that all on my own.’ I might have been pretending to be a man, but it still counted. It had to.

She scoffed. ‘You flew, but you weren’t racing.’

‘Excuse me?’ Anger spiked in my chest. I let go of the bag, sending her stumbling back. ‘You want to say that to me again?’ I squared up to her. I didn’t care that she’d helped me just a few hours ago. No one insulted my racing.

Josie steadied herself against the bunk and tossed the bag down on to it. ‘Sensitive, are we? You may have flown a dragon in Volitant, but you came ninth. You’re lucky Thorne’s been so bad recently that you didn’t seem out of place at all. What’s the point of being the first woman to race in Volitant if you’re only going to be as good as the washed-up misogynistic rider you replaced?’

If I’d been wearing my flight suit it would have been flooding the cooling system as the rage inside of me turned into heat.

‘You want to beat the others? You want to actually be good at this and go ra—’

‘I am good! I’m better than good.’ I got in her face. ‘I’m better than half those riders out there on a bad day!’

‘Then why did you lose to eight of them?’ One sleek eyebrow rose.

My hands clenched. My shoulders squared. I didn’t like her calm tone.

‘Because …’ My blood was rushing faster than my thoughts.

‘You’re not going to blame Gottyk, are you? Use the same excuse as Thorne?’

I slammed my hand next to her head, going through the banded blinds over the window. Sunlight leaked in through the gap. ‘Nothing was Gottyk’s fault. I wouldn’t ever blame him.’

She nodded. ‘Good, we agree on something.’ She gently pushed against my shoulder and slipped away, seemingly unfazed. She pulled out a paper-filled binder from the bag we’d been fighting over, her back to me. ‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ She looked over her shoulder at me. ‘I assume you’ve heard that before?’

I narrowed my eyes. This felt like lecture territory. I pulled my hand out from the blinds, leaving them crooked. ‘Believe it or not I didn’t really have time to prepare, since I stole that flight suit ten minutes before the flare.’

She nodded. ‘And the next race?’

‘I’ll fly harder, faster … I’ll get further.’

‘How?’

‘That’s a stupid question. It’s racing. When I get into the saddle again I’ll be ready.’ My chin tipped up. I tried on Cam’s no-nonsense crew-leader look.

Her eyes rolled up. ‘Why are you all like this …?’ She trailed off before presenting me with the binder she’d been holding. ‘I believe that you’re ready here,’ – She pointed to the centre of my chest. – ‘but you need more than that. You need to be ready here too.’ She poked the centre of my forehead with a single finger, pushing my head back slightly.