The flight to Budapest took nearly ten hours, a long, cramped stretch of transatlantic travel that Ivy spent split between fitful sleep and nervous energy she couldn't quite talk herself out of, her father's saber packed carefully in checked luggage alongside her newer competition blade, both cushioned against the journey with the same care she'd have given something fragile and irreplaceable.
Katya sat beside her for most of the flight, having coordinated seating with the team's travel coordinator specifically to room and travel together, her usual competitive bluntness giving way, somewhere over the Atlantic, to something more genuinely vulnerable.
"I've never been this far from home," Katya admitted, around hour six, staring out at the dark ocean below. "My parents mortgaged part of o
