Chapter 27
Islept terribly.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw lips—Kade’s hot and demanding, tasting like ash.
My first kiss, stolen under the threat of elimination, soaked in desperation.
It was a transaction wrapped in skin. Ick.
It meant nothing, of course. Worse than nothing if there is such a thing.
The memory clings like an oil I can’t scrub off.
And then there’s Caelus. The way he looked at me afterward.
Not angry. Not even surprised. Just…still.
Sunlight peeks through my tent and I cover my head, flipping onto my back and exhaling through my teeth.
I didn’t come here for this—knots in my stomach or the weight of someone else’s silence. I need to remember that and refocus.
There are no noises in the arena outside my tent.
I don’t want to see the arena again. But they’re coming for us any moment to take us to the second trial.
I drag myself up and emerge from the folds of my solitude to an arena that still reeks of copper.
Finn’s body has been removed, but nothing else has been reset.
His blood still has not been cleaned. It was here last night when we returned for bed.
Chairs are still overturned. The bloody iron that impaled him is still on the ground beside the pit. In the haste of everyone scrambling away, a few tables were knocked aside, candles fell over, floral garlands were ripped down. The romantic facade on this steel prison has been destroyed.
The Benevolent wants us to remember what happened to Finn.
This tournament isn’t about giving us a fair chance at love.
It’s designed to break us. By making us break each other.
With the arena quiet, I poke my head into Caelus’s tent and find him lying there awake, lost in his thoughts. We haven’t talked since he kissed Callie and I kissed Kade.
“Can I come in?” I ask.
He sits up, and his blanket falls to his waist, unveiling his bare chest. I move around the tent, letting myself really look at all of him—the curve of his shoulders, the way his muscles shift beneath his skin, the scrapes and cuts he’s collected over the last couple days, and older scars.
There is strength in his build, and yet the way he’s hunched over himself, one leg pulled to his chest, makes him look wounded and gentle, careful to not take up more space than he’s allowed.
Odd for a prince. His torso narrows to his waist, lean and taut.
Every inch of him is carved with purpose, not prettiness.
He is beautiful, not like a painting or fine jewelry, but like the sea under moonlight—silver-shadowed and quietly alive with power.
It draws me to his injuries again from the scuffle with Finn. There is a pile of seaweed in the corner. My wounds have almost all healed up thanks to him helping me. I grab a piece and split it open to make sure it hasn’t dried out.
Caelus rolls his shoulders. “It’s fine.” There is a weariness in him, a deep fatigue that has nothing to do with this competition.
“Please, let me help.”
He groans but turns his smooth, bare back to me. I kneel behind him, the prince, and my hands hover just over his broad shoulders where there are traces of angry scrapes.
“I really can do it,” he says, not moving.
“You can’t reach.” I can do it. I need to.
I lower my hand to touch him but draw back, my heart ramming in my chest, harder than I’ve ever felt it.
If I’m going to keep this facade going with Kade convincingly, I will have to be able to touch him.
I just know in my gut that touching Caelus should be easier than touching someone else. It’s just practice.
“Axira…”
“I want to.”
He waits. I can still feel his arm around my waist when he pulled me up from the waves, and our bodies bumping and pressing close as we danced.
I can still see the kindness in his eyes when he told me he sent medicine for Fina.
I can see our kindred hatred of this place, even if for different reasons.
We’ve touched hands now, several times. But I’ve never touched someone like this.
I’ve never felt skin this warm beneath my fingertips, never seen the rise and fall of someone’s back as he breathes, waiting for me.
He is so still, so calm. So ready for my touch.
As if it doesn’t threaten to rattle everything loose inside of him, like it threatens to do to me.
I scoop some of the moisture inside the seaweed onto the pad of my finger and press it to the worst of the scrapes.
His skin twitches, but he doesn’t pull away.
“Is this okay?” My voice trembles. I bite down, embarrassed at how nervous I sound.
“It’s good.”
A long silence stretches between us. I’m not used to helping someone in this way.
Maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything at all.
But every brush of my fingers across his skin feels like a confession.
I spread the seaweed on another scrape, my fingers grazing his spine.
Like yesterday in the Hollow, something I’ve never felt stirs inside me.
Like I’ve swallowed something alive and it’s yawning itself awake.
“You have to make it out of here,” I say, more and more unsettled with every stroke of my hand. He doesn’t have a good plan. “Is Callie really your choice?”
His chin slides over his shoulder. His icy blue eyes are impossibly clear today.
They find mine. But whatever he is thinking doesn’t make it to his lips.
He turns back around. “You’ll be betraying her too once we steal what we need,” he says.
“But that hardly matters, I’m realizing.
” In the grand scheme of things, betraying others can’t matter or neither of us will survive this.
“If not her, just pick anyone. They’d all take you,” I say.
“That’s what you think I should do?”
The question unsteadies me. “It’s what’s smart to do.”
“You’re right.” He nods, and his hair falls across his back in silky waves. I move it aside, unable to resist, raking my fingers through it. It’s like holding light in my hands. “But the only person worse than you at faking being in love is me.”
He turns, and we’re facing each other again, closer than we’ve ever been. My body curls toward him, like a vine to the sun. But then noises stir in the arena outside the tent. Low voices. Whispers. I lean away from him instinctively.
His fingers close gently around my wrist, pulling me back like there’s more he wants to tell me. “Axira…”
“I should go. They’re awake. Kade shouldn’t see us—”
“Right.” He releases me, and I slip out of the tent, savoring the feel of his touch lingering on my skin.
Outside, silence hangs in the air like a fog, heavy and dense. Orrick is awake, wrapped in a blanket, staring at nothing as he sits beside the mountain of singed logs in the firepit as if it’s a gravesite. The branches and leaves have been combed from his hair.
“Hey, are you alright?” I ask when Lira dents my periphery.
But she doesn’t hear me as she ambles toward Orrick. They sit closely, their limbs touching. He sags against her, sullen. Her heavy-lidded eyes suggest she didn’t get much sleep either. Maybe it’s genuine. Maybe.
My churning stomach lures me to the breakfast table—which is bare. It hasn’t been reset like the other days. It’s not filled with stale food from yesterday morning either. It’s been cleaned.
The doors to the arena open.
“Trial of Loyalty, report,” a Mercyenforcer yells.
Contestants emerge from their tents, still buzzing from their dates yesterday. Rhythe marches to the front, forming a line. Kade is not far behind him. Talia appears beside me. Under her breath, with a snarl that’s more threat than kindness, she says, “You’re out. Stay away.”
A warning. Rhythe’s new target might be me.
The journey to the Trial of Loyalty is like the first—blindfolded in the back of a transport with no windows, no light—and all I can think about is what Rhythe is probably plotting to do to me.
I’ve made him an enemy just as Caelus warned me not to.
But I wasn’t going to have Dorian’s innocent blood on my hands.
Rhythe set him up, and me in the process. I want no part in that.
The chatter dies down once we’re in motion. We ride in silence a shorter distance than the first trial.
When we stop, the doors open to an expanse of green so smooth it looks like fine fabric.
Rolling hills blanketed in crops stretch toward the horizon, where the first light of morning spills golden across the land.
I’ve picked up food here to deliver on my courier routes, but I’ve never paid attention—never taken all of it in.
We pass a platform, stopping in the middle of corn crops.
Dreth is waiting for us beside a burning pile of wood and several courier crates.
Piles of harvested peppers in every color, berries, tomatoes, squash, leafy greens, beans, peaches, plums, potatoes, endless rows of sacks of grains, and that’s just what I can see.
My stomach aches, not just from nerves, but from hunger too.
It’s quickly gotten used to life in the Citadel.
I find Kade lingering near Lira and Orrick.
Didn’t he get the message yesterday? She doesn’t want him.
I do. I stand closer to him, letting our elbows touch.
When he looks at me, I smile. But he glances away with indifference, as if the forced kiss we shared yesterday was a way to get through the elimination for him too.
“I hope you slept alright,” I say.
“Like a rock.” Kade pops his neck to either side.
“What do you know about this trial?”
He shrugs. “Not much.”
My knees are unsteady as I move closer to him, close enough to feel the heat from his body.
“I thought we could help each other today,” I say under my breath.
He folds his arms.
“Kade, come on.” I glance around. Then, I get closer and lower my voice. “The kiss may have been a lie. But you agreed we never got the chance to know each other better. Now’s our time.”