Page 44 of The Heart Trials

Caelus is in the tournament.

With me.

My thoughts are frantic as we’re led to the reception, music crooning in the distance.

“The prince,” Mae says, walking beside me, “can you believe it?”

“Uh, exciting, yes.”

Something’s very wrong. This destroys our plan. How is Caelus going to get me out of the tournament once I steal the magic from the Ascension Ceremony if he’s in it with me?

“Can you dance?” Mae asks as we enter a room elaborately filled with florals and silks decorating the sterile ceiling. The room is unnervingly precise. Dozens of small tables are set for two, each pair of chairs close—much fewer than three feet apart. Close enough to make this all feel very strange. I tug up on my gloves and touch the hook of my mouth chain just to be sure it’s securely in place. The lighting is dim and deliberate. Along the perimeter, curtains billow at the air vents’ exhale, releasing a scent that tangles in the air. At the center of each table is a glass bottle with an Authorized Scent.

With my journal tucked under my arm, still in need of eleven fingerprints, I’m separated from Mae, herded with a pack of others to be seated. Mae and several others are swept to a dance area, where they stand hesitant to look at each other. I scan for Caelus. I have to talk to him. I need to know how he is going to get me out of here now that he’s on the inside.

But I’m face-to-face with a Grainfolk contestant who drums his hands on the table, his chest glowing from a Heartfiller. The scent of him hits me first, acrid and metallic. It clings to the back of my tongue before I can say hello.

“I think we’re supposed to talk,” he says, eyes wide and unblinking, a too-perfect smile stretched across his face, as if the Heartfiller is holding it there for him.

I clear my throat, reminded I need more than fingerprints. I need to pick someone to betray. “Tell me about yourself,” I say.

“I wanted to bring my lizard, but they said no.”

We sit in silence.

“Do you feel anything for me yet? Some kind of bond. I think I might for you. Or maybe it’s indigestion. Did the breakfast upset you too?” He shrugs and slides me his journal. Surprisingly, lizard-guy has managed a single fingerprint.

I leave him there and find another table. I don’t know how binding these fingerprints are, but it’s safer to stay in the spirit of the elimination—picking people I might actually not mind having a longer conversation with.

When I pull back a chair to sit at a different table, a Stonebound smelling of mint and something wet and molded is already there. He smashes one of his hands firmly to the tabletop, straining.

“My hands won’t stop shaking,” he says. “Because of nerves! Not the fungus.” He flicks something off his hands.

I keep moving to find someone else.

“So, I’m technically married,” the third guy begins, and I don’t sit down all the way, moving to another.

I don’t think I expected so many of them to be so weird. Still no sign of Caelus, but the room is large and overflowing with contestants. I search for a face I know and spot Ronan—the Grainfolk boy who entered the tournament for his baby brother. I rush to sit at the empty seat beside him before someone else does, if only to catch my breath with someone who isn’t going to fling fungus at me. His soft, warm scent drifts toward me. Something like sun-touched wheat and smoke from a hearth.

“You’re that Saltblood the Benevolent pardoned, right?” He rakes his hands through his cropped dark hair.

“Guilty. I hear family brought you here.”

“My brother.” His gaze is somewhere else. “He smiled at me for the first time right before I left. You know they can’t smile when they’re really small? Their eyes have to get better first.”

I relax into my seat.

“But when they start recognizing people, it happens more. Teddy has only smiled for me. No one else.” He grins, and it makes me miss Serafina. “I tried to learn all I could from the mothers in my village. We were in an orphanage. Now Teddy is with someone else. A friend…”

I sit straighter. “An orphanage? Wow.” Me too. “Do you think you can win this?”

“I have to,” he says.

I break his suddenly intense gaze, clearing my throat. “I, uh, feel the same way.”

“You do? Why?”

I pick at a thread on my robes, unsure how honest to be. “I have people back home counting on me.”