Page 84 of Tailwind

I had never been very good at moping. After I’d lost my racing career at the end of the Wyvern Cup I’d used the anger and put it into working with dragons in other ways: first with the hatchlings and parents, and then as Gottyk’s keeper. The hard labour had helped burn away the extra energy.

It had worked then – kind of. The familiarity had let me fall into a numb stupor, one that Josie, Theo, Colly and Quinn had woken me up from. I was hoping I could do the same again.

Like everything in my life, it wasn’t happening nearly fast enough. It had been a week since being fired from Kiestral. So I’d done the only thing I could: I’d gone home.

Living with Cam also meant living with half a dozen of her friends at any given time. In the few days I’d been back in our small home on the outskirts of the city I’d avoided her crew as much as humanly possible. Whenever I had made an appearance at dinner there had been open-mouthed staring. At least until they noticed the death glare from Cam.

The only way to not feel suffocated was to leave the house and climb up to the cliff caves. I couldn’t look after Gottyk, but there were still plenty of winged scaly beasts for me to pamper.

To Cam’s credit the homemade aviary for her wyverns was kept to a decent standard. The sandstone caves were natural, embedded into the cliffs just as the Kiestral headquarters were. Smaller, definitely. Less budget, absolutely. Whatever budget the crew did have though was spent here. There wasn’t an embedded heating augment in the walls, but there was an arcanite heater in every stall. The lighting wasn’t coloured or mounted in overhead strips, but a few well-placed floodlights bounced off the walls to give the deep cave a cosy feel.

I swept the copper pellets that had scattered out of the stalls back towards the sleeping areas. Copper was hard to come by, so most drake and wyvern owners used lesser metals for bedding. Yet the half-dozen grey wyverns were curled, stretched out and rolling on premium pellets.

Thankfully they were smaller than dragons, which kept the required amount down. The same went for the food. Scraps of bone that I’d sifted out were piled by the cave exit, ready to be tossed into the ocean on my way out. The muscles I’d built lugging around a single meal for Gottyk were content with the easy half-weight that was divided between the six wyverns.

My heart broke a little every time I thought of him, which was constantly. Josie had sent me daily updates, which I thanked her for, but it still wasn’t enough.

A sharp clicking noise sent a jolt of surprise through me. It started loud and nearby, interrupting my pining.

Orai, Cam’s wyvern, was good at that. He loved to stalk people, sneaking up behind them as close as possible before using his breath ignition to scare the souls out of them.

I kept my face neutral, turning to face the mottled wyvern. It wasn’t much use. He could hear my heartbeat and smell whatever scent humans gave off when scared. I narrowed my eyes at him, holding the gaze of his bright yellow eyes as they stared right back at head height.

My smile, as hard as I was trying to hold it back, escaped.

‘You really are my sister’s wyvern, aren’t you,’ I said as I scratched under his chin.

Dragons tended to form their own personalities regardless of who raised them – it was one of the many ways in which they were stubborn. Wyverns, however, turned out much like their human companions. For Orai, he showed affection by proving he could kill you and then choosing not to.

‘Cam doesn’t like being tickled under the chin though, does she?’ I grinned as Orai’s wings started to rustle with happiness.

He sat back on his haunches, with his wings propping him up. Instead of being separate limbs like they were for dragons, the wings of wyverns were connected to their front legs. Or they were the front legs, depending if you had a wing-first or leg-first perspective.

Regardless, they were just as cute and majestic as dragons were, all at once. It didn’t matter where the wings were when giving them fuss and attention. It only mattered when flying … and racing.

The heartbreak was back.

‘It doesn’t matter, does it, bud.’ Orai had flopped on to the floor so I could reach his belly. ‘Because I’m not racing anymore.’

A heavy boot knocked my arm. My funny bone sang as I toppled from my squat on to the floor next to Orai.

Cam leaned into my field of view, her cropped black hair sticking up like the scrubby bushes that were the height of vegetation on the cliffs. She’d managed to approach in near silence, yet had been heavy footed with the kick. Riders and wyverns – who learned from who?

‘Get up,’ she said, looking down on me.

‘No.’ This wasn’t about just standing up from the floor, it was about leaving the aviary and going back to the house.

‘Lynk made fried fish balls.’

She presented excellent motivation, but it still wasn’t enough for me to want to go back. Not that day. Not at that time.

‘And veggie skewers.’

I groaned. For all the joys of travelling the continent for racing, there was nothing like the home-cooked food in Darbonne. If it had been Cam cooking my stomach wouldn’t have rumbled the way it did, but Lynk … fried fish and skewers …

I shoved myself up to a sitting position, hunching over and running my hands down my face. ‘I don’t want them to be weird about it.’

‘About what?’ she asked. She knew exactly what.