Page 68 of Tailwind

I pouted and took the note back. ‘Well, I haven’t actually contacted her yet.’

‘Are you insane?’ she shouted at me.

We’d made it through hours upon hours of her being frustrated with me during strategy briefings, but I’d finally tipped her over the edge.

‘Lena, get to a comms terminal right now and speak with her! We need to know. What were you going to do? Just ignore it and hope nothing happened?’

It felt like a bad idea to nod and admit to that being my exact plan.

She grabbed the sleeve of my jumpsuit and dragged me to the aviary exit. ‘Go right now. You have a few minutes before you need to get ready.’ She hauled open the heavy door. ‘Tell me over comms before race star—’

Bach Lotiere stood in the hallway. His all-seeing blue eyes bounced between the two of us, his eyebrows raised.

To be fair to him, it was a surprising situation. Josie essentially had me by the scruff of my neck and was throwing me out of my own aviary. I was looking sheepish and not putting up a fight.

This is why I avoided him, because I constantly embarrassed myself. Before all of this mess at least I’d been able to do it in private.

‘Good morning, Bach.’ Josie smiled. ‘Go ahead and start getting ready.’

She gestured along the hallway, still holding on to me. Bach took one step forward before looking back at us. At me.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

I nodded vigorously, my cheeks heating as I did.

‘She’s fine. Just needed some advice on quantities of talon varnish.’

Bach’s eyes narrowed. Then he simply nodded and went on his way.

If I tallied my interactions with him, this tipped everything back to the negative, outweighing him calling me a good rider in the Victrolia forest.

‘Go, Lena.’ Josie brought me back from replaying the glorious memory again. ‘This is important for both of us.’ She looked into my eyes, exuding far more confidence than I could muster. ‘Please. If we know what to expect, we can at least plan for it.’

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’

She let go of my jumpsuit and set me free into the hallway. The thick pine doors closed behind me, leaving me alone with the giant portraits of Bach and Thorne. Doing my best to ignore them and to not think about potentially seeing the real Thorne any moment, I headed for the comms terminal.

The Prevere headquarters were similar in layout to Kiestral’s. Both were a giant set of tunnels inside mountains or cliffs. Though where Kiestral was made up of golden sandstone decorated with orange and white, Prevere was deep slate-grey with cooling blue and white throughout.

Much like Kiestral, the identical lighting all the way through the headquarters made it a nightmare to navigate. I swore under my breath, wishing for a giant map with a ‘You are here’ arrow at every corner.

Eventually I reached the main thoroughfare. This close to race start it was bustling with team crew, important guests and Volitant staff. The latter still made me twitch if they moved too quickly. The stairwell attack still felt fresh.

A bank of comms terminals ran along the far wall. There would be more in the private team rooms, but these were for anyone and everyone. I didn’t want to tempt fate by acting suspiciously. I sidled up to an empty booth and pulled out the note.

Cam never used the same comms terminal twice if she could help it, but she had left a contact code for me to use as part of her message. I lifted the terminal handset to my ear and turned the device on.

‘Kuramines Communications, how may I assist you?’ The male voice managed to sound polite and condescending all at once.

‘I’d like to contact terminal …’ I paused, peering at Cam’s contact code. ‘Gedeinia, dash, eight, nine, three, dash, four, one, two.’

‘Of course. One moment, please.’

The voice disappeared, replaced with a low humming noise for a few seconds.

‘Hello?’ It was Cam. She never announced her name when answering comms. She always left room for plausible deniability, but I could recognize her anywhere.

The emotion I felt at hearing my big sister’s voice caught me off guard. I twisted the cord running from the handset between my fingers.