Phoebe

Phoebe slouched, resisting the urge to claw at her face. The photographer was finished, packing up his cameras and lights over on the next sofa in the coffee shop. She should be able to take the makeup off, but with Cy hovering that would probably get her scolded. She hadn't wanted makeup in the first place but he'd insisted. It made her head ache.

The interviewer, whose name was Renee, didn't seem to be suffering at all under her shimmery product. Her hair was a single immaculate sweep of blonde, unmoving as if carved in place despite the merciful draught that ran through the café. Her tape recorder sat on the table, recording counter ticking slowly up.

Renee smiled, which she did a lot. Phoebe thought it was probably genuine, at least insofar as she genuinely wanted to put Phoebe at ease. Phoebe was trying to cooperate, but it was obvious Renee was going to ask about Thessaly or Mynah at some point. Right now, though, her question was, "You've loved dragon racing since you were a kid, right?"

"Yeah, I have, I started watching when I was, like, seven I think?" Maybe she could take the interview in a different direction with this. "That was when Tony Ellman won his first championship, fighting it out with Ivrada Sonpi at the Winter Palace, I think we all watched it, it was a huge day."

"With your family, you mean?"

Dammit. Fingers of cold walked down the nape of Phoebe's neck and the tops of her shoulder blades. She'd turned away from one danger and walked straight into another. "Yeah, I guess. There were a lot of people around the house."

"Your family supported you through your racing career, but we haven't seen them around your races yet this season." The sweetness in Renee's voice never wavered. "Do you feel like they're out there with you, when you're winning?"

Phoebe looked toward Cy, but he was distracted, answering a question from the photographer's assistant. Hopefully they didn't want more photos. What would the manager want Phoebe to say? For that matter, what would Father? "Tenebrae is my project, I'm doing this for myself." Was that forceful enough? "I don't want anyone to be able to say that I only got here because my family's rich."

"What about emotional support, though? Are your family behind you?"

"I've been too busy to think about that," Phoebe said, trying to laugh and sounding forced in her own ears. "Provided I can keep flying, I'm good."

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"So is it other riders you turn to for friendship? You're good friends with some of the other rookies."

"Niki and Lyonne, yeah, we go back a long way, I'm really glad that we were all able to join the Imperial League together."

"Is it difficult to be competing against them? Does it affect your friendship?"

"Well, they're in a different team, so obviously we can't talk too much about the races, strategy, that sort of thing, but we hang out when we can, tease each other, commiserate and so on."

Renee hadn't stopped smiling, but the smile she smiled now was somehow different from the one that had preceded it. "What sort of things do they tease you about? Girls?"

Phoebe laughed, feeling her cheeks get hot. "Sometimes, sometimes. It's usually the races, Niki's always joking that we should throw races for zir, we always try to get Lyonne to start yelling at us, that sort of thing."

"But they do tease you about girls? Thessaly Pantelleria and Mynah?"

It was hard not to look over at Cy again. He'd started scolding her after interviews for looking at him when the two idols inevitably came up, and refused to offer any advice on what to say. It wasn't like Phoebe knew what she wanted to say, either. She started to lift a hand to rub her face and caught herself. No smearing the makeup. "They tease me about the headlines, yeah."

"And what about those headlines? How do you feel about Thessaly?"

"You know there's nothing I can say about that that won't get me in some sort of trouble, Renee, I wish people would stop asking." Phoebe shrugged, trying to work some of the tension out of her shoulders. "She's my friend, I'm really glad I met her."

"Just friends? What about Mynah?"

Forcing herself to take a breath, conscious of aggression welling up under her diaphragm, she said, "I've met Mynah Darling like twice, I don't even have her phone number. We're managed by the same company, that's all."

"Sounds like you've had a bit of a falling-out," Renee said, voice gentle with amusement.

"It's not like that, I really respect her and everything." Phoebe could feel things getting out of her control. "I just don't feel like I know her that well, and I wish people would stop projecting so much onto a couple of photos from one party two months ago. All we did was talk a bit!"

Cy walked up at that moment, towering over the table. "Let's move it along, please, start wrapping it up now." Phoebe couldn't read his face, and his voice was a carefully-expressionless corporate drone, but there was no mistaking the authority he was deploying. Somehow Phoebe didn't feel protected.

Renee's smile turned brittle, her voice just a touch too bright. "One more question, then, Phoebe. Your friend Niki injured zir dragon at the last race, and ze's going to be unable to compete for a couple of months. Does that kind of injury scare you? You're known for some risky flying."

"An injury to Soot would probably be the worst thing that could happen to me, yeah. I don't take risks he can't handle, though, he's usually the one pushing me to be riskier, I don't think we've found the limit of his strength yet." She paused, started to worry if she was saying the right thing, and pushed on. "He's so much stronger than anyone believes yet."