Chapter 26 #2
Lyra and Varo’s words echo long after the sound of sparring fills the room again.
Everyone here believes it — the Flame doesn’t flicker, the Brand can’t lie, faith burns clean.
You can see it in their eyes, the way they breathe in sync again once the silence breaks. It’s more than belief. It’s survival.
Sarai hesitated when I asked about the Flame.
Her voice went careful. She said these same things but didn’t sound convinced.
She never said it couldn’t be swayed, in fact, I think she might have implied it can be.
I think about that now as Varo’s “maybe” lingers in the air like smoke.
They can pretend the Flame’s will is clean, that it burns through lies and politics alike, but I’ve seen enough humans to know power never keeps its hands pure. And, maybe, Demons aren’t any better.
The room seems to exhale as the tension lifts, and I do too, but it doesn’t settle in me the same way. Because I can’t tell if the fire inside me belongs to the Flame… or if it’s something else entirely, and I don’t know if that matters.
Sleep doesn’t come easily. Not with the ache in my ribs or the burn still simmering under my skin. Not with Elira’s warning still hanging in the air like smoke. I toss. Shift. Breathe shallow and slow. George kneads the blanket beside me, his weight the only steady thing in my world.
Eventually, exhaustion pulls me under. But the dreams are sharp. Crimson and ash. Fire curling around the edges of memory. Caziel, watching from the arena wall with something unreadable in his eyes. A strange man in a metal box, three bigger men staring him down as we fall, fall, fall…
When I wake, it’s still dark, but someone’s there. I know the shape of his silence before I even look. Caziel sits on the low stool near the wall, elbows braced on his knees, cloak trailing behind him like spilled ink. His flame-cast eyes meet mine in the low light, steady and unblinking.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I whisper.
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Long enough.”
I push myself upright, wincing. “Is this part of the mentorship deal? Silent lurking?”
His mouth almost twitches. “I wanted to check your shoulder. And you were… unsettled.”
“You were watching me sleep?” I blink.
“I watch for movement,” he says softly. “It tells me what words don’t.”
It should be unsettling. But it’s not. It’s just him. He moves closer, kneeling beside the bed.
“Let me see.”
I shift the blanket down, exposing the mottled bruise along my ribs and the stiff line of my shoulder. He doesn’t touch me yet—just studies the damage like it’s a riddle to solve.
“You overcorrected after his first feint,” he says. “That’s how he got under your guard.”
“I noticed,” I mutter.
“Not fast enough.”
He lifts his hand and brushes his fingers lightly along the edge of the bruise. His touch is cool. Gentle. Almost reverent.
“You didn’t hesitate,” he murmurs. “That’s something.”
I look away. “I didn’t win.”
“You didn’t have to. You didn’t break.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out thin.
“You have a weird idea of survival.”
He just smiles, gentle as he smooths salve over my bruises. “Survival isn’t always about winning. Sometimes it’s just about being honest enough to keep going.”
“I feel like I’m out of my depth.” I tell him.
“I mean, I knew I was, but now I can see it. I am woefully underprepared for whatever comes next and I don’t fit in here.
” I wish I could go back with you. There’s a beat of silence.
“I just don’t understand why this all has to be so…
” I wrack my brain for the right words, thinking of the way Captain Rehn barked orders at us, “violent.” I shrug.
“You aren’t the first.” He says and my heart stutters.
“To think the Flame, the Rite, doesn’t have to be this way.
” I wait. Let him take his time. “She wasn’t Daemari either,” he says eventually.
“Not exactly. Her blood carried old bonds. Forgotten ones. The kind that come from the in-between—where roots and fire meet. Vesperan.”
I bite my lip to hide my surprise. Vesperan, like Sarai. Like the servers at dinner. Not someone with magic or whatever it is that talks to the mystical, all-knowing fire.
“Her name was Isaeth,” he says. “She was beautiful. Soft-spoken. Brilliant. Not the kind of brilliant that lights up a room. The kind that smolders until the whole room forgets what it was before she entered.”
I blink. That’s vivid. Painful, almost, because I can hear the care in his words. She was special to him. More than I want to hear, but this story is important. I push the prickles of jealousy down deep.
“She believed the flame could be guided,” he continues.
“Not wielded through fear but taught, cradled. Nurtured into something sacred again.” The smile on his face is all nostalgia and memory.
I feel heavy, my limbs aching as my eyes burn.
I swallow once, twice, as if I’m trying to hold back tears. I’m not sure why.
“You loved her?” I immediately want to swallow the words back down. It’s an inappropriate question. It doesn’t matter. It—
“I chose her.” He takes a deep breath. That answer again. Like choosing matters more than love. He said she was Vesperan. Maybe it did.
“And she chose you back.”
“Yes.” The quiet between us is soft now.
Not heavy. Just full. “She followed me into the Ember War,” he says.
“Refused to stay behind. Said peace was worth fighting for, even if she had to walk into hell to make her case.” My throat tightens.
I was to reach out, lay my hand on his forearm.
I don’t. “She was taken during a skirmish,” he says.
“Captured, supposedly. Killed. That’s the story the realm told. ”
“Supposedly?”
He meets my eyes. “There was no body. No ransom. No message. Just silence.” A chill rolls through me. “She was supposed to be forgotten,” he says bitterly. “No funeral. No name in the record-stone. No memorial. My father made sure of that.”
“Why?” I suck in a breath. “Because she wasn’t Daemari?”
“Because she was mine,” he corrects. “And he thought losing her would keep me bound to his war machine. Thought it would keep me blinded by rage and loss. Keep me loyal.” His laugh is hollow. “He misjudged where they lay.”
I whisper, “So it didn’t work?”
“Oh, it did.” He doesn’t look away. “For a while.”
The silence that follows isn’t comfortable. It’s charged—full of all the things he’s never said and the parts of him still scorched by them.
“Is that why you came to me after the brand? Why you stayed? Because I reminded you of—” of what? Of her? Of the fact he couldn’t save her? I should drop this whole conversation. Let it crumble around us like ash. But I can’t.
He doesn’t answer at first. “You screamed like she did.” My stomach knots.
“It wasn’t just pain,” he adds. “It was resistance. You weren’t submitting to the flame—you were surviving it.
” We sit for a long moment, George flicking his tail between us.
He hesitates. “I’m trying to learn from what I lost.”
I nod, unable to speak around the lump in my throat.
She was probably the kind of person people followed without knowing why.
I hate how much the thought hurts. More than the bruises and sore ribs.
Only I would fall through an interdemensional elevator shaft and end up with a crush not only on a demon prince, but an unavailable one.
A man pining after his long-lost love. I can’t compete with a memory. I can’t even compete with real life.
“I’m not her,” I say softly and his gaze snaps to mine.
“I know,” he says. “You’re nothing alike.”
It stings more than I expect. But before I can flinch, he adds—
“She moved like a sword stroke. Clean. Precise. You’re… a wildfire. Fierce. Uncontrolled. Brilliant in your own chaos.”
I exhale, feeling the stirring tendrils of heat in my gut. “Is that a compliment?”
His mouth twitches. “It’s a problem.” He sits finally, not across the room but close. George stirs on the blanket between us but doesn’t move. “She died believing we could fix this Realm,” he says. “That if enough of us stood up, the flame would stop being used as a leash.”
“Maybe she was right.” I look down at my hands. I’m not sure I’m allowed an opinion here, this isn’t my home, and the Flame isn’t my… whatever it is.
“She was,” he says. “And it got her killed.”
Silence again. But this time, I let it settle. I let the grief breathe.
“Does it scare you,” I ask after a while, “that the flame marked me?”
He swallows hard. “It surprised me. The Realm noticed you the same way it did her. And I do not know what scares me more,” he says. “That it did, or that I understood why.” When he turns to face me, the look in his eyes is haunted. “I cannot stand by again and do nothing. I refuse.”
His voice is lower now. A confession. “The moment it took you, I knew what it felt.” I meet his eyes.
“It saw a threat,” he says. “And a possibility.” Caziel stands, adjusting his cloak.
“Get some rest. It will help with the aches.” He pauses at the door, but doesn’t turn, leaving me to stare at the tousled strands of his dark hair.
His glamor shifts, fuzzing around the edges.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “Isaeth would have liked you.” And then he’s gone.
Leaving behind only the flicker of the lamp and the weight of things that burn but don’t quite kill you.
I stay frozen for a while. Breathing. Listening to the echo he left in the room, like his voice clung to the walls and refused to follow him out. George shifts and nudges his head beneath my hand, and I scratch behind his ear without looking.
She would have liked you.
The words replay, echoing through my body like a vibration, sticking to my sore ribs.
I’m jealous of her. God, how stupid is that?
I’m jealous of a woman who died. A woman who believed in things.
Who walked into fire with her spine straight and her voice soft and unwavering.
Who was chosen—not just with words, but with a kind of loyalty that still shakes a man like Caziel years later.
It’s not even really about him. Not just him.
It’s about being remembered like that. Held like that.
Kept like that. It’s about the way he said her name like it was carved into him.
Like she never left, not really. I’ve never been someone anyone kept.
I’ve been convenient. Or pleasant. Or useful.
Something to lean on in crisis, to lighten the load, to smile and fix and please.
I’ve never been someone’s first choice. I’ve never been a priority. Not since the accident.
Maybe that’s why I’m scared of being erased, even as I do my best to let it happen.
Because part of me already has been. Bit by bit.
Until I don’t even recognize the girl who once believed she could do something that mattered.
I glance down at George, who’s curled against me like I’m his entire world.
Who didn’t leave, even when I smelled like fire and pain.
He’d trade me for a piece of cheese without a second thought.
“I don’t want to disappear,” I whisper to him.
For the first time in my life, I want to push back. To fight. To do something with the time I have. I don’t want to be Isaeth. I don’t want to be a martyr or a memory or a ghost someone—anyone—grieves through gritted teeth.
I want to be here. Fully. Loudly, if I can manage it. Even if my voice shakes. Even if I’m not brave yet. Even if I’m not fire. I want someone to look at me and see me. And decide I’m worth choosing. Not because I’m useful. Or safe. Or convenient. But because I’m me. And that’s enough.
Even if I still have to work on believing I deserve it.