23. Flos

flōs ~ōris, m.

1. a flower, blossom

2. (figuratively) the best of something

Rax Istra-Velrayd’s dressing room chokes on its own flowers.

Vases from his admirers crowd every table, every nook and cranny bursting with blossoms. The makeup artist has to squeeze in beside his chair, angling the brush awkwardly at his face. He allows flower deliveries but makes it a policy to never read the cards that come with them—knowing keenly these affections last only as long as he wins and knowing keener he’s alone on the field. When he steps into Sunscreamer, the rest of the universe falls away; the cockpit is his sanctuary, steel walls of fame and skill. The makeup artist touches his jaw, and he fights a flinch—even after the surgery, the places where Mother broke it with a crystal statuette still ache sometimes.

“You should consider getting more rest, sir,” the makeup artist says. “Your dark circles are difficult to cover.”

Rax smiles. “I trust your skills.”

“You’ll probably sleep better now, knowing your pet made it past her first round,” a voice says. Rax rolls his eyes at Yavn von Velrayd, his cousin lounging in an armchair half swallowed by hydrangeas.

“She’s not my pet.”

“Then what is she? Because the rumors say a bastard. You don’t go flying around the Hauteclare name unless you’ve A—got a death wish, or B—really are one of them.” Yavn laughs and peers over the vis at him. “Why the long face—did she turn you down?”

Rax frowns into the mirror, and the makeup artist tries to smooth it away with cream.

“Ha! She did! My poor playboy cousin surrounded by frothing fans, getting turned down by a girl…never thought I’d see the day.” Yavn smirks in that annoying knowing way of his and shoos the makeup artist before leaning in. “Forget about her. Come to my party this Friday.”

Yavn’s parties are secret things held in the Velrayd summer home by the artificial sea at the bottom of the noble spire—parties with rogue academics and poets and heretics excommunicated from the church—parties no one talks about afterward. Parties Rax is convinced Yavn throws just to piss off the House elders. He’s sure Yavn gets away with it solely because he’s a rare genius at managing the House businesses.

“I don’t wanna go to your old-geezer parties, Yavn.” Rax sighs. “All you do is talk about dead Earth guys.”

“Philosophers,” Yavn corrects. “I bet she would—Synali. I might invite her. She seems way smarter than you. More sensitive to the plight of the common people.”

Rax jerks his thumb to his jaw—the scar is now invisible, but the memory of the wound is still fresh in both their memories. “Kinda have my own plights to worry about.”

Yavn stares, years of knowing ringing hard and true. “You should come live with me.”

“And have Mother come over every Friday and ruin your carpet with my insides? I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter where I go, Yavn. It’s a small Station. The family always finds me.”

Slowly, Yavn nods and lowers his eyes back to his paper.

Synali’s name said out loud is a razor to Rax’s skin. He can’t forget the way her eyes burned with hatred when she stood on the banquet podium and denounced House Hauteclare, and watching her first match was surreal. A person with academy training doesn’t ride like that—like a fire is eating them from the inside out. Without a handkerchief, without defensive maneuvers—any protection at all.

The door to Rax’s dressing room clicks open abruptly, but he’s always ready. He cranes his head to the doorway with a smile. “Sorry, I don’t sign autographs before a match. It’s bad luck, and I’m the”—his eyes widen at the young boy in the hoverchair—“superstitious sort.”

Four guards take up places in a dressing room already crowded, cold projection swords on hips roughly pushing aside petals. Armor—gold and purple and dead serious; king colors—and Rax has never seen his cousin move faster than now, closing his vis and slinking out the door. Rax flounders for a second but only a second; he isn’t Mirelle, hunting through the archive every time it updates with the tiniest bit of new info on rival riders—but he’s looked at it enough. The angelic face, the green eyes, the certain ironclad composure all riders have that comes from living through impact after impact…

He quickly gets to his feet, bowing.

“You must be the king’s rider. Nice to meet you, sir.”

“Is it you?” the boy demands softly, ignoring decorum entirely. Rax swallows enough grace to smile.

“I’m sorry, sir—have I done something wrong?”

He can’t think of anything. He doesn’t want to think of the thing that clings guiltiest to him: the dream, that fragmented thing that wakes him in the night, furious and full to the brim with crystal-clear moments he’s never lived—selling bread to strangers on stranger Low Ward streets, making love to people he’s never met. It’s a dream too real to be a dream. The older riders whisper about it as the harbinger of the end for a rider. He can’t face it. He won’t face it, not even for the king’s rider.

The jets of the hoverchair sizzle over the tile of the dressing room, leaving red-hot marks in their wake, ceramic going cool and the young boy’s voice going cooler. “Are you the one doing it?”

It scares him, how the king’s rider doesn’t seem to need to blink. Rax laughs nervously. “I’ll need a bit more than that to go on, sir.”

“Do you know what it means to ride?” he asks.

The question is not a question. The question is a projection sword, and Rax is paper being torn. Riding means his existence changed forever. Riding means his childhood, his terror, his only means of escape, his only protection against a world that wants to hurt him and control him down to the last hair, and finally, he manages through half-gritted teeth: “Riding is my life, sir.”

The voracious curiosity in the young boy’s eyes suddenly dims, wrong answer, and he looks up at Rax like he knows, like he knows knows, knows the locked-cockpit darkness Rax grew up in, the screaming until blood in his throat and the hunger and how his parents gave him scars and took them away again but this boy wasn’t born yet and yet this boy knows as he smiles mildly—like a god who pities—and says:

“Of that, Sir Istra-Velrayd, I have no doubt.”