Chapter 43
Caelus is the first thing I see when I open my eyes.
The world swims in and out of focus, blurred at the edges, like I’m dreaming underwater.
My throat is dry. I blink, and the room sharpens, just enough to register the faintest glow of sunrise filtering through sheer curtains.
The air smells faintly of smoke and pine.
I recognize the scent before the room: his room.
His bed. A cold memory slices through the haze.
Serafina.
She was falling.
I gasp and sit up too fast. It feels like there is a hole in my chest where a heart used to beat.
She’s gone. She’s really gone. She fell to her— I choke.
I let her fall. I did this! My head swims, and I claw at the sheets, pushing them off as if I could shove off the grief. It hurts. It hurts so much.
My gaze is drawn to the bedside table like a moth to a flame, looking for the custom Heartfiller box the Benevolent gave me. I think of the good feeling he promised, and suddenly I crave it like I’ve never craved anything. Anything to end the pain.
But I blink and see Caelus’s bedside table, not mine. It’s not here.
“I need it,” I rasp. My arm sweeps the table clumsily, and a few things crash to the floor, none of them my Heartfiller.
All I can see is Serafina’s face. Growing smaller.
No. No. “Where is it!” Every second I can’t find the Heartfiller, a heavy, relentless pain wedges itself deeper into my heart.
It feels like if it burrows deep enough it could break me beyond repair.
I have to stop it. I need the Heartfiller.
I see Caelus across his room, shoving things in a bag hidden behind his wall mirror. He pulls the bag onto the bed, stuffing it with things of mine from my room. A few jewels, a fine dress. Items I can sell. But I blink, my lashes fluttering, none of it registering. He strides toward me.
“Caelus, did they find her…Have you seen her?” My legs buckle the moment I try to stand. “Could I see her one last time?”
“Ssshhh,” Caelus whispers, gently pulling me to him. He casts a cautious gaze over his shoulder at his door. “She’s alive. She’s not conscious, but she’s alive. That’s what they told me.”
Tears rise so fast I can’t breathe. “Who?” I croak. “And how do you know? She fell—she—she—”
“She hit some brush on the way down. It slowed her fall. I don’t know how, but it saved her.
She was breathing. I carried you both down, tethered to me.
” He shifts, revealing a bag that’s slung over his shoulder—packed, ready.
“I got you both to my personal medic. She’s going with you and Serafina.
I have your ship in port. You’re leaving now. ”
My mind stutters. “A ship?”
“I promised you I’d get you off this island,” he says, quieter now.
“I meant it.” His hair is wind-tousled. Dirt streaks across his cheek, and his shirt is wrinkled and half-unbuttoned.
He looks exhausted, hands scraped raw. And still—he’s here.
Holding me like what we have is something worth sacrificing for.
He didn’t just carry me down a mountain—his love has been carrying me for longer than I realized.
The realization cracks me open.
“I—I can leave?” The words feel stolen. A ship. He got me a ship. Passage off this island.
He nods. But if he has a ship for me, that means he is really giving up on stealing the magic. On unseating his father.
“You and Serafina will both go, and my medic,” he says, voice low. “But I’m asking one thing—when Serafina has recovered, let my medic choose her own path. Let her be free.” He is talking so fast, but my mind is stuck. It’s over? It’s really over. A sob escapes me before I can stop it.
But then the tournament claws its way back into my mind.
Kade’s smirk. Rhythe’s glare. Ivy.
“The tournament,” I murmur. “Did we get disqualified? Who won?”
Caelus shakes his head, jaw tight. “I don’t know who reached the base of the mountain first. I haven’t seen the others.
The Ascension Ceremony is this evening. If Rhythe and Ivy don’t make their move first, my father will announce the winner and make them share a kiss publicly, releasing the magic.
My father will steal it, like he always does.
But I don’t care anymore. I can’t.” He threads an arm underneath mine and helps me to my feet. “Come on, up you go.”
I cling to him, muscles trembling. “How long have I been out?”
Caelus presses his forehead to mine for the briefest second, his breath brushing my lips. “Too long.”
Once he steadies me, he says, “You slept for an entire day. When we reached the base of the mountain, you were brought back to your room. I had you moved here while I called in a favor from Lucent’s fiancée, Rhianne.
She’s one of a few allies I still have here.
She got me a ship from a textile merchant acquaintance.
It’s been scrubbed from the books and pulled into port for you.
” He unshoulders the bag and slips my arm into its strap.
His touch is steady, but everything inside me is shaking.
He secures the pack on my back and gently nudges me toward the door.
Everything is moving too fast. My thoughts are a blur. I can’t think.
“Wait, please.” The last few days slam into me like a wall. My muscles scream and my skull pulses behind my eyes, but it’s the invisible blooming pain in my chest that pins me to where I stand. An ache carved by grief.
Dorian shouting for Mae.
Her shriek.
Serafina’s nails digging into me.
My knees buckle, and I stumble back onto the bed.
She’s alive.
He said she’s alive.
But Mae isn’t.
Neither is the older woman who was very important to her. My heart is splintering.
“Axira, we really have to go.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were right, Axira,” he says. “It’s really that simple.
My mother was a rare Saltblood, brittle and smart.
But kind, gentle, selfless. Rebellious in all the right ways.
And this place killed her.” He chokes on his words.
Then pauses before going on. “At first when you reminded me of her in small ways, I thought it was coincidence. But then, you showed me who you really are, how much you care for people. No matter how much I wanted to shut that down, to believe there is no one else with a heart like my mother’s, I couldn’t.
I was wrong. The minute I realized it, I knew—this island would devour you too.
I can’t let that happen. You have to leave.
You have to be protected because your heart for other people matters. ”
I’m speechless. But when his hand lands on my shoulder, I turn into his touch.
I’ve already lost too much. I might lose Serafina if she can’t recover.
The thought punches the air from my lungs, and something inside me—something I’ve kept guarded and hidden and numb—finally crumbles, one chipped piece at a time.
The world blurs through tears, sudden, hot, pouring down my cheeks. I try to blink them away but the dam is broken.
Serafina.
Mae.
Miss Omon.
The others.
I’ve clung to the belief that being in love is a liability. That it’s better to keep people at a distance, to not need, to not ache. Because the cost of experiencing love fully is loss, and loss is unbearable.
I haven’t wanted to ask myself the question—what happens if I chose Caelus? Not just with my words, but with my heart. What does that do to my world? What does that do to the others I want to protect?
But the question stirs in me sharply like a cramp I can’t ignore.
Proof my heart does choose him.
And I’ve just been denying it to myself.
I can’t unfeel it. I don’t want to. Now I’m supposed to walk away?
Leave Caelus behind. As he stands here showing me something in my bones I think I’ve always known—true love, real love, isn’t a bargain.
It doesn’t twist or demand or change. Love involves sacrifice.
Making room in the heart. Whether it’s for my parents, another human, or a prince carrying the weight of the world on his back.
How can I leave here and pretend none of what he and I shared mattered—when for the first time it feels like love could be the thing I was made for.
It did.
He does.
“The ship will drop you at the nearest land,” he says. “I’ve loaded it with goods—things you can trade or sell.” He presses a heavy pouch into my hands. “And there’s this.”
Gold.
I barely look at it, my fingers closing around the pouch to set it aside. I look for him. I search for his storm-ravished eyes. Today they are bright, like hope.
“What happens to you?” I whisper.
His jaw slacks, his eyes tilted slightly with sadness. “Don’t worry about that.”
“I want to worry about that.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
He looks at me. “Axira, what are you doing? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
I don’t either. But I have to try. I smooth my cheeks, wiping away the last of my tears, but they’ve left a tender heat behind. I attempt to think, to untangle the knots swelling in my chest, but it’s like grasping air.
Caelus has told me that he loves me.
Twice.
And I’ve never said it back.
I’ve thought it. In a fleeting moment. In silence.
In regret. But saying it out loud would make it real.
Permanent. It would mean I can’t pretend this was just a moment.
How do I leave here without him knowing the truth—that I love him too?
That true love, real love, our kind of love, is worth making space for.
But then, how do I say those three words—and have nothing change?
I swallow hard. “Caelus.” I think of Serafina. Her fierce spirit. I would give anything to hear her laugh and play freely with as much excitement as she feels. To feel her arms around my neck a second time. I’d give up the ship, my future.
Love didn’t put everything at risk.
It showed me what mattered.