Page 52 of The Heart Trials

The cliff my mother’s body was rolled off of.

We’re pulled out of the transports, and I step down onto the rocky gravel, scraping my feet. One by one they drag us to the mountain’s edge.

She died of a nasty sickness before coming here. But this is where I saw her last. She died without enough medicine to heal her. We didn’t have funeral sacks and couldn’t spare any coins to get one, so Mercyenforcers took her away in a dirty old rug and brought her here.

I try to picture her face but still can’t. Wind gusts past, pulling at my clothes, pulling me away from the edge. It feels like my mother, warning me.

When the Mercyenforcers come for me now, I gather my courage, but I feel my body resisting. I see myself digging my nails into their skin to peel their iron grip off of me, like watching some tragedy happen outside my own body. It takes three Mercyenforcers lifting me off my feet and setting me on the edge of the cliff to get me in position.

Once we’re all lined up in rows, Rhythe steals a glance at me. He doesn’t look worried like the others. He told me to come find him when the trial opened, suggesting that I can’t survive whatever is coming myself, but I can’t move. The other Saltbloods are gathered around him, including Lira, who is stone-faced and silent. Talia is beside her, staring like she’s looking directly at death. Does Rhythe somehow know what we’re about to face? How could he? I hesitate. I don’t know him at all, and definitely not enough to trust him. But the fact that he seems to know what’s about to happen, and I don’t, makes a small part of me want to join him.

Dreth addresses the group. “Being in love requires courage,” he says. “It requires giving someone else a part of yourself. That is not for the faint of heart.” Another guard paces the length of the contestants as he goes on. “To complete the Trial of Courage, you must jump off this cliff and swim to the shore.”

I stare down the side of the cliff, at the world dropping away beneath me. I’m breathless, not at the steepness of the plunge, but at the memory of my mother’s rug unrolling as her body plummeted toward the waves crashing below.

I have to focus. Dive and swim. I shade my brows with my hand to see the shore in the distance. I’m a strong swimmer. I am. But the ocean stretches out like a living thing, vast and endless, and I notice its water gleaming in fractured sunlight, slate blue in the shadows where calm patches are between the breaking waves.

The contestants step forward.

“Wait,” I say.

There is a strange stillness where the water should be moving. I scan for a better view. Waves thrash sharply, violent and hungry, not matching the rest of the sea. And chaos beyond it. The current is a narrow channel of rushing water carving a path through the surf, slicing and merciless. Foamy water moves seaward, dragging along debris.

The Mercyenforcers start pushing us forward.

“Wait!” We can’t swim in this. The current, I try to say, but no words come when I open my mouth.

“Before the first trial horn, are there any quitters?” The Mercyenforcer scans the contestants. “Now is your chance to back out. You can leave and go home. After this it’s succeed or…”

Die.

Someone whimpers. Bodies shuffle. And in several minutes a drove of contestants back away from the edge, begging to go home. The crowd at the cliff’s edge thins enough that I can see Mae, Dorian, and several of the others. Caelus has distanced himself from me. Mae’s eyes are wide, her mouth pressed into a hard line. Dorian looks like he’s been shouting—face flushed, jaw tight. Others hover behind them, some I recognize, others I don’t. Ronan stands a few paces back, fists clenched at his sides, a raw desperation in his eyes.

Rhythe looks at me again, asking me to come to the group of Saltbloods around him with only a look in his dark eyes. His jaw hardens the longer I stand still. I stare down again, trying to think, when Dreth says, “Find courage or drown in fear.”

The horn blows.

I don’t move.

Someone shoves me forward. I push back, digging my toes into the rock. But they urge me harder and my feet leave the ground. I plummet through the air and the world disappears beneath me. I’ve dived into the ocean a thousand times. Just not from this high up.

And not with a current this violent.

I straighten my body into a sharp line, arms straight ahead over my ears. The dark depths race to meet me.

I hit the water, and my body feels like it’s being stabbed by a thousand needles at once. My foot scrapes something sharp. The world is water and pressure and darkness. When I open my eyes, I see my mother’s body. My heart strains in my chest. I can’t move, staring into the bleak memory of a ghost, living feelings I’m not sure I’ve ever felt. I still can’t picture her face. It was so long ago when she died. But I can see her body, bloated from the sickness. I can still remember the way her gloves could hardly fit her in the end. She tore them a little on the backs of her hands to stretch them over her swollen fingers to be sure our skin didn’t touch.

Grief tugs me down like an anchor, and the surface of the water grows dimmer above. My lungs burn, and it snatches me from the sorrow threatening to drown me.

Air. I need air.

I urge my legs into motion.

My parents didn’t die so that I could drown in the same waves where they were buried. My face breaks the surface, and I drink in air.

Around me there are flailing arms and people screaming. The shore is so small in the distance, I rub my eyes to make sure I’m seeing it. It’s a long swim. A very long swim. Even for a Saltblood.

I spot Mae’s head dipping below the surface as she fights the waves. This isn’t a current you can fight. When you’re outpowered, you have to fight battles you can win. Not too far off from Mae is Dorian. I swim toward her, moving with the motion of the water. She claws her way to me, hugging my neck, her cold bare arms against my skin.