Chapter 14 #2
She doesn’t speak again. Just stands there with her back half-turned, arms crossed like she’s holding herself together.
The room is too quiet now. The air heavy with heat that has nowhere left to go.
I should leave. There’s nothing more to say.
Nothing she wants from me, and nothing I can offer.
But I stay, just a moment longer. Just long enough to see her fingers uncurl.
Long enough to see the smallest trembles in her shoulders shudder to a stop.
“I will speak to the court,” I say. “They are… considering options. I will see to it that you are protected.”
She turns then to meet my eyes. Her voice is hoarse.
“And what does protected look like here? Chains? Fireproof boots? Or a really fancy ceremonial sword I’m not allowed to use?”
I almost smile. But I don’t.
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “But I will do what I can.”
A beat of silence.
“That’s not nothing,” she says.
I nod once—Formal. Clipped—and turn to leave, hand brushing the doorway.
I pause. Not for drama. Not for effect. I feel it—this thread between us. Something pulled taut. Barely seen, not even fully felt. Something real.
“You surprised them,” I say again, voice softer now. “The court. The others. My father.”
She exhales a dry breath.
“Good.”
A beat.
“Did I surprise you?” Her voice isn’t teasing now. Not soft, either.
“Yes,” I say finally. “And no.”
Her brow furrows. She stands near the basin, hair dark with sweat, the curve of her spine betraying how tired she really is.
But her chin is lifted. Her eyes steady.
And I know my answer. I knew she’d be difficult.
I knew she’d be inconvenient. I knew she wouldn’t be restful, or pliable, or easy to remove.
But I hadn’t expected this tug. How much she would get under my skin, burrowing deep into the soft squishy heat of my organs.
How much her presence in the ring would feel like a blade pressed against my throat, or maybe something else.
Something I thought long cauterized.
“You entered the ring. You fought. You bled. I—”
“You didn’t think I would?” She nods, slowly, like that’s the answer she expected.
“I hadn’t decided one way or another, but I did suspect,” I add, “that you wouldn’t make it easy for anyone.”
That gets a huff of a laugh from her.
“No. I’m not great at easy.” She turns back to the basin and wrings out the cloth again, then sets it aside.
“Aren’t you?”
Her smirk causes the muscles in my belly to contract.
“Careful Ember Heir. Questions like that? Where I’m from? They get a man slapped.”
The flame must be losing the translation somewhere. “I meant you seem remarkably calm under pressure. Is that not easy?”
Laughter bursts out of her. Shimmering in the room between us. “That makes more sense. Easy back home means…” her gaze drifts to me and she grins again. It’s a wicked twist of her lips and something lurches in my chest in response. “Something else.”
“Like what?”
Her head tips to the side, her hair still stuck to her head with sweat as she jams her hands on her hips. The cut on her arm is still fresh, raw, but the bleeding has slowed.
“It’s another way to say someone gets around.”
The flame isn’t any better with that phrase because my instinct is to ask if they have chariots in her world too? Portals that open and shut at the flame’s will, but that also doesn’t fit.
“A slut,” she continues, clearly reading my confusion. “Loose, wanton.”
I shake my head.
“A strumpet, hussy, or harridan? Floozy? Harlot?” She purses her lips. “I’m running out of synonyms that you might have heard of. “A whore? She sleeps with a lot of people?”
Oh. Oh!
“And it’s a bad thing in your world?”
“It’s often used as an insult, especially when men say it about women, but I personally don’t see anything wrong with owning one’s sexuality and desires. Sex is fun. When between two consenting adults, I don’t see why it needs to be anyone else’ business.”
“I concur. It was not intended as an insult. I have no…awareness of your,” I swallow, “Sexual desires.”
“That’s good to know, Caz.” Her laugh twists something in my gut.
“I find it hard to believe you can be a… how old are you?” She waves her own question away as I open my mouth to answer.
“Doesn’t matter, you’re clearly a full-grown version.
I find it hard to believe your society wouldn’t have some kind of pathological insult about sex.
Doesn’t every culture? I imagine a world built on desire would have several.
Lumestra. That’s a word I heard today from some of the other contenders.
That’s whore, right? Or some similar kind of insult? ”
The blood boils in my veins and I can feel my hold on my glamor flicker.
“You mistake the word. A Lumestra is no insult. They are flame-bearers—revered, not reviled. Their art is to remind us that passion is sacred, that desire shapes creation as much as steel and stone. To stand in their presence is to be reminded that fire is more than war. They do not cheapen themselves when they share their bodies. They refine us.”
“So not an insult?”
“Call someone a Lumestra and you name her dangerous, revered, untouchable.”
“And if I want to insult?” Her teeth sink into her lower lip.
“You can use the term veythar,” I tell her, “It’s not just physical desires, they’re something else entirely.
A veythar is hollowed, greedy. Chasing down every whim until even their hunger taste of ash.
A veythar takes and takes without grace.
Without gratitude. They squander the flame until nothing remains but smoke. ”
“Are they gender specific?” Kay asks and I frown.
“Why would they be? The Lumestra honors the Flame and is honored in return. The veythar gorges on it until they are consumed. Both are actions that can be undertaken by any.”
“Help me,” she says. The words are soft, but solid. “You’re the Ember Heir, right? You know this place. You’ve survived it. You know him.” She means my father. “The guy they’re all trying to unseat.”
I brace myself. Now comes the ask.
Take my place.
Burn for me.
Die in my stead.
It’s what anyone would do. Anyone raised in a world where survival is traded for favor. But instead, she surprises me. Again.
“I’m sorry,” she says. I blink. She’s looking at me with eyes full of regret. “I didn’t mean to take it from you. The spot. Or whatever this was supposed to be.”
My jaw tightens. She keeps going.
“If you want it back, if there’s a way to fix that—I’ll do what you tell me. I’ll step aside.”
My chest goes still.
“I don’t want to fight you,” she adds. “Or be the reason you lose something that mattered.”
I don’t speak. I’m still waiting for the catch and because the ache beneath my ribs is too unfamiliar to name.
“But if you’re not going to take it…” she swallows, “will you teach me?”
The words land like a blow to the sternum. She looks up, eyes searching mine.
“Please. Don’t let me go into this blind. I don’t need to win. I don’t care about thrones or power or realms made of fire and glass. I just want to walk away from this when it’s over and that last conversation just made me painfully aware that I’m very much out of my depth.”
I stare at her for a moment longer. I have no idea what she’s just done to me. But I know I’ll never see her the same way again. She seems to mistake my silence for resistance and lifts her hands in surrender.
“And before you say anything—I know, okay? I’m not exactly prime contender material.
I could barely lift the damn sword in the ring.
” She gestures to herself with a wry snort.
“The most fight training I’ve had is learning how to wrestle a rescue husky named Theodorable into a bathtub.
Or give George his meds without losing a finger. ”
“George,” I repeat, confused.
“My cat.”
Cat?
She shrugs.
“That was mostly oven mitts and divine intervention.”
And somehow that’s what breaks the rest of me open. Not the fire. Not the fear. The oven mitts. I find myself nodding. Slow. Measured.
“Yes,” I say.
She blinks. “Yes?”
“I will train you.” A pause “You won’t go into this alone.”
She breathes out. A half laugh, half a sob she doesn’t let free. I step back toward the door, letting the promise settle between us.
“Rest,” I tell her. “Tomorrow we begin.”
She nods once. Then adds, more to herself than me, “I’m good at surviving.”
I believe her, but I also know now she doesn’t have to do it alone.