Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
CAZIEL
Ienter without ceremony.
No herald. No announcement. No crown. Just the soft echo of my boots against the basalt floor and the low ripple of conversation that does not pause for me. Not anymore.
It’s better that way.
I move to the outer tier of the court, taking a place that’s neither central nor hidden.
Close enough to listen. Far enough to avoid being drawn in until I choose the time.
The chamber is circular, ringed with seats carved from volcanic stone and hung with flame-veined silk.
Every banner drips with gold thread, every noble with opinion.
And today, all of them are focused on one thing.
Not the Rite. Not the Brand. Not even my father’s absence.
Her.
They do not speak her name, I doubt most of them know it, but they speak of her presence. Her anomaly. Her threat.
“She is not unkindled,” says Councilor Erenath, the phrase passed down from the Flamebound like a riddle everyone is too proud to ask aloud.
“Not unkindled,” echoes a younger voice—Lady Taris, silver-haired and hungry. “But neither marked. An emberless spark. A disruption.”
“Unstable,” says another. “A fracture.”
“She could draw the wrong kind of attention.”
“She already has.”
“Let her be tested.”
“The Forge will burn out what cannot bond.”
“She is mortal,” someone offers. “She cannot withstand it.”
“She crossed into our flame. Let her withstand or fall.”
I watch the slow, careful trading of arguments across the chamber. No passion. No fire. Just bloodless calculation. They’re not debating her fate. They’re dividing it.
“She may not survive the trials,” one lord says. “But if she doesn’t, then we lose nothing. It would be the flame’s providence.”
“And if she proves something?”
“Then we take it. Use it. Claim it as the plan from the start.”
No one flinches at the cold calculation. I do not move, but something in me burns icier than the rest of the room. They would feed her to the Rite like parchment to flame.
“She has committed no crime,” says a younger woman near the lower dais. She was elevated to elder only in the last few flame cycles. A whisper, but firm. “She has harmed no one. Why imprison her?”
“Because she is unknown,” someone counters. “And unknowns are dangerous.” It’s a verbal slap, designed to silence, and the murmur of agreement in the crowd is all I can see, all I can hear. Kay asked again and again and again if she was going to be imprisoned. I treated her concern like conspiracy.
“If we cage all we do not understand, we will soon burn from the inside.” The words roll off my tongue into the silence, steady and precise.
A few heads turn. Not many. Erenath does. He always does. “And what would you propose, my Lord Caziel?”
He says it like a compliment. It isn’t. They only use my title to chastise.
“To release her?” comes another voice—Taris again, sharp as ever. “To let her walk the Flamehall and stir the Rite unchecked?”
Stir the Rite? This is how they will rewrite the history?
The Rite of Ascension was already rising, the flame had already marked several contenders, no connection to Kay.
Not unless they want to argue that the Emberbrand’s appearance made our borders weaker, pierced the veil over the wastelands.
They won’t. They’d have to follow that argument to the conclusion that the Flame is not powerful enough to call the Rite and also protect.
It flies in the very face of their own belief, but I do not like the way they are tying her breach to the Rise.
What do they stand to gain from lashing her to the Trials?
“To protect her?” someone scoffs. “You would shield a trespasser over your own?”
“I would not sacrifice a lamb to see if it bleats,” I say, and I will not be complicit letting others do so either.
Silence again.
Then—predictably—laughter from one corner. Cold. Thin.
“And what, then, would you have us do?” Erenath presses. “The Brand is calling. The Rite must rise. If not forged, she will fester. What is your solution, Ember Heir?”
I hate that title. I always have. I consider how to answer. Weighing strategy. Treading carefully.
“One more mark must rise before the rite can begin,” I say, the words like ash on my tongue.
“Are we at all concerned one will not?” Another elder asks. “That she has blocked or stolen it?”
“There is no evidence of that.” I stare Erenath down, daring him to refute me, but he does not. Neither does he cower. Pity.
“There’s no evidence of anything. We need to protect Crimson first.”
He means Daemari. He would let all others burn without a second thought. And he forgets, she’s not unkindled. The flame has given its own form of approval. That should be enough for most. It would have been before the Cobalt wars.
“Are you so quick to fear that which has not harmed you?” I let my glamour pulse, showing the sharp press of my teeth and the dark depths of my eyes.
Erenath doesn’t pull back, but the color bleeds from his face.
“We are Daemari. Born of flame and desire. We are not so easily cowed. She has been recognized by the Flame. That should be enough to assuage your fears. Or do we truly believe the Flame would mark one meant to hurt our people?”
I’m lying through my teeth. I wonder if the council knows it too.
“But she isn’t marked, Ember Heir.” Erenath’s smile is oily.
I clench my fists, clawing my rage back under control.
“The Flame reacts, she is kindled, but all we know is that she is strong enough to sway the Flame. We do not know for sure that she is safe. She could be something we’ve never seen before. ”
The snarl slips out before I can claw it back.
I don’t like showing that they get to me, but the deferential nod I get from Erenath soothes my nicked pride.
It is Solonar who draws attention back to other court matters.
I tune them all out, letting the rage simmer away to nothing in my bloodstream.
My thoughts are fire. They would have sacrificed her.
Without hesitation. Without Flame. Without knowing a single thing beyond the fact that she arrived where she should not be.
And I, fool that I am, promised her she would not be served up to appease the fear of the unknown.
I should have known better. The Ember Heir, the only child of the Asmodeus. Crowned in prophecy. Named heir before I was old enough to know what it cost. I was expected to take the mark, so I did. Too young. Now I’m expected to take the mantle, and rule Crimson when my father’s time is spent. No.
I once believed refusing the crown would be enough. That denying the flame would weaken my father’s grip. That if I left the game, the board would crumble beneath him. I was wrong. He found other ways to hold on. Other puppets to lift. Other lives to spend.
Like Isaeth.
I taste her name in the back of my throat and hate that it still burns.
She was never part of the plan. Not his, at least. She was clever.
Gentle. She wanted to remake the world—not rule it.
She never bowed. Never begged. She healed people who did not know they were broken.
She gave her all for this realm, for its people, even when they shut her out to the fringes of society, even as they deemed her less.
And when war came, my father saw her as a pawn to be used, and kept it from me because to him, her life was worth less than his vision of a future with me on the throne.
Because to him, love is weakness. Because to him, power is all that matters.
And for a time, I believed that denying him what he wanted would be punishment enough.
But today—
Today I saw the truth. He is not the only one who would burn Crimson to ash if it suited him.
There are others now who have taken up his cause.
Whispers turned wildfire. Some want to test the girl.
Others want to use her. None care what she wants.
None see her. Just like they never saw Isaeth.
Just like they never saw anything beyond what they could possess, control, ignite.
They think the Flame is power. They are wrong.
The Flame is desire. It is want. Need. Not the kind that climbs toward thrones or devours the world for glory. Real magic—the old kind, the kind that makes realms rise—is found in what we burn for.
What we fight to heal. To protect. To build.
What we love.
There is no magic in conquest. Only hunger. Only rot.
I buried my wants to keep the flame from rising.
I told myself it was noble. Necessary. But it was cowardice.
Silence does not save anyone. It only lets the wrong ones speak louder and I will not let her be sacrificed.
Not for the Rite. Not for the Daemari. Not for my father or even for Crimson. Not this time.
I find my old friend in the emberlit corridor just beyond the southern gallery after the crowds disperse. He stands where the flame runs low, and shadows gather in the grooves of the carved stone like dust that remembers too much. He does not look up as I approach.
“I heard a silence fall,” Solonar says, voice smooth and dry. “And I thought—surely my old friend has spoken.”
“Briefly.”
“Sharp, too. The court flinched.”
“As they were meant to. There is no honor in forced sacrifice.”
He smiles faintly and turns toward me, leaning against the curved wall as though it belongs to him.
“They were already sharpening blades,” he says. “You may have slowed the first cut.”
“I intend to stop the strike entirely.”
Solonar tilts his head. “Protective. I didn’t know you’d taken on a ward.”
I bristle at the word. “I was unaware as well.” Did she not insinuate the same?
“No,” he muses, “she wouldn’t make a very good one. Doesn’t listen. Speaks when she shouldn’t. Seems the type to trip over ceremonial steps.”
I exhale slowly. “You’ve observed her.”