Page 55 of Fly to Fury
No, she’d get started on inspecting the aeroplanes. Fieran would find her. He always did.
The ground crew wheeled the first of the returning aeroplanes into the hangar, and Pip strode to the nearest to begin her inspection of the propeller, engine, wiring from the magical power cell to the engine, and the wiring running on the outside of the aeroplane.
She’d inspected five aeroplanes, set her mechanics to repair two engines and Mak to magically refurbish fractures in one propeller, and was starting on the sixth when the familiar light scuffs sounded on the concrete behind her.
“How are the aeroplanes holding up?” Fieran’s voice rang behind her.
She resisted the urge to immediately scramble down the ladder. Instead, she forced herself to continue her inspection of the engine wiring, her head and shoulders deep inside the engine compartment. “Just fine. We had to fix a few wires and propellers, but we’ll have them skyworthy within a few hours.”
“Anything I can fetch for you?” Fieran’s voice grew closer, as if he was now standing right beside her ladder.
The panicked part of her—which didn’t want to break the lightness of the moment with the discussion she needed to have—searched the engine compartment as she wrackedher brain for some errand to send him on. But she’d been woefully prepared and had everything she needed from new wire to wire cutters, spare nuts to torque wrench.
“Nope.” Her voice was too high-pitched, too filled with her tension to echo normally inside the engine compartment. “I’m good…I mean, I have everything I need.”
“Is everything all right?” Fieran’s voice lowered, gentled.
Bother. He knew her well enough to hear the change in her voice. Bother her meddling brother for putting all of this in her head.
“No. Nope. Everything’s fine. Just fine.” Pip stared at the wrench and the wires in her hand. What was she doing again? Which wire was she supposed to be replacing?
“Pip…” His tone was even softer now.
She sighed and set down her tools. There was no point in trying to work or putting this off. It was time to put on her grown-up overalls and face this with all the courage she was supposed to have as a daughter of the mountains.
She climbed down the ladder, staring at her feet rather than glancing at Fieran. Only once she had her feet planted on the steadiness of the concrete floor did she risk looking up.
He stood next to the aeroplane, tucked against the wing to fit beside her ladder. His bright blue eyes studied her, a furrow on his forehead beneath the strands of his red hair. His flight jacket, scarf, and hat lay over one arm while he held his goggles in one hand.
With the two of them sheltered behind the bulk of the fuselage and wings, she wouldn’t get a more private moment to talk with him, unless she could figure out some pretext for going on a walk with him in the direction of the hills where he practiced with his dacha in the mornings.
Her heart pounded in her throat, and her hands weretrembling. This was it. Hopefully she wasn’t about to ruin every potential thing she could have with Fieran. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk with you too.” Fieran’s posture stiffened, and he set his jacket, scarf, hat, and goggles on the wing, as if he felt he’d need both hands free for this serious conversation. “But you first.”
Rats. She should have waited a little longer and let him do the talking. Nothing for it now but to forge ahead.
“Us. Or the fact that there isn’t an us.” Ugh. Where did she even start? “I’m not sure I agree that we shouldn’t pursue anything until the war is over. At least, you never gave me the chance to agree or disagree. You just made the choice for both of us. And it should have been my choice too.”
She hardly dared to look at Fieran as her breath lodged somewhere in her chest, her heart roaring so loudly in her ears that she might not hear his response.
He had frozen where he stood, his smile set in place as a mask to hide his true feelings. Then his gaze dropped from hers, his shoulders rising and falling with a breath. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re not one of my flyboys who I can just command, and that’s not how a relationship works.” His gaze swung back to her, the blue deeper, his smile gone, as he asked almost tentatively, “What would your choice have been?”
“I don’t know.” She blinked, her teeth gritting against the emotion rising in her. She should know. She shouldn’t be this indecisive, especially when she was confronting him over not giving her a chance to voice her opinion. She needed an actual opinion to voice. “I don’t know if starting a relationship would be too much of a distraction for both of us. ButI’m not surenothaving a relationship has been any less distracting. At least, not for me.”
“Not for me either.” Fieran spoke the words so softly she nearly missed them over the hammering of her heart and the general hubbub of voices that filled the rest of the hangar.
“So what do we do now?” If only she didn’t sound so uncertain.
“Dating wouldn’t be against military regulations. You might be assigned to my squadron, but you technically aren’t under my chain of command.” Fieran stuck his hands in his pockets.
“True.” Pip hardly dared hope, her heart throbbing almost painfully in her chest. Did that mean what she thought it meant? Was he considering this? She had to pretend to be calm. “And I don’t think it would harm the squadron’s cohesion.”
“No. I think several of them already know something is up between us. Merrik certainly suspects.” Fieran shook his head, a trace of his smile returning.
“So does my brother,” Pip grumbled. More than suspected.
Fieran winced, the smile vanishing. “He’s not going to beat me up, is he?”
