Chapter 3
Idon’t remember my mother’s face.
But I do remember my father’s, covered in tears, kissing her goodbye before her body was rolled off the cliff into the sea. Mercyenforcers hanged him for that.
Any act interpreted as love is punishable by death for the lowborn. I watched, clinging to his leg, small and malnourished, no taller than his waist, as they arrested him.
I haven’t cried since.
But watching Serafina writhe in our blankets, moaning in pain and burning with fever, makes me come close. She’s only gotten worse since the census, vomiting twice and sweating through her bed linens. Food rations came last evening, after the census, but there was no medicine.
I pad around the half dozen others curled up on their mattresses on the floor as silently as I can, pulling open cupboards, checking the sill beneath our tiny window still open from the night before.
When a violent gust of wind rips inside, shaking the walls of the orphanage, I ease the window closed, catching the latch before it bangs the siding and disturbs everyone.
Sleep is the one thing we can have plenty of.
I keep looking, but every tincture jar I find is empty. There’s never enough of anything. Food is sparse, and Skyborns blame the Grainfolk. Medicine is hard to come by, and they accuse the Saltblood of robbing the trade ships. But Skyborns don’t ever seem hungry or sick.
I find the note requesting my entire supply of contraband, turning it in my hands. Still struggling to believe it’s real. I glare at the seal again. Then the address.
11 Citadel Hill
The Citadel in Skyhaven is where the Benevolent and the rest of the ruling family live.
I’d never have to risk my neck again. We’d never need to steal anything.
Serafina coughs a raspy, hacking one that sounds like her lungs ripping in two.
Medicine. I squeeze the note, reading it again, expecting the words to change.
With this much money we could definitely get a ship.
It all sounds too good to be true. But it’s doubtful the royal seal could be forged. Who else would have that much gold? They could arrest me. Or worse.
I tuck the note away and grab the pamphlet from the table.
A picture printed with the mention of the Benevolent’s Tournament of Hearts catches my eye.
Two bare hands are outstretched but not quite meeting, separated by light.
Love is dangerous. But noble, rare, and sacred when earned, it reads. Beneath that:
One flame will rise.
One pairing will burn bright.
The winning couple will receive:
Lifetime Skyborn citizenship,
accommodations in the Citadel,
and a place at Court.
I blink once, twice. But the words don’t change.
“What’s it say?” Serafina says, bringing herself up onto her elbows on the bed that we share. Her eyes are cloudy and her chest glows with a faint light I only just noticed.
I rush over to her. “What did Miss Omon give you?”
“Something to help me sleep, she said.”
The hair on my skin bristles. So we are out of medicine. The Heartfiller sedative is too strong for her little body. I feel her temperature again. Her skin burns hotter through my gloves.
“The pamphlet.” She tries to sit up taller, but collapses woozily. “What does it say about the tournament? I heard if you win, your heart glows forever and you can kiss without pain.”
I blink at her. “Who—”
“And Billy who lives in Brine End says your whole district gets extra bread for a year if you win.”
“That’s—”
“And you never age again after you win. Makoa in Netters Hollow told me that. She said that your heart keeps you full on true love forever.” She coughs, convulsing with each one.
The Tournament of Hearts is a chance for lowborn to earn Skyborn citizenship by proving they can handle true love. They must pass a series of trials and find their truest-love match among the contestants. Many enter, but only a select number are chosen. That’s all anyone knows.
Skyborn are allowed to watch the trials, and we might get updates in the districts through the daily pamphlets, but no one will really know anything until people start coming home, whispering about what it was like.
The last time the tournament was held, I was eight.
Miss Omon’s helper back then entered. She lost pretty early into the competition, and people say that when she returned home she was a shell of who she’d been.
She never returned to the orphanage. Eventually she overdosed by using a dozen Heartfillers at once.
Serafina stares at me, blinking with a spark of something unfair in her eyes. Hope.
“Fina, that’s ridiculous,” I say. “You can’t believe everything you hear.”
“Does it say it in the pamphlet? That means it’s true.”
I crumple up the pamphlet and drop it in the wastebasket. “None of that is true. It can’t be. It’s…It doesn’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter? Bread for a year.”
I stuff my hands in my pockets, fingers curling the edge of the smuggling request. I sit on the bed beside her, careful not to touch her more than I need to.
When she coughs again, she curls over the edge of the mattress, retching phlegm.
A weight heavier than a Heartfiller feels like it’s wedged itself into my chest. She’s getting worse.
I have to try to get this money, and I have to do it now. I’ll need to be smart in case this smuggling request is a trap. But I have to try.
“Axira?” Serafina blinks slowly. Too slowly. “Why doesn’t bread for a year matter?”
“Because—” If this works, she will dance on the deck of a ship in the sun. “It’s probably Skyborn bread. Yuck! Everyone knows our Miss Briss makes the best bread in Ethyria.”
She grins, a real curl of the lips, drawing creases around her eyes, and it rattles my pulse. I stand abruptly and cross the room to wet a towel before laying it across her forehead. “Calm down, and”—I fluff her pillow, helping her lie down—“get some more sleep.”
I can’t put this off. Requests are filled within a day or they’re assumed to be denied.
But the minute I grab my clothes from the line outside, I spot a vase my mother made me from clay.
She molded it carefully, starting over several times, for weeks, to get it just right.
Then she painted it with rippling blue strokes that remind me of the ocean.
Swim with the current or drown, she’d said when she gave it to me.
I can guess how she’d feel about my secret profession if she were alive.
But treading water forever is no better than drowning.
I have to risk it, one more time. For Serafina, Miss Omon, Nichol, and the others.
I hook the thin silver chain on either side of my mouth. Today will be different. Today I make my own fate. With a few gold coins stuffed into each of my shoes, the usual thin blade in my bun, and a backup one in my boot, I sling the rest of my savings across me.
When I turn to head to the door, a small hand grabs my boot.
“Wait, where”—Fina tries to clear her raspy throat—“are you going so early?”
“Couriering. Very important delivery today. Now, sleep.” I smile to soften the stress that’s crept into my tone. It’s not her fault she has to be drugged instead of healed.
“I can come this time. I really do feel alright. We can stop by the stream on the way home. You said you would teach me to fish, remember?” Her brows furrow somewhere between mistrust and hope. “I won’t get in the way. I’m not a little kid. I’m eight years old.”
I imagine I looked at my mother the way she looks at me now.
Each night my mother would tell me the same bedtime story about the power of hope.
That nothing was impossible. Her optimism didn’t save her from an early grave, and I’m not naive—the only power I have is the power I make.
There were many things my mother used to say that I don’t agree with, but the body heals best with lots of rest isn’t one of them.
“Not today.” I pull the blanket to Serafina’s chin and leave her there. She will be okay. I will make sure of it.
When I slip out of the door, eyes watch me descend the stairs.
But I avoid looking at Miss Omon. When I reach the last step, her stare still burns my skin.
I turn back. She’s already dressed for the day, her gray hair tied back, muck boots peeking out from her skirt tied between her legs.
Her chest glows faintly with dregs of a sedative wearing off.
She’s never been a good sleeper. The shame over giving Serafina a Heartfiller is written all over her face.
But her thin mouth stays shut. As if saying a word might break her.
As if despite all this time that we’ve been fighting to survive here, some things seem to never change.
My mother would think of something encouraging to say, but I turn and leave.
If today’s smuggling goes as planned, Miss Omon won’t be forced to make impossible choices again.
My hands are slick. I tear the paper beneath the address and smudge the charcoal numbers on the back before shoving the rest in my pocket and rehearsing my plan to settle my nerves.
Clear the morning’s checkpoint. Get tagged to enter Skyhaven.
Gather my goods and contraband. Meet the customer.
Buy some medicine from someone, whatever it costs, on the way home.
Get to the docks by sunset. We could be on a ship by nightfall.
Mandatory checkpoint lines already wind through Dockers Row.
I find a line with Mercyenforcers who look different from the ones I saw yesterday.
When it’s my turn, I’m waved forward. They don’t question my crossed arms. When a Mercyenforcer returns the Heartfiller she was about to shove into my chest back in the barrel, I say, “I need to be tagged. I’m making deliveries to the Citadel today. ”
She opens her hand for my courier schedule. My throat goes dry.
“I don’t have it. But look at the address on Citadel Hill. It’s a big order for the tournament.” I hand her the rip of paper with the address. She turns it on both sides, scrunching her brow at where I smudged off everything except the address.
“What happened here?” she asks.
I smooth my hands on my lowborn dress. “Sweaty hands. It had a name. It must have gotten rubbed off by mistake.”
She turns it once more. Every delivery loaded up for Skyhaven the last several days has been double stocked. The tournament brings all the Skyborns from across the island to the Citadel arenas to watch.
“Tournament or not, you should have a schedule signed by your docker with the delivery locations and inventory list of goods.”
My heart knocks into my ribs. This royal seal and address…I hoped it would be enough. If I don’t show up to meet the customer, and it’s legitimate, the opportunity could be gone. “You have to tag me. I have to—”
One of them grabs me by the jaw firmly, and my chain pinches the corners of my mouth. “We don’t have to do anything.” I force down the lump in my throat and fish out a gold coin from my purse. They hold their hands open. When my purse is half empty, they let me go.
“Good, saltrat.” They tie a pale-blue rag on my arm, tagging me as a lowborn. I resist the urge to spit in their faces. That would get me tossed into the sea, for sure.
Once I’m free of the morning’s checkpoint, I hurry back to the orphanage without going inside.
Beneath our building, under a stone on the bank of the stream, is a hole.
I collect my sack of stowed Heartfillers before hustling to the Dredge to grab my crates for the day’s deliveries: fish and clamshells.
And now, hidden among them, my entire stash of Heartfillers—enough to buy my way off this island.