Page 116 of Salem’s Rise

I survived. I won the Fourth Trial.

I’m one step closer to the boon, one step closer to Josh. Everything I’ve sacrificed to get here finally seems worth it.

Then I turn to Silas.

He’s still chained to his stake, fire spreading around his boots, snaking dangerously close to his ankles. He watches me through the smoke, his face tight with pain, and then… he smiles.

The truth begins to take shape, but my mind recoils from it.

“What did you do?”

“I think you know,” he says, his breathing labored now, strained.

I stumble toward him, stopping only when the heat underneath his stake becomes unbearable.

“Stop the fire. Save yourself too.”

“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head once. “Only enough magic for one.” A strained trace of his old arrogance touches his mouth, though pain has hollowed his face. “Those are the rules.”

Something inside me gives way, and I understand all at once what he has done. He has surrendered his chance at The Rites. The leadership he was raised to claim. And his life. He has given all of it up… for me.

The tears come before I can stop them, hot and useless. All the things he said, all the moments I dismissed as manipulation, rearrange themselves in my memory with heartbreaking precision. The warnings. The silences. The way he always appeared when I was in danger. The violence in him that never turned toward me. When he said he had feelings for me, that he cared about me, he meant it.

He’d always meant it.

I was such a fool.

Around us, the others slowly begin to break free from their chains. Rowan tears a current of air through his flames, the wind twisting around his stake until the fire is driven back and his chains release. Lena pulls earth upward in a wall of black soil that smothers the base of her stake. Georgina follows with a burst of air sharp enough to scatter sparks across the clearing.

Only Silas and Wren remain.

Wren is screaming now.

Silas is not.

“You let me out too soon,” I sob, the tears streaming down my face. “I could have saved myself. If you had just waited⁠—”

He shakes his head, and the sadness I see there is somehow worse than the fire.

“No,” he says. “The Fourth House never had an element to wield.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“You were never useful to me because of your House.” He coughs hard, his body folding as far as the chains allow before he forces himself upright again. “You always thought I had some ulterior motive, but I didn’t want to be your partner to use you. It wasn’t to keep tabs on you or to sabotage you. I only wanted to keep you safe. To protect you.”

The fire has completely engulfed the ground below him now.

“I only wanted you close,” he continues, the words breaking apart between ragged breaths. His expression softens in a way I have never seen before. No defenses. No cruelty. Nothing hidden from me anymore. “I only ever wanted you.”

“Silas, no.” I reach for him and recoil when the heat scorches my palms. “You can’t die.”

The flames begin to flicker around his lower legs, and the very bottom of his coat has begun to blacken and curl from the heat. His head has fallen forward, his breathing shallow enough that I can barely see it through the smoke. The fire reflects in his dark eyes when he forces them open again, and for one horrible second, I see acceptance there.

Not fear. Not regret.

Peace.

He has decided this is a fair price.