Chapter 32
Not long after the Benevolent announced the rule change, we are shuffled out of the throne room, back to our quarters like a herd of animals. No one speaks. The air is thick with nerves. The cold stone walls, etched with scars of past tournaments, don’t help. Everything is gray and pitiless.
I thought we had until the end to declare a match. There must be a scheme here, a twist, and it has something to do with Caelus being accused of trying to fix the tournament. I shift my weight from one foot to the other, suddenly unsteady on the ground under my feet.
This is a game of power.
It’s always been a game.
In front of me, Dorian’s hands are clasped like he’s wringing a confession out of them.
He keeps glancing toward Mae, whispering and worrying.
She nestles closer to him as they walk. She is so happy.
Dorian’s decent. Not my kind of decent, but hers.
Not that I have a kind of decent. A light and frantic flutter takes off in my stomach.
“What are you thinking about?” Caelus asks. His gaze hits me like a spark. He is beside me. Now that we’ve officially declared each other as matches, we don’t have to hide talking. It’s nice.
“How much we need to discuss,” I say. “Privately.”
We walk the length of the next stairwell in silence.
The flickering lights buzz softly, casting shadows across the tense faces of the other contestants.
Everyone is pretending not to be worried that the end is so near.
We’re all wondering not just who will win, but who will get away with their lives.
Who will lose but at least make it home? Will anyone?
When we reach our floor, the Mercyenforcers turn on their heels and disappear down the stairs, boots echoing until there’s nothing left but quiet.
We’re left standing in the long sterile corridor.
No one moves. No one wants to be the first to turn their back.
I can feel the way we’re all calculating, wondering if we’ve made the right choice now that the other options have been taken away from us.
The silence stretches; the corridor feels longer than it is.
Eventually, Lira rises on her toes and kisses Orrick on the cheek stiffly. His entire face turns red. He doesn’t look at her, only down at a folded paper, trying hard not to smile. It’s awful that she’s loyal to the alliance. Is she even serious about him?
“I need to get some sleep,” she says, reaching for her doorknob. Then Rhythe slips into his room, Jace into his. But Talia lingers until Jace has disappeared and pads to Rhythe’s room, glaring at me before stepping inside. Ivy follows at a distance.
An alliance meeting. I don’t move. Not yet.
Caelus’s chin hovers just above his chest. His lip is deep purple at the corner and split at the bottom.
“Does it hurt?” I ask softly. My hand rises, almost without thinking, reaching toward his face—but I stop myself short, fingers retreating on instinct. I shove my hand in the pocket of my dress instead.
“It’ll heal,” he mutters. He won’t look at me.
“What did they do to you?” I ask.
He finally lifts his eyes. They’re not the soft, calm kind of blue today, but rather a storm that rages. There’s a rawness in them like the color has been scraped thin by too much thinking, too much regret.
“Caelus?” I say, more softly.
“I’ve made it worse.”
“What do you—”
“Stick to the plan,” he says under his breath. “I’ll come again when I can.” Cold air shifts beside me as he walks away toward the stairs.
“Caelus?”
He doesn’t turn around, and it feels like standing in the eye of a storm all by myself.
I unclench my tight fists and stride toward my door when I notice Orrick is lingering in the hall, still turning that paper in his hands.
His blush from Lira’s kiss has faded. Lira, who I am sure will be sneaking down to Rhythe’s room the minute Orrick’s off to bed.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Aria brought it,” he says.
“Aria?”
“My mother. She prefers we use her first name. Makes it easier to keep a distance, you know?” He hands me the paper. I unfold it, and there is a beautiful drawing of a face I know—Ronan. The one who entered for his baby brother, and drowned in the first trial.
“Your mother drew this?” I ask.
“No. Someone Ronan knew gave it to my mother when she received the harvest delivery yesterday. Word’s starting to spread to the districts of who hasn’t made it. She asked Aria to ask me to give it to Finn. But that news hasn’t reached them yet…”
Silence passes between us, and I can see Orrick grabbing the poker to impale Finn all over again.
“And I feel horrible,” he goes on, gulping.
“No. You were under their influence. They fed you rage.”
Kade. Kade fed him rage.
“That’s what Lira says.”
“It’s true.”
“I know. Just doesn’t feel that way.”
I let the silence linger a moment again, hoping it gives him room to breathe. “That was nice of your mother to bring that here, and of Ronan’s friend to draw it.” I start again toward my room farther down the hall.
He smiles after me, slow and a little crooked. “You’re alright for a Saltblood. I’ve seen how you are compared to the others.”
“You’ve been watching us?” I ask, half teasing.
“I’m quiet. All the quiet ones are watchers.” He tucks his hands casually into his pockets. He’s easy to talk to. His hair is tidied, and he rests back against the wall more at ease than I’ve ever seen him.
“You seem different or something,” I say.
He shrugs. “I feel different.” He scrubs a palm behind his head, sheepish.
“Eh, I’ve always been better with one-on-one, I guess.
I get tripped up with my words when people look at me or talk to me usually.
But after Finn, I just…seeing that monster come out of me broke something I can’t fix.
And it’s hard to feel much these days. Even nerves.
Except with Lira. She started coming around after Finn, you know, telling me things about myself. And I guess I’m trying to believe her.”
“What kinds of things?” I ask.
As I head down the hall, he follows me. “That nobody sees me as competition, so that makes me more safe,” he says.
“That I am a good listener and that’s a good thing.
She says I should talk more because the longer I do, the more the nerves go away.
She says I need to start using what I know about people from watching them to get ahead.
She thinks I’m being too nice, minding my business. ”
Lira is right about a lot of it. And yet, she could still be planning to betray him for the alliance. But I swallow the truth. Lira’s made him more comfortable in his own skin. He deserves that. We all deserve that.
“We could win this, I think,” he says as we pass a door that’s slightly ajar. “Everybody thinks it’s going to be Dorian and Mae. But I don’t know. I love that girl. I love who she makes me feel like I could be.”
My heart turns in my chest. “Orrick…”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
Harsh voices spill out from the propped door into the corridor. Kade’s is sharp and mocking, Rhythe’s is low and cold. Orrick and I share bewildered looks. I press my ear to the frame, listening. Orrick does too.
“I told you to behave yourself,” Rhythe chides. “You need to be focused, not underneath some Skyborn’s skirts.”
“I’ve done everything you asked,” Kade fires back. “Keep my Mercyenforcer buddy in my pocket, keep an eye on Axira.”
Goose bumps race up my spine. Rhythe asked Kade to spy on me? Orrick’s brows draw up, and I can feel the question he’s holding in—did you know? I shake my head.
“I’ve kept all your secrets! You said to get rid of the contestants.” Kade exhales. “All of it, I’m doing it.”
“Dorian’s still here,” Rhythe says flatly.
“I followed the plan at the tea shop. Axira screwed that up. It’d be easier if I went after Mae.”
“Mae is not physically strong,” Rhythe goes on. “She’ll crumble in the third trial without Dorian next to her. If you get rid of him, you get rid of both of them. He’s the efficient choice. But you haven’t even done that. I told you who I want gone before the final trial.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, still raw from before. They’ve been planning this. Calculating who lives, who breaks.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kade says. “I’m doing the best I can, alright? Did you even make up your mind about the prince’s girl? I don’t see how you haven’t slit her throat yourself.”
“Don’t call her that. And leave Axira. I’ll deal with her myself.”
My breath catches. What does that mean?
“And the prince?”
“As if you even could,” Rhythe snaps.
“Insult me again—”
“And what, soldier? You will follow orders, like you’ve been trained to if you want to get what we discussed. Mess up again and I’ll cut you loose.”
A slow, creeping chill works its way through me, settling in my bones.
The Trial of Strength is going to be a bloodbath.
Kade speaks again, lower this time. “If you must know, that Skyborn’s skirts you didn’t want me under did a favor for us today. You’ll see.” Their voices move closer to the door and I pull away, yanking Orrick into my room next door.
Orrick gives me a look, and I suddenly realize I’m shaking with anger.
“I need to see Lira.” He reaches for my door to leave.
I don’t stop him. I don’t say anything at all. The words lodge in my throat, cutting every time I try to swallow them down. I feel awful. Instead, I pace my room in restless circles until the moon rises over the water outside my window, its reflection trembling across the waves.
At least Orrick was here. At least someone else knows. The pressure to do or say something isn’t just on my shoulders. Maybe that’ll make it easier to move forward. Or maybe that’ll just make it harder to stand still.
I force myself into a long bath and slip into fresh robes, but when I sit on the edge of my bed, I instantly spring back up. If I do nothing, how am I any different from the Skyborn?
I need to talk to Mae. She needs to know what the alliance is planning. Her and Dorian. Then maybe Orrick and I can find a way to bring the Ivy and Rhythe secret to some of the others. Talia and Lira didn’t believe me before, but maybe they will now.
I ease my door open, heart pounding—
When a bloodcurdling shriek splits the night.
The sound burns through the hall like fire. I race toward the scream and find Orrick lying in the doorway of Lira’s room, glassy-eyed and frozen, frothing at the mouth.
Dead.
Lira is on top of him with a blade in her back.
Also not moving.
Also dead.
I stare, unable to move, blinking hard over and over again, waiting for the scene to change, for the blood dripping from Lira’s back to go away.
Talia dashes past me and falls on top of Lira’s body, beating her fists red.
“Wake up! Lira.” She sniffles between gasps for air. “Wake up. You have to get up. The plan. Lira, we have a plan!” Her words crack with pain. She buries her face in her friend’s dress, convulsing with grief. Mercyenforcers rush in, and I still can’t move.
I was just talking to him.
I was just—
Mercyenforcers try to lift Talia off of Lira’s body. She bites one person who touches her and slams her fist into the face of another.
“Talia?” Jace elbows his way through the guards, panicked. “Where is she? Move!” He kneels beside her, resting his face on her back, his arms working around her waist, holding on to her tight.
“No, Jace—” Talia wails. “She can’t be—”
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.” He strokes her hair, kisses the back of her head, and it makes me feel things, heavy things, near my chest.
“We need to remove the bodies,” a Mercyenforcer says, pulling a stinger out. “Get her out of the way or we will.”
“Don’t call her that! Don’t call her a body! Her name is Lira. Her parents were Pattie and Theodore. She had two brothers and one of them is a Grainlore apprentice, training to be a full master, knowing the best seasons and soils and everything.” Tears gush down her face.
My father was hanged for less. I shift uncomfortably.
She cries louder. “She always said he told her it was really hard. And he is so proud. He is so proud, Jace.” Every word rips from her lips like it’s being torn from her bones. “She has to get home, Jace.”
The mercyenforcer lifts her, cradling her in his arms, and takes her away as she sobs on his shoulder. With Talia gone, I can see Lira and Orrick fully. She’s holding the folded piece of paper from his mother, the drawing for Finn.
What happened?
He was just—
We were just—
And he said—
The world sways, denting black at the edges.
I feel more than ill.
I feel pain where my heart is.
Wetness forms on my cheeks, and the odd ache in my chest unravels with each drop. I stumble backward, away from this horror, my gut lurching its way up my throat. Then I see Mae hugging Dorian’s shoulder.
“Mae.” I open my arms instinctually, and she opens hers like no time has passed at all since we sat and talked.
It’s as if a strong, genuine connection can outlast whatever comes.
We hold each other, standing there, and I let myself cry.
For Orrick, who I hardly knew, and Lira, who I didn’t even trust. But it’s more than that.
I cry harder, and I realize my tears are for my mother.
And my father. And Serafina, who I am terrified I’ll never see again.
They’re for the orphanage, and Dockers Row.
For every person I’ve never cried for before who has deserved it.
I’m crying because I need to. I’m crying because I’m finally allowed to.
Here, I won’t be killed for it. I cry more for the Saltbloods who can’t.
Mae and I put our foreheads together. “It could have been anyone,” she says.
“No, Mae. This was planned.”
Her hazel eyes widen with fear. I look past her to more Mercyenforcers, watching. Kade is nowhere to be found. He did this. I know he did. Rhythe ordered him to. This is a game indeed, in its eleventh hour, and I’ve just met all the serious players.
“Later,” I tell her. “We will talk later. Trust Dorian. No one else.”
She nods, and we break our touch. It’s different from Caelus’s and mine, but still special. And I realize I’ve longed for it for so long.
When I turn the handle on my door, the last thing I see is Rhythe watching me from across the corridor.