Page 54 of The Heart Trials

I blink the world back into focus. Dorian and Mae are on the shore, sitting close. She is crying into her arms. Crying without anyone to stop her. I can’t resist staring. I consider going over. But Dorian runs a bare hand along her back like he’s forgotten he’s lowborn—or decided it doesn’t matter. It’s as if in the hush of the terror we just survived, they are drawn together by something stronger than sense. I have to tear my eyes away from them to look for Caelus.

I try to lift myself up on achy limbs for a better view. There are others collapsed on the ground, breathing shallowly, battered—several are bleeding. Rhythe is farther back on the dry sand, watching the sea alone. I don’t see Lira or Talia, Orrick or Ivy. Finn is lugging himself out of the ocean with heaving breaths. Then he pulls himself up onto his feet and looks out at the sea. For Ronan, I imagine.

I finally spot Caelus. My heart skips a beat.

I can still feel his arm around me. He is gathering bunches of seaweed, tying it together, and roping it over his shoulder. The gel inside it is good for wounds. I dust my hands and sit up. I don’t know how he saw me get sucked under, unless he was watching me after I jumped…He’s a strong swimmer for a Skyborn. He walks toward me, and I realize I am staring. I look away, back to Dorian and Mae, wondering if they are still touching. He is beside her now with a narrow space between them. But Mae has stopped crying, and I can’t help but wonder if his touch helped.

Seaweed falls on the ground in front of me. “Are you alright?” Caelus asks.

I nod, unable to find words for everything I am feeling right now.

“Get your cuts cleaned up as soon as you can,” he says, gazing over his shoulder to where a transport with Mercyenforcers is waiting to take us back to the palace.

“Are you alright?” I ask. “How’d you learn to swim like that?”

“Not here.” Caelus walks away, and I notice Rhythe staring at me curiously. I lower my gaze and crouch, splitting the seaweed open and smearing its gel over the slices of red all over my feet. The sting dulls. My muscles still ache as I stare out at the sea, at the cost of freedom.

The Benevolent intends to kill us. He must.

We’re competing to be soldiers, not citizens. Would there even be a tournament if food was in plenty supply? If medicine was easy to come by? Would love be enough to get tournament participants? For Mae it seems to be. She jumped off that cliff, and if Dorian hadn’t been there to save her, she wouldn’t have made it to this shore.

She trusts the Benevolent. They all do.

I did too, until I stopped taking Heartfillers and had to watch Serafina and Nichol nearly starve without any distraction glowing in my chest.

We’re disposable to the Benevolent.

The world blurs, sharp and red at the edges. What does he get out of this? Why give us Heartfillers?

My heart thuds so hard it feels like my ribs will burst. Like the anger I feel is hot and alive inside me. It feels good. It feels real and true and human.

Saltbloods have an advantage, but as I skim the beach for survivors, I realize only a handful have made it back. Many are in the distance, still swimming toward the shore. My palm moves to my chest, a reflex to the worry rising up in me. Not my problem. Not my concern. I should not care. But I curl my fingers into a fist and feel that anger again, clinging to it before I join Finn.

“Do you see him?” I ask, hoping Ronan makes it. His Serafina is counting on him.

The big guy doesn’t look at me. “He was trying to pull someone else with him. I don’t see either of them.” Finn’s jaw hardens. “I told little Teddy, I promised—”

“No,” I say. “Don’t let your mind go there. Not yet.”

He meets my eyes, his narrowed in suspicion.

“I have someone I’m doing this for too,” I tell him, and his sharp edges soften as he nods solemnly. Finn and I stand there until more survivors have joined us on the beach. None of them are Ronan.

A throng of Grainfolk emerge from the waves, strung together—seaweed lashed across their torsos, knotted with torn sleeves of their tunics. A makeshift lifeline. Clever. Jace—the Stonebound the Mercyenforcers questioned after the elimination—leads the group. He drags them one by one onto the sand. The last person tethered to him can’t stand, so he loops an arm under their shoulders and hauls them forward.

The droves of people on the shore tending their wounds freeze in shock, staring at Jace as if he’s grown two heads. They can’t comprehend why he would help his competitors.

I run over to help untie the bindings, freeing each person.

“Is Finn alright?” Jace asks me.

I nod. “But Ronan hasn’t shown yet. Have you seen him?”

“Grainfolk fellow, lugging another with him?”

“Yes.”

“I swam past him,” Jace says, still out of breath. He gazes back out to sea, before running to help a Stonebound who washes up like a boulder on the shore.