Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CAZIEL
The stone beneath my boots is worn smooth from centuries of footfall, but tonight it feels sharp underfoot.
I should leave—should get out of my own head and return to the keep before anyone starts whispering about the Ember Heir sulking outside the contenders’ hall, but I do not move.
The barracks door creaks open behind me, wood groaning against old hinges.
I know the gait without turning. Confident.
Loose. Like everything in the world still belongs to him.
“Didn’t think I’d find you lurking like a wraith,” Varo drawls. “Have the shadows become your new court, or is that just for show?”
I glance at him over my shoulder. “Varo.”
“My Lord,” he answers with a smirk, stepping forward until we stand shoulder to shoulder, staring out across the training fields bathed in dying torchlight. “You always did prefer brooding exits.”
“I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to walk somewhere.”
“No, not permission. Just… strange. Seeing you here.” He gestures toward the barracks with his chin. “Checking up on your little firebrand?”
I exhale slowly. “She survived.”
“She barely stood.”
“She stood,” I snap, then lower my voice. “That’s what matters.”
Varo watches me a beat too long. “So, it’s true. You’ve taken a personal interest.”
“She’s under my instruction.”
“So was I, once.”
There is a pause. The silence between us is thick with things we do not say anymore. I remember when we fought side by side, when he laughed like the world could not touch us. We were almost brothers. I made him second in my command.
Until Isaeth.
Varo tilts his head, voice cooler now. “You think she’s strong enough for the Rite?”
“She’s willing to try.”
“She doesn’t know what trying costs.” He turns to me then. “But you do. Don’t you, my Lord.”
I hold his gaze. “That’s why I’m here.”
He huffs something that might be a laugh—or a warning. “You used to believe in the Rite. In the blood and glory of it. In what we it stood for.”
“I believe in honor,” I say. “And I believed in the Rite until I learned who pays the price for our glory.”
“You think I don’t know about price? About sacrifice?” His jaw tightens, his gaze steely. “You think I didn’t lose anything when she—You know nothing.” He cuts himself off. But I know who he means.
“You didn’t lose her,” I say quietly.
“That’s right,” he murmurs. “You did. And then you left the rest of us to clean up the mess. Alone.” The torch closest to us flickers, casting his expression in shifting shadow.
He looks older than I remember. Hardened, and not in the way battle makes you sharp—but in the way grief dulls you. “You stopped standing beside me.”
“You were still standing for something I couldn’t believe in anymore.”
He laughs. “I know you’re a Prince, but this is selfish even for you.
” Varo looks past me then, toward the narrow window slits that line the barracks wall.
“She’s not going to make it,” he says. I do not answer.
“She’s fire, sure, but she’ll burn out, and if you’re not careful, you’ll burn with her. ”
I step closer, just enough for him to feel it. “Then I’ll burn.”
There’s silence. Then, softly, almost fondly, he says, “See? Selfish. You always did play the martyr well.”
He moves to pass me, pausing at the door.
“I intend to win this, Caz. I still believe the throne matters. The realm and its people matter and Crimson needs someone willing to bear the price to keep her safe. The rest of us didn’t give up on everything just because you did.
” He opens the door, looks over his shoulder once more.
“Try not to fall for the human too hard.”
Varo disappears into the barracks, and I am left standing in the corridor with my teeth clenched and my brand pulsing low and steady across my chest, in time with my thundering heart. Not pain. Not heat. Pressure.
Try not to fall for the human too hard, he said. She’s not going to make it.
He meant it as a jab, but it hits somewhere deeper.
Somewhere I have not let myself look too closely.
It was easier when I thought of her as a responsibility.
An anomaly. A dangerous unknown in a game she did not ask to join.
Easier when I assumed Father was intending to make a spectacle of her but let her go.
Varo’s not wrong. She matters. More than she should. And that terrifies me.
I am left with the smell of scorched air, the echo of her voice in my mind, and the brand on my chest pulsing like it remembers what it is meant to carry.
It hums under my skin. Not the surface ache from training or pressure.
Deeper. Like a chord plucked inside my ribs that never quite stops vibrating.
It has been worse since the trial. Since the flame claimed Kay.
I trace the edge of the mark absently. I do not have to look to feel it—every line of that brand was cut into me before I had reached my twentieth year.
Before I understood what the war even was.
Before I realized what we were really fighting for.
They say men start wars and boys finish them.
I thought it was glory and heroic. Saving the realm and all those in it, but it never is.
I begged to be on the front. Begged to lead my own command.
My father agreed. Said it was necessary.
That Crimson best must lead the charge and if the Asmodeus’ son fell back, it would look like fear.
Like weakness. Like defeat. We might as well have rolled over and allowed Cobalt to encroach on our borders.
I believed him. War made heroes. It was a proving ground for strength, for purpose, for legacy.
But I wa wrong. It does not make anything.
It only destroys. It strips you down to your last breath and teaches you that there are no victors, no heroes, only survivors. And even they do not walk away whole.
I thought the Cobalt incursion was real. We all did. I thought we were defending the border. I thought the Flame would guide us because we were righteous, because it was ours. And I was good at it. Too good. Quick with a blade. Merciless when it mattered. I became what they wanted. Until Isaeth.
Gods, Isaeth.
Sometimes I still hear her laugh. That soft one, like she did not want to be caught enjoying something.
The way she used to wrap her shawl too tightly around her shoulders in the drafty wings of the citadel.
She worked in the healing halls, quieter than most. Never asked for more.
Never took up space. She was Vesperan. A servant.
Beneath me, by law. And she was everything.
I asked her once what she would want to do if she could be anything. She looked me in the eye and said, “Free.”
I told her I would give her her freedom.
One day. It wa a vow and I meant it. My father knew and he did not object, not aloud.
Just warned me not to cause a stir. “Not now,” he said.
“Not with war looming. Let the Flame quiet first. Let the realm settle.” Then we could talk about legitimacy, about choices.
About mates and bonds and forever after.
I was young enough to believe that. Stupid enough to trust him.
When I left for the front lines, I asked her to bond with me anyway.
I wanted my soul tied to hers and I was cocky enough to know I would come back alive.
I did not think I would come back broken.
None of us did. The camps were nothing like I had pictured.
It was not the laughing camaraderie of the training barracks.
It was not the celebration of a resounding victory.
It was dirt and ash and blood. It was the smell of charred innards strewn across the cracked ground.
It was fighting wraiths and hallucinations, trying to burn the false images to nothing as Cobalt wove their magic around us.
There was no beauty, no glory, not in a single moment spent there. And then I got her letter.
There’s a group of us being dispatched to the camp. There’s need for healers and I want to do my part for peace. I’ll find you when I arrive.
She never did.
I wrote her. Nothing.
I wrote my father. Silence.
I nearly left my post. Varo stopped me, reminded me we were stretched thin, that the realm would crumble if I abandoned command. So, I sent scouts. Then more. Then one last party. The rest of the group arrived at the camps and Isaeth never did.
I had never met Sarai before that day. Her voice shook when she gave me the news.
“Taken,” she said. “By Cobalt. From the Wastes.” But the wastes were the opposite direction.
No need for the party or traverse their treacherous desolation.
I remember standing in the mud, not feeling the cold.
Just blank. My guts torn out, twisted until I was an empty shell.
My sword hand clenched. I could not breathe right.
“She would not have gone alone. Not to the Wastes.” I had protested. They were not considered safe for the Vesperan.
Sarai nodded, eyes wide. “No, my Lord,” she had agreed.
I returned to Crimson. Demanded answers.
My father said she was gone. Before the party had left the keep.
She had gone out the wastes for reasons unknown and never returned, Cobalt’s signature in her wake.
That there had been an attempt at rescue, but not in time.
He did not tell me sooner because I could not afford to be distracted.
“Isaeth was a servant,” he had said, like that explained everything. “She knew her place. She understood the cost of war.”
He was wrong.
“She was mine,” I said.
He only shrugged. “And now she’s part of something greater. She died for her people.”
That is when I walked away. I have not worn that uniform since. Not even now.
The memory breaks like ash against my ribs.
I scrub my palm down my face, trying to shake it off.
I should not still feel this way. Should not still be this raw.
Something itches against the back of my skull.
A question, bleeding away at the edges. Something I am missing.
Something I cannot afford to mistake. Not this time.
I walk the edge of the courtyard, slow, measured steps to match the rhythm of my thoughts. I tell myself I am just thinking about strategy. About what she still needs to learn. But all I see is her—bracing under Varo’s weight, messy in her form, but refusing to back down.
She is not Isaeth.
But for the first time in years, I am afraid of losing someone again.
Isaeth believed the Realm could be better.
That we could be better. She had convictions sharp enough to carve kingdoms, but she was gentle where I was cruel.
She was never meant to be part of my world, not truly.
She was Vesperan. Flame-less. Powerless. Bound by laws older than our stones.
That was my sin. Not the love. Not the hope.
The orders. I stopped the blind obedience when she died.
I stopped playing my father’s games. I also stopped asking questions.
I left it at that. The pissy pouting Prince, sleepwalking through life to make a point.
And now… now Kay stands in the same citadel.
Wearing my tunic. Bearing the mark of the Rite. She burns like Isaeth never could.
She does not belong here. She should not have to fight to be seen.
To be remembered. But if she must fight, she will not fight alone.
Varo does not understand. He thinks I walked away because I was weak.
Because I lost something precious and could not stomach the aftermath.
But it was not grief that broke me. It was the realization that the glory I fought for was not real.
That the realm I bled for had no memory of the people it sacrificed.
We do not win wars. We just survive them.
If we are lucky. And luck has teeth.
The training fields are empty now, dusk bleeding soft violet into the sky.
I stand at the edge of the ring where she fought.
Where she did not fall. She is inside. Eating, maybe.
Or sleeping. Or pacing in that too-small alcove they have assigned to her until she earns something better.
She should have broken today. Her form was terrible, her footwork all over the place, and her stamina barely carried her through.
But she did not break. That matters. It means she can be taught.
I should not be here. Watching. Thinking.
Feeling. She is a contender, like the rest. A complication.
One I chose when I fetched her in the Wastes.
And again, when I did not let go. Or maybe it was never a choice.
Maybe it was fated. Maybe the Flame drove us toward each other, pulling her here.
Into this world. Because it was always meant to be her.
I tell myself I am only here because I want her to live.
That is all. Survival. She does not need to win.
Someone else will, probably Varo, or Lyra, if she decides she wants it badly enough.
But Kay? No. Not this time. The realm would not accept her.
The Rite would eat her alive if I gave it the chance. So, I will not.