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“Wren!” Uncle Mark’s voice pierces the haze of my mind.
“Heal her!” Sigurd implores. His voice is panicked, brittle.
Am I that injured?
He lays me on something soft. Then Hawke is there, pressed in next to Sigurd, who still looms above me. Hawke trails his hands down my arms, my side. A cool tingling rushes under my skin, and I can’t help but sigh.
The jumping, cramping muscles in my calves relax. My lungs no longer burn. My vision clears, and I can make out Uncle Mark and Moria near the end of the couch, leaning this way and that to get a good look at me.
“She’s fine,” Hawke says. “Some scrapes and sore muscles. Nothing serious.”
Sigurd all but shoves him out of the way. His warm palm rubs over my exposed side where the shirt was torn away by the blast. “How…” He gapes, eyes wild. “I saw that blast come for you. It hit you. I thought, I—”
“It didn’t hit me,” I say. Although, I’m almost certain it did. “Grazed me. Tore my shirt, but I’m fine.”
“Fine?” He steps away, pacing across the shaded space—one of the boxes in the stands? “I thought she’d hit you. If she had—”
Wind stirs up, racing through the box and whipping my hair.
“Whoa.” Moria jumps in front of me, taking the brunt of his fury.
The wind dies in an instant.
He growls. “If she’d truly hurt you, I’d rip her apart.”
I flinch back into the cushions.
“There’s no rule against attacking other competitors,” Hawke says.
“There is against killing them.”
“She’s not—” Moria starts.
Sigurd shoves her to the side and drops to his knees next to me. “Drop out. Right now.”
“What?” I blink at him.
“You could have been killed. If something happens… The cauldron isn’t worth your life.”
My lips press thin. “But it’s worth my grandmother’s. What if something happens to her while I’m gone? Tabitha already has her hands full. She can’t watch after Gran all the time. Aunt Virginia won’t. Gran needs me. I have to be there for her. What if she falls? Forgets her meds?”
I shudder and shake my head, refusing to consider the worst.
“You can’t help her if you’re dead. Stop this, Wren. Stay with me.” He reaches for me.
I scoot away, all the warmth and safety of moments ago vanishing in his words. “You. This is your fault, you know. You stuck me here with this stupid bond.” I hold up my wrist. “You don’t care about me. You said yourself I’m nothing like your lost love. You’re selfish. Starting wars. Pursuing petty revenge. You want me to stay, to protect me, because you couldn’t protect her. It has nothing to do with me!”
Deathly silence hangs around us with the buzz of the crowd in the distance.
Sigurd is completely still, his gaze dark. My chest rises and falls with all my emotions poured out and laid bare. It’s too much. How dare he pretend to care after what he said the other night? How dare he order me to quit now after what I’ve been through?
Moria’s mouth is parted, and she blinks as if she’s just witnessed a brutal battle. Maybe she did, though not the kind I’d wager she’s used to.
I can barely make out Hawke and Mark in the corners of my vision, but neither moves.
Sigurd’s expression breaks. His shoulders droop, and he hangs his head.
The action cracks my heart. It is his fault, but this fury, this hate… He doesn’t deserve it. Not from me.
