Chapter 13
Dorian’s gaze finds me immediately as he approaches the food table.
“No,” I say, revolted all over again by how he tried to convince me to marry him.
“What?” Mae asks.
“I know him.”
“That guy?” She points at Dorian, who is fixing his gloves at the food table. His hair is tied back, as it was yesterday when he conveniently didn’t mention that he’d entered the tournament.
“Yes,” I say. “He’s Saltblood. An oddly sentimental variant.”
“Really?” She slides to the edge of her seat.
“He asked me to marry him.”
She deflates.
“I said no,” I clarify. “He’s yours if you want him.” I hope he is not here to try to change my mind.
I leave her there and corner Dorian as he is piling another slice of meat onto his plate. “You lying snake,” I whisper.
The dopey smile he came in with is gone. He leaves the line.
I follow him. “You wanted to marry me yesterday and you knew your name was in the tournament?” I say. “You knew you’d been picked by the time I saw you!”
His jaw works. “If you said yes, I was going to drop out.”
“So you’re here now to do what, force my hand?”
Him being here screws everything up. I’m supposed to be pretending to fall in love with someone. What if he can tell I’m faking it? We’re not exactly strangers. He could ruin everything.
“Actually, no,” he says. “You made yourself clear. I’ve moved on.”
I don’t believe my ears. He wanted to make children with me yesterday. “You’ve just changed your mind, suddenly, and your heart is wide open?” I say. “Ready to find the love of your life here?”
“Is that so wrong, Axira? For me to hedge my bets to try to find something that makes me happy? I wanted it to be you, yes. But I don’t anymore. This gets me out of the forced choice when I make nineteen years in a few days. This gives me more time, a different group to choose from.”
“You’re still being forced to pick,” I say.
“It’s not the same. Here everyone wants to find love. They want the same things I want. Don’t I deserve to be with someone who wants to be with me?”
“That’s what you think you’re going to find here? In some forced-proximity mating competition?”
He didn’t grow up skipping through flower fields like Mae with a father who preached hope and love.
He grew up doors down from me, cleaning out storm drains, flood-trench digging, scraping barnacles off the sea wall.
I thought he’d know like I know: Nothing the Skyborn offer is ever as good as it seems.
He stiffens. “Do you hear yourself?”
I sigh. “I just meant, you know the Benevolent is not—” I look around.
Dorian’s jaw hardens, his gaze darting too.
I don’t have to finish; he knows what I’m going to say.
There are two types of lowborn: those who snatch up Heartfillers at every chance they get, singing the Benevolent’s praises, grateful for whatever he gives us because they’re hooked on the feel-good.
And then there are the others, who are sick of aching tummies and burying our sick.
Most are the former, but I thought at least Dorian was like me. I hug myself and whisper, “Dorian, people die in this tournament.” Mae doesn’t believe me. But he should be wiser.
His lashes flutter. The shock brightens his eyes for a heartbeat before they narrow to slits. “Why do you care what happens to me?”
“I don’t care. It’s—”
“You sound like you care.”
I clench my fists. Why does this matter so much to me?
My heart twists, and I almost wish I was on a Heartfiller.
It would be easier to pretend his words meant nothing to me.
But in truth—he said all those nice things about me, and even though I refused, a part of me believed, I guess, that I could be somebody’s, not Dorian’s, but someone’s… “Ugh. Never mind!”
“You know, you could have just said I’m not what you’re looking for, Axira. I thought you’d give me at least that much respect. I was wrong about you.”
Eyes around the room are on us, and I feel awful.
Talia’s anger from her altercation with the butter knife has simmered.
She sits soothing herself, rocking back and forth slightly as she watches me and Dorian.
Mae hasn’t moved from the spot where we were sitting.
And Wraith Girl lurks like a shadow, curled in her seat, hiding behind her coiled veil of hair, soaking in everything. I sigh.
“You’re right,” I say. If he believes this tournament can give him a life that he wants, I won’t judge him for it. “You do deserve to find whatever you’re looking for. I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t say anything for several moments, and then he drops his gaze and says, “Thank you.”
“I mean it, Dorian. I really hope the experience is everything it promises to be. And you find someone.”
When he meets my eyes, the brown in his has softened. His mouth tugs sideways, and I can tell he believes me. I’m glad. I do mean it.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for too,” he says. He rips a piece of bread with his teeth as he wanders off to a seat and I stand frozen. He doesn’t know anything. He meant a love match.
I watch him go until the Saltblood with the half-shaved head crosses my line of sight.
He hasn’t moved from the corner where he lingers in solitude since being searched by the Mercyenforcers.
We lock eyes across the room. He doesn’t smile.
Doesn’t blink. There is something kindred in his gaze, like he too would prefer to be somewhere else.
An unsteady feeling rattles through me, but my head tilts in curiosity.
He acts as if he knows me. But I’d remember his face, or at least his smell.
He lifts his hand, slow and deliberate, fingers curling toward himself like a man calling a mutt, telling me to come over.
It’s not coy. It’s a command that pins my heels to the ground. I turn my back on him and rejoin Mae.
“That didn’t look like it went well,” she says, but she’s perked up. “Have you ever tried…” she whispers, touching the chain at her mouth.
Kissing. I whisper, “No.”
“Me either. I tried with my hand once. It was weird.” She bites a smile away, and rubs the same spot on her chest, the lack of a Heartfiller getting to her.
“But he has really nice sized lips.” She’s staring at Dorian again.
“His mouth is pretty, don’t you think? Ronan has a pretty mouth too, but he’s so serious.
I don’t think I’d find that very fun after the initial thrill wears off, you know?
The thrill will wear off I think. I mean, that only makes sense.
That’s part of the reason I skipped the Heartfillers last night.
I want to feel all the things, you know? Are you listening?”
“Huh? Yeah, sure,” I say.
“What’s his name?”
“Dorian.”
She repeats it a few times under her breath.
Them together isn’t a bad idea. With the meal about finished, contestants are getting restless.
People are mixing now, swapping journals, sharing fingerprints, Stonebounds with Grainfolk, Saltbloods more warily.
People switch seats, groups huddling together, talking, giggling, getting to know one another.
Except Wraith Girl. She is still wrapped up in her chair like an eel. Talia is no longer rocking back and forth, and she and Lira, the girl she almost got into a fight with, are laughing as if nothing happened between them at all.
“We should get over there, size up the competition.” Mae gets up.
“Go ahead, I’m coming,” I lie, my stomach in a knot at the idea of pretending to gush about what kind of lips I’d like to kiss. I feel feverish. Caelus was right. I have my work cut out for me here.
Mae bounces over to the group of girls. They pull up a chair, and she’s immediately pointing at Dorian and smiling behind her gloved hands.
The guys have gathered as well, but the mysterious, dark-haired contestant from my district still broods alone as if he’s above getting fingerprints.
I guess he will be gone by the first trial and I won’t have to wonder why he can’t stop staring at me.
Maybe he knows I smuggle. Maybe he’s jealous.
Or worse, angry. Maybe I stole from him at some point.
The Mercyenforcer veteran—Kade is his name, I think—has joined a conversation with the two Grainfolk who argue like brothers: Ronan and Finn.
I don’t think any of those three are for me. Especially Kade. He looks like he might try to kill me if he found out I was planning to betray him. There are dozens of others attaching themselves to group conversations, sinking into the excitement of the moment.
I urge myself to move and emulate Mae’s enthusiasm, but I am lead in my seat.
By the time I drag myself over, a bell rings, signaling the end of breakfast and a reminder that we’re one hour closer to elimination.
Mercyenforcers escort us out of the hall for the opening address by the Benevolent.
We’re silent again, heads down, snaking through the long halls of the Citadel.
Wraith Girl is behind me, dragging her feet.
Behind her veil of hair, her dark, jewel-like eyes dart from the floor to me and back to the floor.
She isn’t Grainfolk and she’s too small to be Stonebound.
She also seems too timid to be Saltblood.
But those quick, measuring eyes, always scanning for danger, give her away.
And those windburned cheeks, salt-chapped lips, and thin scars laddering her arms—the kind you only earn from barbed hook traps and shucking razor-edged clamshells.
Mae was such a help identifying possible people.
With the way this girl watches everyone and everything, maybe she could be too.
“Ready to make a match?” I say under my breath.
She narrows her eyes at me.
“Do you have your eye on anyone yet?” I ask. “I don’t.”