No answer again. Skandar dressed in the half-light of the morning, disappointment and guilt tightening his throat. He shouldn’t have said it: If I was riding. They’d been talking like they used to, before Kenna took the Hatchery exam, before all her dreams came crashing down. Skandar entered the kitchen to the sound of sizzling eggs and blaring early Cup coverage. Dad was humming, leaning over the pan. When he saw Skandar, he gave him an enormous grin. Skandar couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him smile. Dad’s face fell a little. “No Kenna yet?” “Still sleeping,” Skandar lied, not wanting to spoil his good mood. “She’ll find this year hard, I expect. The first race since…” Skandar didn’t need him to finish the sentence. This was the first Chaos Cup since Kenna had failed the Hatchery exam last year and lost all chance of becoming a unicorn rider. The trouble was, Dad had never acted like it was rare to pass the Hatchery exam. He loved unicorns so much, he was desperate for one of his children to become a rider. He said it would fix everything—their money problems, their future, their happiness, even the days he couldn’t get out of bed. Unicorns were magic, after all.
