Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
KAY
The knock on the door startles me. It is not soft, like Sarai’s.
This one is sharp. Precise. The kind of knock that expects obedience.
I sit up too fast and immediately regret it.
My neck aches. My spine feels like it’s been fused to the mattress.
I don’t even remember falling asleep. Not really.
More like I blacked out with my eyes open. No dreams this time though.
For a second, I think—hope—it is Caziel.
I want to pretend I don’t know why, but I do.
He’s easy on the eyes, and while not necessarily kind, he was respectful during our trek through the city.
Not to mention an orgasm or two would be a nice distraction and probably help with the stiffness.
I’ve clearly read one too many demon romances, but a girl can dream. I definitely wouldn’t turn him down.
I scrub a hand over my face and mutter, “Nope. Not doing that.”
Still, I hesitate before opening the door.
Just for a second. Enough to let the hope twist into something quieter.
It’s not Caz. It’s not Sarai either. It’s someone I haven’t seen before.
Tall, Daemari—of course—with slick dark hair braided over one shoulder and robes so perfectly draped they look like they were poured onto him.
His skin is pale gold, and his eyes burn like low coals.
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak. Just steps back and gestures for me to follow.
I almost ask if he is here for the assessment, but I stop myself.
Obviously, he is, and the look in his eyes says he has no interest in conversation.
I glance at the hallway behind him, then down at myself.
The robe from last night is still clean, somehow.
My hair’s a little wild, but I don’t think anyone’s grading on presentation.
I follow.
The corridors are unfamiliar. Not that I knew many of them to begin with, but this is a different part of the castle. Darker, deeper, cut from heavier stone.
My escort doesn’t speak. I try once, casually,
“So, just checking, are we walking to my death or to a moderately uncomfortable breakfast?”
He doesn’t reply. Doesn’t even blink. I resist the urge to make another joke just to fill the silence.
Instead, I watch the walls. There are few windows.
Fewer curves. The walls seem to narrow as we go.
There are sconces every few yards, mounted in brackets that look like curling claws.
The flames inside don’t flicker like real fire.
They move more like water—slow and rhythmic. Like they’re breathing.
Or listening.
As we walk, they shift. Not a lot. Just a tilt here, a bend there.
But always as we pass. Like they’re reacting to something.
Reaching. Symbols I haven’t seen before line the stone.
These aren’t the smooth spirals carved near my room, but sharper ones, more geometric.
Some of them glow faintly as we pass, like embers flaring in the dark.
I glance back. They dim again once I’ve past.
“Is that normal?” I ask. No answer, of course. “Cool. Love the mystical ambiance. Very mood board of doom.”
Still nothing. He leads me down another hall, this one steeper, and I realize I’m being taken deeper.
Beneath the castle, maybe. Or to a part of it that doesn’t want to be found.
My stomach flips. Not with fear, with the sense that something’s building.
Some weight I haven’t earned pressing against the back of my skull.
I keep walking. And I wonder how magic works in Crimson.
Something to do with flame with fire. Is it something they study?
Channel? Are those glowing runes reacting to me or scanning me or preparing to eat me?
Do they have rules? Do they have limits? Or is everything here just flame and want and the laws of physics screaming quietly in a corner?
We round one last corner and stop in front of a tall, arching doorway. This one isn’t carved from stone. It’s metal—dark and red-black, with a symbol at the top that looks like a stylized flame with a vertical slash through the center.
I swallow. The escort gestures for me to enter. I step forward.
The door opens not with a creak or groan, but a hush—like silk sliding over skin.
Inside, the room is massive. Cathedral-high, hexagonal, built of the same black-red stone as the Citadel walls but polished to a mirror sheen.
Every surface gleams faintly, like the whole chamber was carved from obsidian and left to soak in firelight.
There are no windows. No throne. No banners.
Just a floor of inlaid bronze, each tile etched with runes I can’t read, and seven towering braziers spaced around the edges of the chamber.
The flames inside them are wrong. Not red.
Not yellow. They burn in hues I don’t have words for—colors that feel like heat and silence and grief all at once.
And in the center of it all stands a ring of figures.
Seven of them. Hooded. Motionless. Draped in robes of black and ember-gold, each one taller than the last. Their faces are hidden in deep shadows, though the firelight should be enough to reveal them.
I can’t tell if they’re Daemari or something else.
And for one dizzy moment, I wonder if they’re statues. Until the closest one turns its head.
I freeze mid-step.
The door closes behind me. Soft. Final. I’m alone in the center of a room designed for judgment. Of course. I take a breath. Shallow. Quiet. I don’t move any closer than I have to. No one speaks at first. The silence stretches out, long and brittle.
And then one of them leans slightly forward and says, “It stirs.”
Their voice is low. Not raspy—just old. Dusty. Like a forgotten book opening in a sealed library.
Another follows: “It does not burn.”
“It is out of place,” murmurs a third, voice higher, female maybe. “Out of order. Out of flame.”
I can’t tell if they mean me or the fire in the center of the room.
“She walks with a shadow that is not her own.”
“She comes untouched.”
“She comes unknown.”
I clear my throat. “Uh, she’s still right here, by the way.”
The silence that follows is almost amused.
Another voice speaks. This one deeper than the rest. Smooth, careful. “Do you know what you are, anomaly?”
“Human?” I try. “Presumably.” A flicker of something moves through the flames in the braziers. Almost like a laugh, or a wind that doesn’t exist.
“Presumption is dangerous here.”
“Yeah,” I clear my throat, “I got that memo.”
The room hums. Not sound, just pressure. Like something beneath the stone is shifting. Watching.
Another voice: “You crossed into flame without kindling.”
“You do not match the spark.”
“You do not match the ash.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I say, more defensively than I intend. But also, I have no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe I did.
“Intention is not required,” someone whispers. “Only resonance.”
“What does that mean?” I ask. “What resonance?”
But they do not answer. They never do. They ask questions, overlapping, never waiting for me to respond:
“Do you dream of fire?”
“Do you ache when it rains?”
“Has your shadow ever spoken back?”
“What the hell—” I start to say, but they press forward.
“Have you ever forgotten your own name?”
“Has a wound ever bled gold?”
“Have you kissed the dark and not recoiled?”
“I don’t—” My voice falters. “No. I do not know. None of that makes sense.”
“Neither do you,” one of them says. “Yet here you are.”
“I didn’t ask to be,” I snap, before I can stop myself.
A long, humming, awful silence. One of the flames behind me sputters. Another flares. Something shifts in the runes beneath my feet, and I feel it like heat licking the edge of my spine. But it doesn’t burn. It just waits.
“You feel nothing,” says the first voice again. “And yet everything listens.”
One by one, the hooded figures step back.
None turn. None speak again.
The central brazier flares blue.
And from the shadows, a different voice says—flat and final—
“She does not burn. But she is not unkindled.”
The room exhales. The flames dim. And the door behind me opens again.
I don’t move. My legs feel like they belong to someone else. My chest is tight. My skin prickles with heat that isn’t heat, like the afterglow of lightning or the moment right before a burn that never comes.
She does not burn. But she is not unkindled.
I don’t know what the fuck that means, and frankly I don’t really want to. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it feels like a line drawn in ash. Like someone etched it into the record books of this place and underlined it twice.
Not one of them. Not not one of them either. Just wrong enough to be noticed. I exhale slowly and step backward. One foot, then another. No one calls after me. No one follows.
I make my way back to the big stone door, The brazier flames are dim now, casting long, warped shadows across the black floor. The seven figures are already retreating to the benches along the outer walls, their robes folding into the dark like wings.
By the time I reach the threshold, it’s like they were never there.
The hall outside is still empty. Still cold.
I lean against the wall just past the arch and scrub a hand down my face.
I wasn’t touched. I wasn’t harmed. But I feel…
unmade. Like their words carved me open in places I didn’t know were soft.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but it’s long enough that I start replaying the questions in my head.
Have you ever forgotten your own name?
Has your shadow ever spoken back?
I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to turn around and scream that none of this makes any damn sense.
But instead, I whisper, “What the hell are you people?”
The wall doesn’t answer. Neither do the flames. But I swear—for one terrible second—I feel something hum behind my ribs.
Not heat. Not pain. Pressure.