Chapter Twenty-seven
It’s a peculiar intimacy, sitting with my bare back to Taron as he tends to my laceration. He dabs the wound with a rag soaked in grade-one healing tonic. It stings, and I draw in a startled breath.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Taron asks, lifting the cloth.
I shake my head no and he continues to work. I try to focus on his breathing, each slow inhale followed by an even slower exhale.
My own breath seems to be stuck in my throat. I’d like to think it’s a lingering effect of the poisoned dragon’s scale, but the grade-three healing tonic seems to have done the job. There’s no denying it’s due to something else entirely.
My mind is clear again, and any sense of delirium is gone. I smother the memory of two bodies pressed together in a shower. Taron and I are teammates. This tenuous bond we have is built on survival, not trust.
Up until now, our relationship has been brittle, fragile at best. Taron has only just started to let me in. I can’t afford to do anything that would make him shut down again.
Whatever that moment was – however breathless it left me, the feeling of his fingertips still lingering on my skin now – I can’t under any circumstances let it happen again.
I distract myself by focusing on the cabin around me. To call it a cramped space would be an understatement. The cabin has little room for more than a narrow double bed and a clothes railing pushed into the corner by the door.
Our newly assigned uniforms hang neatly on hangers, black this time, along with another scroll hanging by a red-and-gold ribbon. The next Competitors’ Brief, no doubt.
“All done,” Taron says as he pulls away. “It already looks much better.”
I get off the bed, clutching my damp vest against my chest. Even though I have my back to him, I can feel Taron’s eyes following me across the cabin. I throw the damp vest on the floor, take its replacement off the hanger and pull it over my head.
When I turn, Taron sits on the left side of the bed with his legs crossed. He’s shirtless, his violet hair still damp, hanging in twisted strands across his forehead. The room’s dim light catches on his pale skin, highlighting a deep-blue bruise swelling across his ribcage.
“I’m fine,” he insists before I can comment. “It happens when I overexert my talents.”
“I … don’t understand.”
“It’s a rebound effect. Triggered when a Luna is crushed under the force of their own manipulations.”
“Sounds painful.”
“I’ll survive.” He looks down at the swollen bruise, wincing as he shifts on the bed, clearly not fine at all.
The bruise swells, the skin taut and angry, pulsing with a deep, mottled purple that seeps out into yellowed edges. Tiny red streaks creep outward like veins, a clear sign of inflammation settling in.
“I’ll just drink this.” Taron uncorks the grade-one healing tonic he used on my wound and tips it back like a shot.
“I guess that works.” I shuffle around the bed to my side and sit down. It’s a creaky old thing with groaning springs.
My throat feels dry. The air in here is too thick, too close, like it’s pressing in on me from all sides. I shift around to face Taron.
“Thanks,” I say. “For taking care of me.”
“Can’t compete without a teammate, can I?” His tone is casual. “It’s a good thing you had those healing tonics. Really good stuff.”
“You think so? I made them myself. Alaric taught me. My, uh, old boss from the apothecary.”
“That’s cool. Do you enjoy it?”
“I do. I’m not a Flora, of course, so I’ll never be as good at it.”
“That doesn’t matter. At least you have something you’re passionate about.” I catch the way his voice hardens ever so slightly, a subtle crack in his usual stoic demeanour.
“Do you have anything you’re passionate about?”
Taron’s jaw twitches. “Not any more,” he says, and the wall between us slides back into place.
A sadness for him creeps up on me, unexpected and aching. I shift a little closer so our knees are almost touching. He doesn’t move away.
There’s so much I still don’t know about Taron. And yet, sitting here in the quiet, a hair’s breadth apart, I feel that pull between us again. The urge to put my hand on his knee and squeeze.
Instead, I say, “Do you … know why we’re doing all of this? I know Madame Vera wants the wish, but do you know why?”
Taron’s face hardens at the question.
“Please,” I press, quickly, before he shuts down. “I could’ve died today. And tomorrow … we don’t even know what the final trial entails. I need to know why I’m risking my life here.”
Taron sighs, his shoulders slumping.
I grab his arm. “Please.”
“She wants … to resurrect someone. An ancestor.” His eyes flick towards mine, holding them as he gauges my reaction. “She doesn’t know where they’re buried. So, she’s going to use the wish to find out.”
“All this,” I whisper, “for a burial location?”
Taron doesn’t answer. A muscle jumps in his jaw, like he’s clamping down on whatever else he might have wanted to say.
“This ancestor of hers,” I ask, remembering the Necroseals hidden under the floorboards. How Madame Vera referred to them as heirlooms. “Are they … someone important? For her to go to such lengths to resurrect them?”
His lips press into a hard line and he shakes his head. “We should get some sleep,” he says. “We’ll need our energy for tomorrow.”
Taron flicks off the lamp and slides under the blankets. I sit in the dark for a beat, my mind heavy with questions he clearly won’t answer.
Finally, I shift under the covers. The bed is narrow, barely wide enough for two, and I try to lie still, careful not to touch him. Inevitably, our limbs brush.
He stiffens. Then he breathes out slowly.
I would, too – if I were able to. I blink in the dark, waiting for my eyes to adjust. All I can see is the memory of him in the shower, water soaking his vest. The dangerous look in his eyes as his palm followed the curve of my ribs and he pushed me up against the tiles.
Taron shifts beside me. Slowly, until he’s facing me in the dark.
I do the same. I can barely make out the slope of his nose.
The flutter of his lashes. His breath ghosts my face, and I know he can feel mine, too.
I gasp when his hand moves beneath the blanket. It settles on my hip. The weight of it sends a rush of heat spiralling up my spine.
His thumb brushes a slow, almost absent stroke over the fabric of my clothes. My skin prickles.
I don’t know who moves first, but suddenly our noses are touching. My lips part. His do, too. I shift closer, into the confines of his larger frame. When my hand glides over his bare chest, he flinches. Sucks in a sharp, involuntary breath.
“Sorry,” I whisper, pulling away. I forgot about his bruise. “Did I hurt you?”
“It’s fine. Just tender.” Taron’s voice is gravelly. He looks at me again, swallowing thickly. Then he turns around.
He’s curled away from me now, shoulders rigid. I mimic him, rolling to the other side but not closing my eyes. The cabin is quiet, though my thoughts are anything but. I think of his hand, still an echo on my hip. The unbearable closeness of his lips.
Most of all, I think of what he told me before. Madame Vera’s plan.
And I wonder, What ancestor could be worth all this bloodshed and chaos?
My eyes flutter open at the sound of distant voices. There’s a crash. Someone groans in pain.
Taron and I both sit up. The cabin is dark and I realize we’re sitting close together, our feet entangled beneath the sheets.
“What’s going on?” I ask, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Can’t be good, whatever it is.” Taron leaps out of bed, pulling his vest over his head in one smooth movement.
I wrap the blanket around me and follow him outside. The campsite is swathed in a blanket of mist, and for a moment I’m disorientated, trying to work out where the cabins are.
Another crash, followed by a low moan, draws more bleary-eyed figures from the cabins around us. Competitors stagger into the open with tousled hair and hastily thrown-on garments, blinking against the chill.
There’s Kara and Savannah, Gigi and Gunther … and out of the mist comes Gideon, hurtling through the air before crashing on the ground in front of the fire pit.
Something is coiled around his body, long and black and feathery. A waft of bitterness stings my nostrils. The smell of grief.
“What’s happening?” Kara asks. “Where’s Cyrus?”
Gideon points a shaking finger at the trees beyond our cabins, where a sudden burst of light makes me wince.
I barrel after the group. We find Cyrus standing at the edge of the trees with his fists balled, knuckles fizzling with sparks of light. Around him, more sparks spiral through the air like fireflies. He throws his arms forward, and the sparks shoot through the mist at a figure on the ground.
The figure is immediately shrouded in a black haze, as though they’ve thrown a blanket over themselves. A blanket of energy that repels the onslaught of sparks from Cyrus.
“It’s Rhius!” I shout.
Cyrus recoils when he sees us. His vest clings to him, smeared with blood, and his skin is slick with sweat. “He tried to kill me in my sleep!”
“That’s against the rules,” Kara says.
Rhius staggers to his feet, but he can barely stand and falls back on to his knees. He has a swollen eye, and a gash runs from his temple into the side of his neck. “The rules only apply to competitors. Mei is gone, so I’m out of the tournament. I can do what I want.”
“But he’s still a prince,” I say, stepping towards Rhius. “And they’ll have your head on the mainland if you kill him.”
Cyrus laughs. “He can’t kill me! Look at him – he can barely stand. This is ridiculous. I didn’t kill Mia…”
“Mei,” Rhius spits, clutching at his ribs.
“Whatever her name was,” Cyrus began, but his voice hitches slightly, eyes flicking away for a second before meeting Rhius’s glare again with renewed coldness. “Her death was a freak accident. Even if I did kill her, it’s the nature of the game.”
“He’s right.”
My head swivels. It’s Taron speaking.
“Whether or not these two kill each other is none of our business.” He shrugs. “I say we leave them to sort it out.”
“Good enough for me,” Gigi quips before stretching into a yawn. “Just keep it down, will you? Some of us are trying to sleep.”
As the group turns, Cyrus keeps watching us with gritted teeth. His eyes flicker over to me for a second before returning to Taron. “You’re not better than me, server boy,” he finally says.
“I never said I was,” Taron replies.
Their emotions ripple around me, faint in appearance but potent. It’s a strange contrast, how Cyrus’s energy is bold, almost suffocating in its intensity, while Taron’s remains a tightly coiled thread of control, fraying ever so slightly around the edges.
The tension between them intensifies. And then – a loud, jarring sound shatters the quiet of the campsite. The harsh clang of a gong.
The third and final trial has begun.