Chapter 12 #3
“Should we ask him for a fingerprint?” I whisper.
I don’t care how strange he is. If I had extra food in the district, I’d stuff it in my pocket too.
That said, I can’t imagine him scaling the side of any mountain or hunting anything.
He definitely doesn’t seem physically strong enough to pass the trials if they are as difficult as Caelus implied.
“Stick Boy?” Mae asks. “Dunno his name. But I overheard that he entered as a dare. He looks like he sleeps in the woods and rolled out of bed and showed up here.”
I can’t believe I have to pretend to fall in love with one of these people.
My head hurts.
An image of Stick Boy, the Stonebound, trying to kiss me comes to mind, and the muffin in my stomach tries to come up. “We won’t actually have to kiss someone, will we?” I ask.
“Gosh, I hope so!”
Mae points out a few others, a tremor shivering through her fingers, telling me what she knows about them from her district or what she overheard last night.
“You’re very observant,” I say when she’s finished.
She shrugs. “No one really pays attention to me because I talk so much. They think I’m in my own world and not really listening. They’re wrong.”
A milk-pale girl with freckles and white blond hair cascading over boney shoulders passes in front of us now, looking for a seat.
A nasty bruise blooms on her cheek. Her big gray eyes are so pale they look silver.
She settles at a table with a plate of food but leaves it untouched, staring across the room at nothing.
Mae leans over to me, crossing the sea of distance between us.
Her nearness startles me, and I stiffen.
“That’s Talia,” Mae says quietly. “I assumed she was Saltblood, but I heard her talking about Frostledge in the Stonebound district. See that bruise? Her mother told her she couldn’t come. They fought about it. But she came anyway.”
Talia’s shoulders are squared, and her eyes are a fire full of anger and something else. My stomach tightens. “She intends to win,” I say.
“Don’t we all?” Mae’s brows kiss, then she grins, craters forming in her cheeks. She’s right. Everyone here is my competition. All of them could be in the way of me saving Serafina. Including Mae. Unless…
“Maybe we can stick together,” I say. “You know, not compete against each other.”
“Maybe.” She winks, then laughs. “Just kidding! But you have to tell me who you want first.”
“Move,” someone shouts as a ruckus breaks out between Talia and another contestant, who looks familiar to me.
The rise of the girl’s cheeks, her thick hair twisted down her back, her rich brown skin worn like someone raised by the sea.
She tries to squeeze past Talia’s seat, which is protruding in the middle of the walkway, and accidentally grazes her shoulder.
Talia recoils like she’s been burned. Her whole body stiffens as she pushes back from the girl, eyes wide. Her hand goes straight to her shoulder, gripping it hard—rubbing the spot like she could scrub the touch away.
“You touched me,” she snaps, now on her feet.
“You’re in the way.”
“I think that girl that bumped Talia is from my district,” I tell Mae.
Talia’s hand slides down to her thigh, fingers drumming fast against the fabric of her dress. She rocks slightly, like she’s trying to ground herself. Like she needs a Heartfiller. “Don’t touch me,” she says.
“Get out of my way, then.”
Talia suddenly shoves her chair farther in the aisle, blocking the girl’s path completely. “Find another way around, Saltblood.”
I’m right. She is from my district. The Saltblood kicks Talia’s chair out of the way. “Stonebound think their elevation makes them better than everybody. Lira, don’t let her bother you,” someone mutters.
Lira, the Saltblood, tries to pass Talia again, and I can’t look away.
Talia grabs her breakfast knife in her fist.
The room quiets. Lira sneers. I wait for the Mercyenforcers to rush in, but they don’t move from their posts around the room. As if this is part of it. As if another kind of elimination starts now. I remember Caelus’s words about people dying in the tournament. Is this what he meant?
“Are you going to slit my throat or use that for butter?”
Quiet laughter comes from a contestant curled up in her chair like a wraith, with skin the color of earth after a rain.
A curtain of coiled long dark hair shields her face, but her dark eyes shine eerily.
She has the salt-worn hands of a Saltblood, but there’s a bold frailness about her that reminds me of Serafina.
We meet eyes. She stares a moment, then looks away, hiding behind her hair, still snickering.
“Who is that?” I ask Mae about Wraith Girl.
“Some Saltblood. Don’t know. She talks less than you.”
Talia still holds the knife, their audience growing.
“A coward. You won’t make it past the first trial.
” Lira kicks Talia’s chair over and finds a spot to sit beside cynical veteran Kade.
He doesn’t look up from his plate. The hall erupts in chatter, moving back to their conversations, and I realize my heart is racing.
I thought she was going to kill her. And I’m not sure anyone was going to do anything about it…
The walls feel like they’re closer or the room is smaller or something.
“Have you heard that some people don’t make it home?” I ask Mae.
“What do you mean?”
“Some people die in this tournament.”
Mae doesn’t respond for a moment, scratching at her forearms as if she could peel something invisible off her skin. “Why would you say that?”
“I can’t tell you, but it’s true.”
She blinks in disbelief. “Well, it is a contest to earn citizenship in Skyhaven and all the pressures that come with love. I’m sure it has some risks, but the Benevolent is good, Axira.
He gave us Heartfillers. What are you suggesting?
” She smiles that same infectious grin, and I have to remind myself that her chest is not glowing.
This tournament is everything she’s hoped for.
I’m not sure if I should pity or envy her. There is a kind of bliss in ignorance.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” I say.” “Never mind.”
Away from all the commotion, across the room, the Saltblood with the jeweled earring, the same contestant I saw staring at me in the hallway yesterday, is being roughed up by a Mercyenforcer near the exit.
His gaze cuts across the room at me, sharper than obsidian.
The Mercyenforcer pats him down, digging into his pockets, checking the inside of his mouth before shoving him away, back toward the tables of contestants.
All the while, he doesn’t stop watching me. I shiver.
“Who’s that?” Mae asks.
“He has been staring at me since yesterday.”
“Maybe he likes you.”
I am about to respond when the doors to the hall open. Heads turn in that direction, expecting another announcement that time is nearly up.
But Dorian enters, grabbing a plate.