Chapter 22 #2
“Excuse me for trying to save you from being cut.”
So I was last, as I suspected.
“Be mad if you want,” he goes on. “I wasn’t going to let you be disqualified. You’re stuck with me for a day, but you’re still here.”
“I didn’t mean—Caelus, I don’t mind being stuck with you. Kade is on a date with Lira right now. He will be kissing her at the end of the day for all we know.”
“You don’t mind being stuck with me?” He smirks.
I elbow him. “Have you picked someone?”
He avoids everyone who tries to talk to him. Syra’s warning plays like a tolling bell in my head. He will be killed. She seemed sure. But she also didn’t flinch at me matching with Kade. So her judgment is faulty at best. I tell him what she said.
“You’re worried about me,” he says.
“I’m not worried.”
“You reach for your bun when you’re in a panic.”
I hadn’t even realized my hand was nearing the nape of my neck. I shove my palms together and stuff them between my knees. “I just need this to work.”
“We’ll find Kade and Lira. I’ll make sure of it.”
“And somehow protect Dorian.”
He frowns. “Why Dorian?”
I tell him about Rhythe’s plans, and Caelus’s jaw tightens. “You might have to give up on trying to protect Dorian, Axira.” There it is again, the softness that slips into his voice when he says my name like it matters to him. Like I matter to him. “You can’t risk becoming Rhythe’s enemy.”
“Why?”
“If he becomes your enemy, he becomes mine.” His jaw tightens, and his eyes move over me—gentle, watchful.
Like he’s holding himself back from saying more.
The air between us tightens. His gaze lingers on my mouth for half a breath before meeting my eyes again.
“You don’t want me in a fight with Rhythe. ”
“Because—”
“Because my father is looking for a reason to make things worse for the districts. Whispers of the rebels resurging have him frazzled. I saw him pacing in the middle of the night days ago. Rhythe is from a family of traitors.”
“But his life was spared. Wouldn’t the Benevolent assume he’s loyal to him?”
Caelus shrugs. “That’s the only reason Rhythe was allowed to compete in the tournament, I would guess.
But my father is the kind of person who never forgets a person’s mistakes.
And he will bring them up at the worst possible, most painful times.
” Caelus’s gaze drifts past me to the window as if the glass reflects some horror only he can see.
“Rhythe fighting with his beloved son is the perfect reason to make things very bloody in your district, very quickly.”
A wave of dread rolls through me. But my mind doesn’t stop—it races ahead. “But I thought he wanted to get you killed in here.”
“He wants whatever suits him when it suits him, and as of two nights ago, he’s more worried about the whispers of rebels than me disrupting his stupid tournament.
When he visited my room last, he was threatening to have Finn’s family punished because he picked a fight with me.
But he decided Finn dying was a severe enough punishment.
He’s determined to crush the whispers of a new rebellion, whatever the cost. And that means punishing the lowborn. ”
“Serafina—”
“Will be okay.” Caelus fingers slide over mine suddenly, and everything fraying inside me slows as if he’s caught the threads before they could unravel completely.
It feels like being chosen, not in the tournament, but in another way.
I don’t pull away. I hold still, letting it steady me like an anchor, memorizing the weight of his hand covering mine with more certainty than I’ve ever felt from anyone.
“I sent more medicine this morning,” he says. “But Dreth’s getting suspicious. We’re going to get that ship, Axira. We’re going to get you and her out of here.”
A swell rises in my chest—hope or grief, I can’t tell. Maybe both.
“It’s for all of them at the orphanage,” I whisper, the truth escaping me.
His hand tightens around mine, holding it fully now, like a promise.
Like he understands somehow. Like he won’t let go until I’m ready.
And when he finally does release me, the absence leaves my skin tingling. Air rushes back into my lungs.
“You have to help me protect Dorian,” I say in a rush.
“Axir—”
“He’s as much home as the rest of them. I can’t put him on a ship.
But I can’t let them kill him either. And Mae…
She believes in all this. She hopes in it.
She just wants to be loved, whatever that means here.
She craves it, Caelus. Shouldn’t that count for something?
Shouldn’t she win? Isn’t that another way we defeat your father—by making sure the winners actually deserve to win. ”
He frowns out the window. “That’s not our fight.”
“Isn’t it? Aren’t most of us in these deadly trials already fighting side by side in a way?”
Caelus stares at me for a moment. “You’re not talking like the Axira I met in the corridor. She was focused on one goal, nothing else.”
Serafina. Getting out of here. That was the plan. But somewhere along the way, in the cracks Serafina carved open inside me, others have started to settle too.
“Caelus…your fight isn’t mine. And yet I’m here. My fight isn’t yours and yet Serafina has med—” The words stick in my throat, too thick to finish.
“Alright,” he says. “We’ll protect Dorian too. I understand.”
“You do?”
He shrugs, sheepish, breaking our gaze. “There’s a sense of home some people give you.
And it’s hard to let them go…” He is so quiet I almost miss it.
His head dips, just slightly, like the weight of it all presses down on him too.
There’s worry in his silence, but something else too—grief, but with resolve.
And it feels like maybe between all the fractures, we’ve found something else to agree on.
That maybe home isn’t just the district we left, but something we’re creating, like it or not, here.
When we escape the metal box, we’re dropped at the Heartstage, an amphitheater carved into rose-colored stone, ringed with gold-leaf balconies and trellises that drip with pale flowers.
Scent diffusers release a soft blush mist. Music swells exactly on cue.
At the center of it all, actors move like dancers on the stage in slow, deliberate patterns, performing a love story about a soldier made of fire and a girl made of smoke. Every time they touch, she fades.
“She sacrifices herself in the end so he can rise,” Caelus says, noticing I’m watching.
“That’s awful.”
“But look closely at what each of them are wearing. They’re sending a message.”
The actor playing the soldier hides a thin crown in his hair, lost in his curls, hardly perceptible.
It looks like some kind of band to hold up his hair, but it makes me think of royalty.
The girl playing smoke has a shiny clear patch of fabric at her chest that looks oddly like an inconsistency in the design, a roll of poorly stitched fabric.
But when it catches the light, it looks like the shape of a Heartfiller.
“The soldier character is signaling that he is the Citadel,” I whisper. “The smoke girl is signaling that she is the lowborn.” The lowborn sacrifice themselves so the ruler can rise. “They’re saying the Citadel’s strength comes from erasing us? They need us to be strong?”
Caelus’s brows bounce.
We’re told our place is proof of our flaws—that we are undeserving of Skyborn privileges.
They are strong, courageous, and loyal. We are weak, emotionally reckless, and uncivilized when untamed, not to be trusted with love or power.
But the two onstage, with their hidden crown and veiled Heartfiller, are saying the highborn are nothing without us. They need us to stay powerful.
“Is that true?” I ask. I don’t see how it could be. But true or not, it’s a bold thing to say on a Citadel-sanctioned stage.
Caelus’s gaze darts away, his chin sliding over his shoulder as people crowd into the theater area. He pulls me along. He doesn’t answer my question, but I’m struck with another.
“How have they not been arrested?” I ask. “They’re practically calling the Benevolent a liar.”
“Because most Skyborn don’t see what’s real,” he says, guiding me around the crowd. “They see a play about a great love. They see what fits the story they’ve already decided to believe.”
Like Syra. “They see a romantic play because it has to be a romantic play,” I say. “It’s too hard to believe anything else. It’s unfortunate.” I glance around. “Because the truth isn’t that hard to see when you look for it.”
“Exactly. You’re brilliant.” He’s stopped walking. He’s looking straight at me.
“What?” I ask, cheeks heating.
He looks away too fast. “Nothing,” he mutters. His lips twitch, not quite a smile.
“So where’s our first stop?” I reach for the itinerary. But he pulls it just out of reach.
“We’ve got until noon to meet at the tea shop. That gives us the whole morning.” The storm in his eyes shifts—lit now with something bright and wild. He crumples the paper in his fist. “I’ve got something more exciting in mind.”