Chapter 18
Ilie with my face smashed against the wet sand until I can breathe normally again. The sounds on the shore blare in my ears and my chest is still burning from being starved of air. My skin stings with cuts and scrapes from brushing debris.
I blink the world back into focus. Dorian and Mae are on the shore, sitting close.
She is crying into her arms. Crying without anyone to stop her.
I can’t resist staring. I consider going over.
But Dorian runs a bare hand along her back like he’s forgotten he’s lowborn—or decided it doesn’t matter.
It’s as if in the hush of the terror we just survived, they are drawn together by something stronger than sense.
I have to tear my eyes away from them to look for Caelus.
I try to lift myself up on achy limbs for a better view.
There are others collapsed on the ground, breathing shallowly, battered—several are bleeding.
Rhythe is farther back on the dry sand, watching the sea alone.
I don’t see Lira or Talia, Orrick or Ivy.
Finn is lugging himself out of the ocean with heaving breaths.
Then he pulls himself up onto his feet and looks out at the sea. For Ronan, I imagine.
I finally spot Caelus. My heart skips a beat.
I can still feel his arm around me. He is gathering bunches of seaweed, tying it together, and roping it over his shoulder.
The gel inside it is good for wounds. I dust my hands and sit up.
I don’t know how he saw me get sucked under, unless he was watching me after I jumped…
He’s a strong swimmer for a Skyborn. He walks toward me, and I realize I am staring.
I look away, back to Dorian and Mae, wondering if they are still touching.
He is beside her now with a narrow space between them.
But Mae has stopped crying, and I can’t help but wonder if his touch helped.
Seaweed falls on the ground in front of me. “Are you alright?” Caelus asks.
I nod, unable to find words for everything I am feeling right now.
“Get your cuts cleaned up as soon as you can,” he says, gazing over his shoulder to where a transport with Mercyenforcers is waiting to take us back to the palace.
“Are you alright?” I ask. “How’d you learn to swim like that?”
“Not here.” Caelus walks away, and I notice Rhythe staring at me curiously. I lower my gaze and crouch, splitting the seaweed open and smearing its gel over the slices of red all over my feet. The sting dulls. My muscles still ache as I stare out at the sea, at the cost of freedom.
The Benevolent intends to kill us. He must.
We’re competing to be soldiers, not citizens.
Would there even be a tournament if food was in plenty supply?
If medicine was easy to come by? Would love be enough to get tournament participants?
For Mae it seems to be. She jumped off that cliff, and if Dorian hadn’t been there to save her, she wouldn’t have made it to this shore.
She trusts the Benevolent. They all do.
I did too, until I stopped taking Heartfillers and had to watch Serafina and Nichol nearly starve without any distraction glowing in my chest.
We’re disposable to the Benevolent.
The world blurs, sharp and red at the edges. What does he get out of this? Why give us Heartfillers?
My heart thuds so hard it feels like my ribs will burst. Like the anger I feel is hot and alive inside me. It feels good. It feels real and true and human.
Saltbloods have an advantage, but as I skim the beach for survivors, I realize only a handful have made it back.
Many are in the distance, still swimming toward the shore.
My palm moves to my chest, a reflex to the worry rising up in me.
Not my problem. Not my concern. I should not care.
But I curl my fingers into a fist and feel that anger again, clinging to it before I join Finn.
“Do you see him?” I ask, hoping Ronan makes it. His Serafina is counting on him.
The big guy doesn’t look at me. “He was trying to pull someone else with him. I don’t see either of them.” Finn’s jaw hardens. “I told little Teddy, I promised—”
“No,” I say. “Don’t let your mind go there. Not yet.”
He meets my eyes, his narrowed in suspicion.
“I have someone I’m doing this for too,” I tell him, and his sharp edges soften as he nods solemnly. Finn and I stand there until more survivors have joined us on the beach. None of them are Ronan.
A throng of Grainfolk emerge from the waves, strung together—seaweed lashed across their torsos, knotted with torn sleeves of their tunics.
A makeshift lifeline. Clever. Jace—the Stonebound the Mercyenforcers questioned after the elimination—leads the group.
He drags them one by one onto the sand. The last person tethered to him can’t stand, so he loops an arm under their shoulders and hauls them forward.
The droves of people on the shore tending their wounds freeze in shock, staring at Jace as if he’s grown two heads. They can’t comprehend why he would help his competitors.
I run over to help untie the bindings, freeing each person.
“Is Finn alright?” Jace asks me.
I nod. “But Ronan hasn’t shown yet. Have you seen him?”
“Grainfolk fellow, lugging another with him?”
“Yes.”
“I swam past him,” Jace says, still out of breath. He gazes back out to sea, before running to help a Stonebound who washes up like a boulder on the shore.
“And you’re sure you haven’t seen him since then?” I ask, following.
“I’m sure.” He lugs the gasping man from the waves.
The knot in my chest deepens as I help the other Stonebound crawling to shore. I pull them from the water, rolling them onto their backs and pressing on their chests until they cough up water, trying to remind myself that I am not here to make friends.
Every reflex to stand aside and not care feels foreign. The way Jace is helping the others, showing concern, he must feel the same way. I wonder if he stopped using Heartfillers a long time ago too. But he rushes past me to help another before I can whisper the question.
Mercyenforcers shove past us suddenly, marching over to break up two Stonebound who have frantically wrapped their arms around one another, kissing one another on the face.
Not like a first touch. Like two people who know each other well.
As they’re dragged away, they’re assaulted with questions about when they met and how.
“I’m surprised so many of you made it,” I tell the Stonebound whose arm is hooked around my neck as I drag them to shore.
Living so far from the sea, learning to swim wouldn’t have been impossible, but it also couldn’t have been easy.
I set them down and count all Stonebound with one hand. Much less than before.
When I turn back toward the waves, Talia has washed up. She pushes up on her elbows, dazed. When Jace offers her a hand, she glares at it. His hand lingers patiently until she takes it, pulling herself up.
I rejoin Finn, who is still at the water’s edge with his arms crossed tight.
More Saltbloods make it back, crawling toward Rhythe before collapsing on the sand.
He doesn’t move to meet them. Doesn’t even look.
Some alliance. Ronan is still not here. But Kade made it, stomping up the shore alone, not offering a hand or accepting one.
Ivy follows soon after, climbing out of the waves like the sea wraith she is.
Just behind her is Lira. A long stretch of time passes and no one else emerges from the ocean.
The later it gets, the quieter the people on the shore get.
After a while I realize, that’s it.
No one else is coming.
Caelus and I meet eyes across the beach as he wrings out his shirt before putting it back on. The glimpse of his bare skin catches me off guard, a warm pull low in my stomach. I force my gaze to his face. His stare is haunted with exhaustion, his complexion drained of color, blending with his hair.
One down, I mouth, two to go.
We did it. We are one trial closer.
I should be thrilled, but I feel sick.
When the sun begins its descent, we’re summoned to get back into the transports. It took a caravan of six to get us here. Two are returning completely empty.
“Finn, I think we have to go now,” I tell him.
He doesn’t move.
Ronan didn’t deserve this.
He, like Mae, should have made it. The words twist my insides. People are dying. This isn’t a game with more than two winners.
“Finn, I’m sorry.”
“I told her that if I won this, I would find a way to bring her here,” he says.
Her. Her who? But he goes on, and I recognize that look in his eye, the way Dorian looked at me before the tournament. Finn has someone back home.
“I promised that whatever happened, it would never replace how special she is to me.” He chuckles darkly, eyes to the sea. “I’m talking like a dead man.”
I glance over my shoulder. Mercyenforcers are gaining on us. They’d get rid of him if they knew he plans to sneak a lowborn into Skyhaven if he wins.
“Ronan knew. He understood. He told me if he got sent home and I stayed, he’d make sure she knew no one had replaced her. That I am just playing the game and would send for her soon. She’s taking care of Teddy.” He turns to face me. “Don’t you see? He can’t be dead. He wouldn’t give up on Teddy.”
I blink away the forbidden sting in my eyes.
“He is out there, somewhere. I have to just wait for him.”
My throat is thick as I think of Serafina, how memories of her pulled me through those waves. Guards reach us.
“We’re leaving.” They grab him.
“I’m not leaving him,” Finn roars.
A stinger hits Finn in the neck, and the big guy falls to his knees, seizing.
“Wait,” I gasp. “He just needs another minute. Please—”
The Mercyenforcer’s head cocks. “What did you say?” His gaze drops to my hand, and I cover my heart with my palm, stepping back. Skyborn are self-controlled, I recall Syra’s warning. Not overcome with emotion.
“Nothing, I said nothing.” I stare at the ground.
Caelus moves behind me, coming from nowhere. “Get to the transport, Axira,” he says under his breath, calm, but there is rage in his eyes.
Mercyenforcers pull Finn up. He resists, trying to shove them off of him.
“Keep it up, grainrat, and I’ll disqualify you.” The Mercyenforcer threat doesn’t stop Finn’s fighting.
“Axira.” Caelus lingers, waiting for me, risking us being seen together. Trying to protect our plan and protect me.
But there is something final about leaving this beach that pins my feet to the sand.
Ronan’s dead.
A dull, pressing throb aches in the center of my chest. Ronan and I only exchanged a handful of words.
But I can still hear the way he said his brother’s name.
I can still see the way he looked when he talked about his brother’s smile.
His expression when I insisted I didn’t like him.
I steady myself, legs trembling beneath me, and it confuses me.
I don’t understand this feeling. I shouldn’t care like this.
And yet—my body is grieving before my mind can catch up.
Most of the others moving toward the transports glance at Finn with disinterest, well practiced at indifference.
Too freshly weaned from Heartfillers. But Mae curls into herself, overcome with emotion like a dam that’s been violently broken.
Dorian’s hands find her face like a moth drawn to a flame.
I can’t tell if it helps, because she cries harder.
Ronan is in the depths of the sea.
Despite how much he needed to win.
That could have been me if I wasn’t a strong swimmer.
That could be me, next trial.
“Axira,” Caelus calls. “You can’t help anyone if they disqualify you. Come, now.”
When Caelus calls me again, I turn my back on Finn, who is now resisting the five Mercyenforcers trying to wrangle him into submission. The last thing I remember hearing are his ear-splitting sobs.