Page 103 of The Heart Trials

As I look into the surprising incident of last evening to ensure this was tournament-related, please enjoy a few extra days in your quarters.

Graciously,

The Benevolent

We are locked in our rooms. I recklessly bang on the door again.

No one comes. When the sky is bruised, the color of evening, my door opens, a tray of food is slid inside, and it shuts again before I can even see the deliverer’s face.

The door is locked again.

The next day, I sit near the door for hours, knees tucked to my chest, listening for any sign of things going on outside. I hear nothing. No one. No whispered conversations, no boots on polished floors. The mourning Heartfiller still sits in my waste bin like a patient threat. I fish it out of the trash, then toss it back in. Over and over.

I think about Caelus. His voice. His hand on my back. The way his presence calms the static in my chest. How sure he is that we can get out of here. His determination, his hope, his gentle and quiet defiance. I shouldn’t miss him. I do anyway.

I try to sleep, but I float at the edge of it, half dreaming, half waiting for something to change.

Nothing does.

I wake with a gasp before dawn, disoriented. I had a dream of Caelus diving into an ocean of choppy waves to save Orrick. But as he swam him to the shore, Orrick became too heavy, and they both drowned.

My breakfast tray is already here. I didn’t hear anyone come. I eat a little, but it tastes like death. Still no word. Still no knocks. Are the others still locked in too?

I whisper Mae’s name. Then Caelus’s. Just to hear a voice in the room.

The mourning filler is still untouched. But now, I keep it closer. Just in case.

I braid my hair. Undo it. Braid it again. Then wrap it into a bun.

Anything to fill the time.

The dreams last night were worse. I was walking through a hallway that never ended. No doors. Just eyes, watching. I start talking out loud to Caelus as if he’s here. I tell him about the dream. About how angry I am that I miss him.

I hate this.

I hate how easy it is to need him.

I press my forehead to the door. “Please,” I whisper. “Let me out.”

Nothing answers. I consider the Heartfiller, holding it this time in my hands.

When the door opens, Syra is there. She scans my room without a word, spots the unused Heartfiller in my hands, then leaves. A few minutes later the door opens again. She’s returned with Dreth. His eyes drop to the unused filler.

“The Benevolent would like to see you,” he says.

34

The doors Dreth takes me to tower over me like the entrance to a sealed vault—tall and seamless. He doesn’t speak. Just opens the doors and urges me through.

The air shifts as I step inside—warmer, denser, and fragrant with something like crushed flowers laced with metal. Glass shelves and low tables fill the room, each one crowded with trays of Heartfillers in shades I’ve never seen. At first, I spot the familiar ones: the golden yellow of euphoria, the pale-blue haze of sedatives, the coral tone of the memory filler—standard at every checkpoint. But these aren’t standard. These are trays stacked with variations—Heartfillers in every imaginable shade and intensity of those three types. And beyond.

I think of what Caelus told me, of how Heartfillers are harvested or replicated from someone’s truest-love kiss, and suddenly I am dizzy.

“Axira.” The Benevolent’s voice startles me.

I’ve only ever seen him from a distance, speaking in that glassy, formal tone that makes every word sound like an order. Thirty paces is about as close as I got in the throne room when I first arrived here. But he stands from the jeweled metal chair where he was sitting, and my chest feels like it could cave in on itself. The sooner I find out what he wants with me, the sooner I can get back to my room where I at least felt safer.

He’s not in robes. He isn’t very tall. He’s compact and unassuming, wearing simple gray, sleeves pushed up. He smooths his hand on his pants. He looks…ordinary. My arm, pointlessly hovering near my bun for the blade that used to live there, lowers.