Page 88 of The Heart Trials

He blinks, his eyes widening. Then he stumbles up, ghostly pale, worried, I bet, about what Lira might have heard. He glances around, paranoid. He cares about Ivy, which could mean he is lying about his motive for wanting to win. All his talk about fighting for Saltblood, when Dorian is one of us and he tried to have him killed. Maybe Rhythe has been lying to all of us the entire time. Maybe he was lying to me just to get me on his side. He knows I’m a good smuggler.

In the distance, Caelus still stares, unfocused, like he’s just outrun something, standing there as if he isn’t sure if the nightmare is over.

“Rhythe.” Lira grips him by the shoulders. “You’re alright. It was a memory Heartfiller. A strange kind I’ve never seen.” Her brows furrow, showing him the dark-coral shard.

He flinches in fear before regaining his composure. “What happened?”

“You were about to shove this into your chest!” She kicks the blade before turning to glare at me. “She was standing there watching.”

Rhythe’s cold eyes widen first, then narrow, a divot appearing between his brows.

“No, I—” I start.

“What’s going on here?” Talia is behind us with a pitchfork in her hand. “What did Axira do?”

“She was about to let Rhythe die,” Lira says.

“I—” I was. I really was. The thought chills me. Rhythe picks up the pruning blade, spinning it in his hand as he strolls toward me, as cavalier and nonchalant as he normally is. As if he wasn’t just scared to death of losing Ivy.

“Brave of you to choose to be my enemy, Axira.” He continues past me. Lira and Talia trail behind him, but I stand in their way.

“He’s lying to both of you,” I say. “He’s using this alliance to position himself at the end, not to rob the Benevolent but to win. With Ivy.”

Lira guffaws. Talia studies me a beat too long, but she scoops up a few more weapons and tosses one at Lira before catching up to Rhythe. They are a lost cause. He can have them both.

Just then, Mercyenforcers drag bodies with bruised purple throats and swollen lips across the scorched ground, the stench of bile thick in the air. One by one, they pile them up—the first tossed on the ground is a girl with half-eaten food still clutched in her hand. Their discolored lips…throats…

“Poisoned.” The word slips from some desperate place inside me.

“Steep price for disloyalty, like I said.” Dreth raps his knuckles against the metal plates across his chest.

They poisoned them. They poisoned the crops.

More bodies are tossed on top of the first one. Titus and Tamara, I think are their names. I didn’t know them. Never held a conversation with them and yet I can’t look away.

A crowd forms, watching in fretful silence. Talia holds on to Jace, gaping in horror, her palm on her chest. Mae is stifling a sob into Dorian’s shoulder; his bandaged face is still bloodstained. Ivy is in the shadows, looking from the bodies, then to me, then back to the bodies. Orrick and Lira look like they might lose their midday meal.

More bodies. More dead.

Dead for eating the food we were supposed to burn.

Bile rises in my throat and out my mouth. Titus lies on top, his arm bent back in an unnatural way. Something’s different about him. I step closer. His skin is covered in dirt as if he worked hard, did what he was asked, and then took a bite of a piece of food at the end. His throat isn’t purple and his lips are not swollen like the others’. But his face is covered in blood like he was beaten for that bite the minute he finished it.

Kade calls my name, but I skim the chaos for a ribbon of white hair and race to Caelus.

“You’re okay,” I say, catching up with him. He’s gone deathly pale. His arms are rigid at his sides. A low sound escapes him—half a gasp, half a strangled word. I touch his arm gently, imagining my warmth could calm his storm.

“Back to the arena,” Dreth announces, directing us to the transport.

Caelus opens his palm, showing me the glowing darkened coral shard.

“I know,” I say. “I’ve never seen it work like that before. You’re okay, though, right?”

“No,” he says. “No, I’m not. When we get back, meet me in my tent once everyone’s asleep. Axira, I have something to tell you.”

29

Isit beside Caelus in his tent after everyone is asleep, letting our thighs touch. His hands rest in his lap, knuckles pale, but his shoulders are drawn up slightly, as if he’s bracing for an impact. He is shaken, staring at nothingness. “Was it the hallucination?” I ask in a whisper. It still sounds too loud.