Page 87 of The Heart Trials

She vanishes like a vision, fracturing into drifting flecks. And the piece of crystal attached to my chest like a barnacle falls to the ground. I pick it up, examining it. The memory Heartfiller is standard issue at checkpoints throughout the districts. They are the worst ones, making you relive past memories over and over.

But this one…

I turn the piece, pulsing a burned shade of orange, a much redder hue of coral than any memory Heartfiller I’ve ever seen. It hums with a darkness inside it that reminds me of death. This one was making me hallucinate in the present, like fake-future memories somehow. I throw it down and smash it with my boot.

Without the Heartfiller, the haze begins to lift from my vision like morning sea mist in the midday sun. Shapes sharpen. Color returns. Sound rushes in—wind rustling through the stalks, the groan of wagon wheels. I’ve wandered to the same spot where the Mercyenforcers gathered us yesterday to read out the rules and sort us like livestock.

That’s when I see them.

The field before me is chaos.

Contestants are unraveling in their own minds, screaming, fighting, running from hallucinations, soft coral glowing at their chests.

There is a litter of tools on the ground—rusted shears, splintered shovel handles—and several in hands. A pitchfork lies on its side like it was dropped mid-strike. Even a long wooden tool snapped in half is deadly in the right hands. Mercyenforcers lurk in the shadows of the perimeter of trees, feasting their eyes on the mess.

Someone backs into me. Jace. He darts around me, clutching a bloodied sack of food like a weapon, running from something only he can see. I spin, trying to find Caelus, but stumble on Talia on her knees on the ground, rocking back and forth sobbing, arguing with a hallucination.

Paces away, Lira is tearing through the field, trampling vines and scattering roots in her wake. She turns over a planting bed, digging through loose soil with her bare hands, looking for something. Her eyes dart, unfocused, and for a second she looks toward the tree line as if something’s chasing her. She stashes a tangle of branches under her arm and glances toward the edge of the field—where two Mercyenforcers watch just beyond the rows, one with sharpened spears, the other scribbling on a paper as if taking notes.

This is madness.

Nearby, metal scrapes against metal. Sparks fly, steel clashing with steel. Contestants stagger between trampled crops. Some cry out. Rusted tools-turned-weapons are being swung at nothing. I dodge past Orrick, who is bleeding from the temple and shouting a name I don’t recognize.

Beyond the haze of smoke, across the field, I spot Caelus.

He moves like a man torn in half, holding an axe, swaying it one way and then the next. He steps back and falters as if the air is pushing against him. His weapon wavers, then lowers. His mouth moves, saying something I can’t hear. Then he falls to his knees. His shoulders rise and fall like he’s drowning. My heart twists.

“Caelus?” I rush his way, darting around several others, when I smack into Rhythe and stumble sideways. Rhythe, who tried to frame Dorian as a rebel. Rhythe, who probably now wants me dead. His hair is plastered to his forehead by a sheen of sweat. His widened irises dart back and forth as if hunting for threats in every shadow. The tiny crystal at his chest glows.

The fear on his face stops me dead in my tracks.

His nose flares with each ragged breath. His lips are parted, quivering; the usual intimidating smirk is gone. “Keep your voice down,” he says to some unseen hallucination. “They’ll hear you.”

I can’t move, transfixed.

“What do you mean we can’t win this? We can. Don’t talk like that.” He reaches for nothing. “Ivy, listen—”

My pulse skips. Ivy…

“No one even suspects us.” He claws at the sides of his face, and I can feel control buckling in him. “Put that down. Put that blade down, now.” Then he picks up a sharpened pruning blade as if he is the Ivy he’s imagining. “We can’t give up now that we’ve come this close. We have to fight. We have to live.”

He cares about Ivy.

And she cares about him. How did I not see it before? They knew each other before coming here! They must’ve. And he’s hiding it from his alliance for a reason. He mutters something I can’t hear, resolve cementing in his eyes. “If there’s no other way. If they’ve really found us out. Are you sure? You’re sure?” He crouches low. He gasps. “They know? They know. They’ll kill us, Ivy. They’ll kill us both, unless we…” He double fists the weapon, pressing the sharp tip to himself.

I suck in a breath. He’s going to do it. He’s going to shove that blade into his stomach.

“Same time,” he says.

Everything in me wants to scream.

“One.”

But I’m cemented in place.

“Two.”

“Ah!” Lira charges past me, knocking the blade out of his hands. He shoves her off of him and throws her to the ground hard, about to bring his fist down to her face when she rips the glowing shard from his chest.