Chapter 40
Caelus.
When Rhythe and Ivy disappear into the trees, I jolt into motion, rushing back for the tent.
The last I saw the prince, he and Kade were in a brawl with no clear winner.
A deep, aching fatigue scrapes at my limbs.
I stagger into the forest, the ground tilting beneath my feet, time unraveling at the edges.
The antidotes. We have to get them before sunrise the day after tomorrow, and before we can start our descent.
We’re running out of time. My limbs feel too heavy, too slow—like I’m dragging my bones through mud.
“Caelus?” I call out.
But there is no screech of metal. No cries. No movement. Just silence—thick, dead silence pressing in from all sides. My eyes strain in the darkness, searching wildly for Kade’s hulking shadow, for Talia’s thin frame, for anyone. Panic buzzes through me, setting my nerves alight.
The world sways. I stumble and throw out my arms to steady myself, and my fingers brush against canvas.
The tent. I lean into it, then collapse to my knees and force out a breath.
The weight of the last hour crashes down at once—every sprint, every blow, every choice.
My body is raw and rattling. Scrapes burn across my arms and legs, blood drying against torn fabric.
I lower myself to the ground. It takes effort. Every part of me screams for stillness.
“Caelus?” I try again. My voice comes out like a scratch.
“Axira!” Caelus bursts from the shadows like wind through trees.
He drops to his knees and gathers me into his arms with a strength that startles me, holding me like I am something precious.
There’s just his heartbeat now, steady and real against my cheek.
I bury my face beneath his chin. He’s still alive.
“Caelus.” His name escapes my lips like a breath.
In the clear sky, the moon shines bright, illuminating his face, which is a ruin—battered, bloodied, his left eye swelling, lip split wide.
Cuts score his jaw, his brow, his temple.
His clothes hang in tatters, streaked with sweat and red.
He doesn’t speak, just holds me tighter. And I let him. Just for another minute.
“I thought they took you…and—” The knot at his throat bobs. “You’re okay.”
“I thought Rhythe was going to kill me,” I say. “But he didn’t. Caelus, he could have shoved me off the edge, but he didn’t. Why?”
“I assumed my father sent him to kill me. But…” Caelus exhales. “There’s something else, Axira. Do you know about the Redwake?”
I blink, and I can still see Miss Omon’s haunted stare, the eerie way her gray eyes became hollow when she spoke of the rebellion. The children standing beside graves in those framed pictures in my room at the palace. Goose bumps race up my skin. “I’m Saltblood. I know the Redwake.”
“Ivy left her bag,” he says in a rush. “I went through it. I probably shouldn’t have. But look.”
The journal’s faded pink cover is tattered and peeling at the edges. It’s covered in dozens of tiny flowers—each one folded by hand from scraps of paper, some yellowed with age, others torn from old flyers, ration slips, and crinkled wrappers. In the center are the words Let It Bloom.
Caelus cracks open the dry pages to one with a folded edge. “Read this.”
I settle in beside him.
Sylvie,
Jackie wasn’t at the market today. No one has seen her. I’m trying not to panic, but people don’t just miss market days anymore—they disappear.
Old Lady Ruby was sewing bright-red ribbons again last night. She wouldn’t tell me why. She kept saying to stay quiet, threatening to make me hold my hand over my heart like I’m a little kid again. That scared me more than the ribbons. I took another filler. I can’t tell if it’s helping.
Brine End feels like it’s falling apart. Smoke from the Citadel reached us this morning. People say Grainfolk burned a permit office, Saltbloods tore down the Benevolent’s statue—no one knows what’s true, only that something big is happening.
The food carts haven’t come in forever. Mother says not to touch the fish; she thinks the guards poisoned the shore. I don’t know what to believe, but the water looks strange.
They’re calling for help with the children. I have to go.
Write soon,
Gloria
My hands are frozen. “This is a journal from a rebel family.” I swallow, hard, looking over the cover again, feeling the age of the pages. I was so young when the Redwake happened, fifteen years ago. Ivy doesn’t look older than me. “Her birth parents were killed in the rebellion.”
“If it’s not her mother’s, it’s from someone she knows well. How else could she get her hands on something so personal?”
“She brought it with her here, which is a risk. That tells me it’s important to her. Very important.” I still, trying to piece together an image in my mind of being one of those children in the photograph in my room, standing over graves dug for their parents.
“I was five when it happened. My father made me march with the Mercyenforcers who did the executions.” His stare simmers with something bitterly disgusted.
“I watched as he made the children dig the graves. Then he slaughtered the rebels right in front of their children.” His voice falters, raw around the edges.
He stares past me like he’s still seeing it.
I can see the line of vacant stares in those photographs. They still burn the back of my eyelids.
“I couldn’t do anything. I just—watched.” His eyes are glassy, full of ghosts. “As the children dug, they chanted, ‘Let it bloom.’ ”
I rub my hands over the cover on the journal where those words are.
“But the rebels are dead,” I say, finding it harder to swallow. “Those children grew up and—”
“Axira, you’re not naive.”
“Ivy and Rhythe know each other,” I admit.
“Rhythe, whose mother blew the whistle on the rebellion in exchange for Rhythe’s life. What if he’s still in contact with the survivors?”
Rebels, Ivy and Rhythe? Is it possible the movement still exists, so many years later, after all but a handful of traumatized children were killed in the Redwake? A fire couldn’t spark from such few embers, could it?
“That’s impossible.” But the minute I say it, I know it’s not true. The closer I get to the end of this tournament, the more it feels like Ethyria is sinking its claws into me. The idea of escape, of finding a ship and slipping away, is beginning to feel more like a dream than a plan.
A hum explodes in the recesses of my mind, like a memory just out of reach.
“Let it bloom.”
Then it comes to me. In my father’s voice.
Bury the name where the silence grows,
Cover the truth where the cold wind blows.
Hold it close in the ash and gloom,
Love is a seed—let it bloom.
“I know that phrase,” I say, remembering. “I heard it from—”
But I can’t say it. My father’s voice is whispering treason into my mind. The frame the Benevolent gave me on the first night of the tournament, branding him a traitor. A rebel. My head throbs. If Ivy and Rhythe are rebels, why would they enter the tournament?
“They’re planning to assassinate the Benevolent at the Ascension Ceremony,” I realize aloud. My fists clench. As much as I hate Rhythe, it’s exactly what the Benevolent deserves.
“They could be.” Caelus squares his shoulders.
“Regardless, my father cannot get word of this journal. If he suspects rebels have infiltrated the tournament, it will become a bloodbath. We have to pivot.” He paces in a circle, raking an angry hand through his moonlit hair.
“We have to get to the summit, get that antidote for me so we can both climb down safely. And then you have to leave. Immediately. Skip the Ascension Ceremony.”
“I don’t understand. The magic—”
He grabs my shoulder gently. “Listen to me, if my father finds out rebels are in the tournament—there won’t be a winning couple. There won’t be an Ascension Ceremony. It will become a second Redwake. He’ll kill everyone, and he won’t stop at the contestants. He will level all of your villages.”
The world unsteadies beneath me.
“Maybe we can beat Rhythe and Ivy to the antidotes and turn them in,” I say. “If Mercyenforcers apprehend them, maybe they’ll see them as an isolated threat and spare the rest of us.”
“My father won’t take any chances. So neither can we. Axira, you have to go. We cannot win this. I’ve been outsmarted, I’m sorry.” His gaze burns hotter than fury.
“No, no, we can still do this.” My voice shakes, but I clench my fists at my sides.
“We can beat them to the antidotes. Dorian and Mae are still out there. Rhythe and Ivy aren’t in love.
Callie’s dead, and so is Jace, which leaves Kade and Talia alone.
If the Benevolent has to pick a winner, it’ll be Dorian and Mae, as long as they make it to the top.
” I jab my finger toward the distance, like the peak is right in front of me.
“And then we can take the magic we came for.” I turn to face Caelus, heat flushing up my neck.
“Doesn’t your father deserve to see his power taken from him?
” I close our distance. “You can rule in his place.”
He steps back. “That was never the plan,” he says, his lips pressed thin.
“Well, what was?”
“The people can pick someone.”
“They have! You.”
Caelus paces in a circle. “You talk about Skyhaven as if I belong there. I don’t belong anywhere. Especially not there. I don’t buy their lies. I don’t enjoy their games. I don’t fit. Either way, the original plan is too risky. It’s dead. Done.”
“Giving up is the wrong decision.” I still him with a hand on his arm. His tortured gaze meets mine, and I can feel the weight of the world in his stare.
He runs his thumb down my jawline, and my skin feels like fire. His stare softens into something so kind it feels slippery and sharp. “I’m sorry, Axira. We’re not doing it anymore. It’s over.”
“It’s not over!” I throw the words at him, trembling, holding back all the things I wish I could say.
“It is!” His eyes are dark with frustration but rimmed with worry.
I shove him in the chest. “Why would you just back out? After everything? After Finn, and Orrick and Lira. So they died for nothing? It was all for nothing. Why!”
“Because I love you! That’s why, Axira! In a way that doesn’t make sense. If we keep playing this game, you will get killed! I am putting you on a ship off this island!”
I can’t move. He loves me. He loves me.
And I love him.
But if I say it aloud, if it’s heard and felt, I can’t snatch it back.
And our fragile hold on surviving all of this will shatter.
“Did you hear me?” he asks.
I blink, hard, forcing myself back to my senses. Caelus is right. If this tournament gets shut down because Rhythe and Ivy are discovered to be rebels, there won’t be any true-love magic to steal. I should go as soon as I can. There’s no point in waiting.
I swallow. Caelus brushes a stray strand of hair from my face, tucking it gently behind my ear. His fingers linger, tracing the line of my cheek, the curve of my jaw, the shape of my lips. Every place he touches burns in the best way.
I let my eyes shut, drinking in the feel of him.
I try to memorize it—the warmth of his fingertips, the quiet reverence in his touch—as if I could tuck it away, hide it somewhere safe that doesn’t cost me.
I hold myself there, trying to capture every feeling and thought that’s rushing through me.
If I’m going to make it on a ship with Serafina, I will have to let him go, completely.
His lips graze my forehead. His fingers thread into my hair. “Love killed my mother, Axira,” he murmurs. “She loved the people of this country in a way that broke all the rules, and it got her killed. My Saltblood mother.”
I suck in a breath.
Saltblood. Caelus is half Saltblood.
“No. That’s impossible. The Beloved? She can’t be from—”
“She grew up in Anchor’s Alley, over by Brine End by that little repair shop.”
“Fisher’s Gate. They do sails and rope repairs for Ferdy.”
His brows dent.
“Someone from home.” I never met the Beloved, but everyone knows about her death.
“There used to be a statue of her in Commerce Quarter, but my father had it taken down for repairs. It never went back up. He named her the Beloved, but he didn’t actually love her.
The irony is everyone else did. But they didn’t know about her lowborn blood.
” He laughs softly. It’s bitter. “It’s one of the palace’s best-kept secrets.
If the Skyborn knew, they wouldn’t love her or me.
A half-breed Saltblood? They’d hear: rebel.
They’d slaughter me.” He exhales like the weight of the world is on his breath.
“I can’t let you meet her fate,” he says.
His words are like a hot stone in my hand. I don’t know what to do with them. I have to let them go. His mother. His poor mother. The cost of love is always too high. I have to get on that ship.
We hold each other, but I already feel him slipping away. My heart is hardening, my mind planning. Focus on Serafina.
We pull apart.
“Alright, let’s get to the top,” I say. “And get me on a ship.”