Chapter 15
Caelus is in the tournament.
With me.
My thoughts are frantic as we’re led to the reception, music crooning in the distance.
“The prince,” Mae says, walking beside me, “can you believe it?”
“Uh, exciting, yes.”
Something’s very wrong. This destroys our plan. How is Caelus going to get me out of the tournament once I steal the magic from the Ascension Ceremony if he’s in it with me?
“Can you dance?” Mae asks as we enter a room elaborately filled with florals and silks decorating the sterile ceiling.
The room is unnervingly precise. Dozens of small tables are set for two, each pair of chairs close—much fewer than three feet apart.
Close enough to make this all feel very strange.
I tug up on my gloves and touch the hook of my mouth chain just to be sure it’s securely in place.
The lighting is dim and deliberate. Along the perimeter, curtains billow at the air vents’ exhale, releasing a scent that tangles in the air.
At the center of each table is a glass bottle with an Authorized Scent.
With my journal tucked under my arm, still in need of eleven fingerprints, I’m separated from Mae, herded with a pack of others to be seated.
Mae and several others are swept to a dance area, where they stand hesitant to look at each other.
I scan for Caelus. I have to talk to him.
I need to know how he is going to get me out of here now that he’s on the inside.
But I’m face-to-face with a Grainfolk contestant who drums his hands on the table, his chest glowing from a Heartfiller. The scent of him hits me first, acrid and metallic. It clings to the back of my tongue before I can say hello.
“I think we’re supposed to talk,” he says, eyes wide and unblinking, a too-perfect smile stretched across his face, as if the Heartfiller is holding it there for him.
I clear my throat, reminded I need more than fingerprints. I need to pick someone to betray. “Tell me about yourself,” I say.
“I wanted to bring my lizard, but they said no.”
We sit in silence.
“Do you feel anything for me yet? Some kind of bond. I think I might for you. Or maybe it’s indigestion. Did the breakfast upset you too?” He shrugs and slides me his journal. Surprisingly, lizard-guy has managed a single fingerprint.
I leave him there and find another table. I don’t know how binding these fingerprints are, but it’s safer to stay in the spirit of the elimination—picking people I might actually not mind having a longer conversation with.
When I pull back a chair to sit at a different table, a Stonebound smelling of mint and something wet and molded is already there. He smashes one of his hands firmly to the tabletop, straining.
“My hands won’t stop shaking,” he says. “Because of nerves! Not the fungus.” He flicks something off his hands.
I keep moving to find someone else.
“So, I’m technically married,” the third guy begins, and I don’t sit down all the way, moving to another.
I don’t think I expected so many of them to be so weird.
Still no sign of Caelus, but the room is large and overflowing with contestants.
I search for a face I know and spot Ronan—the Grainfolk boy who entered the tournament for his baby brother.
I rush to sit at the empty seat beside him before someone else does, if only to catch my breath with someone who isn’t going to fling fungus at me.
His soft, warm scent drifts toward me. Something like sun-touched wheat and smoke from a hearth.
“You’re that Saltblood the Benevolent pardoned, right?” He rakes his hands through his cropped dark hair.
“Guilty. I hear family brought you here.”
“My brother.” His gaze is somewhere else. “He smiled at me for the first time right before I left. You know they can’t smile when they’re really small? Their eyes have to get better first.”
I relax into my seat.
“But when they start recognizing people, it happens more. Teddy has only smiled for me. No one else.” He grins, and it makes me miss Serafina. “I tried to learn all I could from the mothers in my village. We were in an orphanage. Now Teddy is with someone else. A friend…”
I sit straighter. “An orphanage? Wow.” Me too. “Do you think you can win this?”
“I have to,” he says.
I break his suddenly intense gaze, clearing my throat. “I, uh, feel the same way.”
“You do? Why?”
I pick at a thread on my robes, unsure how honest to be. “I have people back home counting on me.”
A silence passes between us, and it doesn’t feel strange at all.
I open my journal, considering. But how could I really choose him to betray, to risk putting a target on his back, when he has his own Serafina?
Ronan watches my fingers flick the pages of my journal.
Then, he offers me his journal first. I pick up the Scent on the table instead: Mutual Regard.
“You want to try it?” he asks.
I set it down. “No.” I can’t betray him. It feels wrong. So the last thing I need is him and me getting along well, mutually regarding one another any more than we are now. “I’m not right for you.” Who knew this would be so hard? For all the wrong reasons.
“How do you know that in just a few minutes?” He grabs the bottle. “I think we should try it.”
“No. We shouldn’t. Do you have your eyes on anyone?”
“I mean, I do now, yes.” He turns the bottle in his hand, watching me. We are deeply the same—he doesn’t care who he matches with; this isn’t about finding a truest-love match. He just wants to win, whatever it takes. But I won’t betray him. I can’t.
“I mean, we could try—”
“I don’t like you.” My stomach knots. “So I’m glad we got that out of the way early.”
He sits back in his seat, jaw slack, stunned.
“Good luck.” I rise from the table.
“At least give me a thumbprint. You can’t see yourself talking to me again?”
I hand him my paper begrudgingly and press my thumb to his page as well.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Sure. Still don’t like you.”
“Got it.” He watches me curiously as I wander off.
Caelus cuts through the dance floor, and I exhale, marching toward him. When he’s close enough to hear me, I mutter, “We need to talk now.”
“Stairwell,” he says as we keep walking past each other.
I detour around the room, giving the festivities a wide berth.
Contestants are reaching across tables now, some getting bolder, gloved fingers brushing, while others linger awkwardly in the space between.
Those who were frozen on the dance floor now sway gently, some hands settling at waists, others fumbling to connect through layers of fabric.
Once I’m beneath the stairs, I wait. When Caelus appears, his knuckles are fisted so tight they’re blanched. “My father is trying to kill me,” he says.
“What happened?”
“This has to be fast. We can’t ever be seen together.
” He peeks out of our stolen meeting spot.
“We stick to the plan. You have to make it to the end. I’m still going to get us out of here somehow, at the Ascension Ceremony.
” He tries to storm past me, but I grab him by the arm. His coat slips in my soft glove.
“How are we stealing the magic exactly? You never said. What does it look like? Where will—”
“I’ll tell you when the time is right.” It isn’t a suggestion.
“Well, is our cover blown?”
“Not exactly, but—”
Footsteps echo above us, heading in our direction. We descend the stairs, halfway down a floor. When the noise is gone, I ask, “What does he know?”
“He quietly had one of the contestants hanged. I don’t know why. He also somehow figured out that Lucent and I were trying to prevent the tournament from happening. But the only person Lucent told about our plans was Rhianne. She wouldn’t betray him.”
Hanged! I suck in a breath. “Who is Rhianne?”
“His fiancée. She’s one of the palace maids. Moving into the royal family after the wedding. But now that’s off, much to my father’s delight. I’m actually surprised she’s not here.”
“And your father knows the plan involved my Heartfillers?”
“No, I managed to keep that quiet. You’re safe.” His blue eyes trace me, and every hair on my body stands. “Our plan is safe, I mean. Just more complicated because now I’m in here with you.”
I nod, though my chest twists.
“He said he should hang me in the streets,” Caelus says.
“From the sound of it, Skyborn wouldn’t be very happy about that.”
“Perhaps. He said he would give me a chance to make my own fate. I obviously don’t need to earn citizenship, but the trials are difficult. He’s betting I’ll die. So he can’t be blamed.”
“Why do the Skyborn love you so much?” I ask.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to know what Skyborn think.”
I look for a shift in his posture or fidgety hands. Either he’s an expert liar or he really has no idea why the Skyborn seem to worship him.
“Why do you hate your father?” I ask. It couldn’t be more clear. He’s undermining him, stealing from him. “What did he do to you?”
“The less you know the better.”
“It feels like you’re playing some twisted game with me when you keep me in the dark.”
“Well, I’m not.”
I tell him about the death certificate his father left me on my pillow. “He knows my father was accused of being a rebel, which isn’t true. Are you sure he doesn’t suspect me of being a part of your cousin’s schemes?”
“He doesn’t,” he says, fishing something out of his pocket. He pulls out a driftwood-handled blade that used to live in my hair bun. “I believe this is yours.”
I reach for it but hesitate, as if it’s too hot to touch, too real. When my fingers close around the handle, I can feel its carved grooves against my skin. “Thank you,” I say.
“Sure thing. I saw a guard with it and knew it had to be yours. The carved markings on the handle are from an old fishing wives’ tale.”
“How much do you know about Saltblood?”
“I’m the Prince of Ethyria. It’s my job to know all the districts, their cultures and histories.” His gaze flicks away.
“No one saw you take this?” I slip my dagger into my bosom against my chest.
“No. We’re safe. For now. But my father isn’t completely naive. I spared you from execution. He knows I’m against him. He may become suspicious, which is why we can’t be seen together. How did last night go?”
I hug myself, thinking of Serafina still at home burning up with a fever she can’t cure. Did the rations arrive today? Was there medicine this time? “It was fine.”
“Was it really?”
“You have no idea what it’s like outside these walls. Being here around all this, when…” I can see Serafina’s sad eyes. I can hear her raspy cough. “The sooner we get through this, the better. But I need a favor.”
“Yes?”
“I need you to get medicine to my orphanage for a girl who lives there.”
“Curly brown-haired girl about waist high?”
“How’d you—”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “I figured it out when you asked the first time. I had some sent. Enough for a few days.”
I suck in a breath. “I—thank you.”
“We need you focused.”
“Right.” I swallow, meeting his eyes, trying to understand why he would do something so…kind.
His blue eyes search me. “It’s hard for you, being here. Of course, it would be.” He shortens the space that separates us. “My father is cruel.”
“He is.” I didn’t expect his own son to see it. But I also didn’t expect to find myself here.
He stares at me intently, nodding for me to say more. I glance away, afraid he’ll see too much in my face. I’ve probably already said too much. He just needs to keep up his end of the bargain.
“Are you ready for tomorrow when the gloves and chains come off?” he asks.
“I’m more concerned about us both being in the tournament. You have no idea how we—”
He rests his bare finger gently on my lip. The suddenness of his touch makes breath stick in my chest. The spot where he touches is warm. Heat spreads to the rest of my face, my cheeks, the back of my neck, rushing through me like a tidal wave. I snatch away from him.
“You can count on me.” His gaze dips to my mouth, then to my eyes. “Let me figure it out. Focus on elimination and the first trial. And, Axira—”
The way he says my name feels like an invitation I don’t know how to refuse.
“You need to get used to touch.”
“Touch can breed love,” I recite.
“Look around. Love is a weapon. Use it. In fact, take off your gloves.”
“I…what? No.”
“Your prince commands it,” he says, so gently I almost think he’s joking. “Take them off.”
“No!” I recoil, tucking my hands away from him. “I won’t.” Tomorrow, I’ll be laser focused on the mission. I’ll be playing a role, pretending. Now, here, alone, being completely honest with him feels different.
“Fine. But before bed, you need to open the window, let the wind graze your bare fingertips, feel the steel of the palace’s walls. Remove the brittle papers from the frames hanging as decoration. Feel the fragility of this place, Axira.” He straightens his coat.
“Why?”
“So that when you get a taste of what it’s like out there, you don’t lose yourself in it. You can’t fear this place or its rules. Or you risk being seduced by the whims of first touch, like everyone else.”
I’m speechless. His words strike something brittle in me.
He is trying to help me because he needs me.
But it must be more than that. He didn’t need to give Serafina medicine.
He didn’t need to give me back my blade.
It shakes me more than if he’d physically forced me out of my gloves.
Everything about him unsteadies me. Every look.
Every word. And now, every touch. I can still feel his phantom fingers on my lips.
He stands there, steady, concerned, patiently waiting for me to respond.
And somehow, that’s worse. I was built for resilience, not tenderness.
“I’ll try what you’ve said.”
“Very good. I do hope you sleep well, Axira.” He turns to exit the stairwell but stops, his chin sliding over his shoulder. “Protecting people who can’t protect themselves is never the wrong choice.” He leaves, and I realize why the people of Skyhaven love him.
Somehow—he’s shown them his heart.