“You’re so weird.” The tall blonde roughed up Chase’s hair and sat on Pippin’s bunk. “I’m not going to lie, Nyx. It smells like boy feet in here.”
“Don’t call me Nyx.” Chase slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. She squeezed her knees to her chest, trying to hold herself together. “I’m not a pilot anymore.”
“For now,” Sylph said as though this information meant little to nothing.
“I just tried to fly, and I couldn’t even lift off the apron. I’m on the Down List.”
“That could be temporary, so let’s not assemble the pity parade just yet.” Sylph lay back on the bed. “Do you sleep on the top or the bottom bunk?”
“What are you doing?”
“I figured you needed a new roomie.”
“I want to be alone,” Chase lied.
“You never like being alone. I figure that’s what all those boys are about. Thought I’d hustle in here before they find you hanging by your bootlaces.” Sylph kicked her feet up. “I’m taking the bottom because I’m a bottom sort of person. You strike me as being a top person. Wink, wink.”
“Did you just make a sex joke?”
“No.”
Chase didn’t know what to do. Sylph was in her room. Being sociable. Joking and talking about Chase like she actually knew her. Dragon had crashed, Pippin was dead, and yet this was suddenly the hardest reality to stomach. “We aren’t friends, Sylph. You do remember that, right?”
“I don’t have friends.” Sylph’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Liam says I am too imperious.”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“Right, so, I’m imperious and you’re unstable. But we got into the Streaker project together, and we’ll get through the rest together.” Sylph tugged her boots off and smoothed her shirt over her flat belly. “You are the closest thing I have to a ‘girlfriend’ and vice versa. There’s no point arguing.”
Chase stood and climbed the bunk, all the while looking over the edge at Sylph. “So let me get this straight. You’re threatening to be my friend?”
“My plan is that you’ll do this grieving thing, then—”
“Don’t piss me off right now, Sylph. I’ve already corrected your RIO’s face.”
“Anger is good for you. It’s one of the stages of grief,” Sylph continued, as commanding as ever. “We’ll get you back in the air soon. I’ll let you fly Pegasus until Dragon is running again, but you’ll have to be careful with my baby. Not. A. Scratch.”
Chase couldn’t help picturing the crash. Black smoke rising over that lake. Dragon in pieces. Pippin losing his words in fistfuls. The image was like a searing flare through her mind.
“I can’t fly without him,” she said lowly. And the truth of her words made her withdraw inside and shake like her whole body had been burned.
“Sure you can,” Sylph dismissed. “Liam agrees with me that you’ll be able to get your wings back. It’ll mean practically living in the shrink’s office. Kale has the final say—and Tourn—but you have some pull there. What are you thinking?”
“That I’ve phased into some parallel universe.”
“That’s also good. Denial and whatnot,” Sylph said. “Another stage.”
Denial? Was that what kept her mind rewinding, trying desperately to rewrite what had happened?
“I went through something similar when my grandmother died,” Sylph continued.
Chase felt a pattern emerging. Kale had shared his backstory trauma earlier—about the wife he’d lost a few decades ago in childbirth—and now Sylph was throwing in hers. Apparently that’s what people did when something terrible happened; they told you about something terrible that had happened to them. And while Chase could see why people would want to commiserate, it felt to her like tallying tragedy. No thanks.
“Grandmothers always die, Sylph. Old age is kind of a given.”
“Do they always die from malnutrition, Nyx? From secretly starving themselves to save money for their granddaughter’s training so that she might make it into her dream academy?” Sylph waited. The silence was so saturated with shame that Chase had to answer the rhetorical question.
“No, they don’t.”
“That’s what I thought,” Sylph said. “You wounded asshole.”
“No wonder you’re so serious all the time,” Chase murmured.
Someone knocked loud and hard on the door. Chase had no clue who it could be. She and Pippin never had visitors.
The knock sounded again.
“Answer that,” Sylph said. “This isn’t my room.”
Chase shimmied down from the bunk and opened the door. Riot stood in the hall. He shifted on his feet and rubbed his elbows. His nose was swollen and red. “Are you here for Sylph?” Chase asked.
He frowned. “Sylph’s in there? I thought…well, I have to tell you something. Get it off my chest.” They stared at each other for a long moment. Chase wondered if he had come to give his condolences. Or share his sob story. She was wrong on both accounts.
Riot spoke in a rush. “I told a few people about Tourn being your dad. The night before the trials. I was still mad at you.” He waved his bandaged hand as though it gave him a pass.
Chase rested her forehead on the door. Closed her eyes. “So?”
“So I’m sorry. I wanted you to know that. I thought maybe that was why you hit me.”
“Forget it. None of that matters now,” Chase said, and she believed it.
“Trying to sleep here, Riot!” Sylph yelled. “You should be resting. We have to be airborne again in five hours.”
Riot leaned against the door and whispered, “Are you all right?”
Chase wanted to lie, but she didn’t have the fuel. That, and Riot looked like he really cared. It was as strange as Sylph lying across Pippin’s bunk.
“No, I’m not all right,” Chase admitted, feeling oddly relieved by the truth. “But I’m still here. Although I’m a little worried Sylph has decided to become my bosom buddy.” Chase hadn’t expected herself to joke, and it brought a goofy grin to Riot’s face.