Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
KAY
Iknow I’m dreaming.
The air tastes too sweet, too heavy—like spun sugar melting into smoke.
Music drifts from nowhere. A carousel tune, but wrong: warped by distance, slowed until it beats like a pulse beneath the floor.
Lights spin in a ring of gold, crimson, violet—each rimmed in black, as if every color carries its own shadow.
The ground hums underfoot. Threads rise faintly through the floorboards, glowing lines of dark glass. They move when I breathe.
Horses circle past—too bright, too still. Their eyes shine like polished obsidian, reflecting light that isn’t there. Each carries a name I almost know. A streetlight. A clinic door. The sound of a bell. The world turns. The air flares with heat.
Caziel stands at the edge of the carousel—half in shadow, half in flame. His outline wavers like he’s caught between worlds, every breath making the darkness bend around him.
“Kay.”
The voice comes from everywhere at once—under my skin, behind my ribs, inside the hum of the threads.
“I’m here.”
When I reach for him, the air fractures like glass. My reflection lingers—eyes ringed with black, a flicker of something living inside the dark. The threads between us stretch, gleaming obsidian shot through with crimson light. They tremble when he speaks again.
“Don’t be afraid.”
A bell chimes. The music falters.
The carousel spins faster. Faces blur into streaks of light: my mother, George’s paw, the man from the elevator. His lips move out of sync with the motion, voice catching in the hum of the ride.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “So sorry.
The lights collapse inward, bleeding toward black.
Caziel’s voice cuts through the dark, closer now, steady and certain.
“Find your way out.”
Everything shatters.
The colors fold into a single thread, black as night and glimmering faintly red where it touches my skin. It hums once, deep and low, before burning away. And I fall—through silence, through shadow, through myself.
Iwake before the bell. The world isn’t spinning anymore, but my stomach still thinks it is.
My cheeks are wet, my ribs aching from some remembered fall.
No dreams. No sound. Just the weight of silence pressing on my ribs.
For a moment, I don’t move. The air feels too still.
Like something’s missing. It takes a few seconds before I realize what it is.
George isn’t here. My throat tightens as I sit up and scan the space beneath my bunk, checking the corner where he sometimes curls in the shadows. Nothing.
I pat my jacket. Shake out the folded blanket at the foot of my bed.
I don’t even think—I just search. Even in places he couldn’t possibly fit, my heart hammering.
Like if I move fast enough, I’ll find him.
But he’s not here and I feel like I’ve lost him again.
The grief that hits me isn’t loud. It doesn’t scream.
It just folds itself neatly beneath my ribs, presses in, and stays. Like it was always there waiting.
I swallow hard and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
The floor is cold against my feet, but I don’t flinch.
I don’t do anything. I sit there for a long minute, staring at nothing, hands curled into the blanket.
The bunk creaks faintly as I move. The others are still asleep—soft breathing, the occasional shift of a limb or the rustle of sheets—but it all feels miles away.
There’s a wrongness in me. A hollow ache where something should be.
I’m not crying. Not shaking. But I feel like I should be. And that’s worse.
I get dressed slowly. The uniform still fits, but it doesn’t feel like mine anymore.
My hands keep fumbling at the fastenings.
My boots are scuffed. Everything’s just slightly off.
Like my body forgot how to be mine. I braid my hair too tightly, even though no one’s looking.
Just to feel like I’m controlling something.
The walk to the water basin feels longer than it should.
My legs are steady, but my steps don’t feel right.
Like I’m wearing someone else’s weight. Someone else’s history.
I splash my face. The cold bites, but it doesn’t wake me up.
I wipe my hands dry and look down into the basin’s surface, half-expecting something to leap out of the reflection at me. But it’s just water. Just a girl.
Still me.
Mostly.
I don’t know what I expected. Scars? Smoke? A mark across my face?
No. That would be too easy.
I dry off with a cloth and stand there for a while, listening to the slow breath of the walls. The flame always seems to hum in the background here. I never noticed it before, but now I can’t un-hear it. It’s constant. Like it knows something I don’t.
The contender hall hums with low voices, the metallic scrape of utensils on stone, the faint hiss of steam.
I keep my head down, tray in hand, and slide into an empty space near the far end of the bench.
The table’s warmth seeps into my palms — steady, alive, almost breathing.
Someone sits beside me without a sound and when I glance up, Nyxen Vale is staring back at me.
Their presence doesn’t announce itself; it gathers.
Light seems to lean away from them, bending just enough to make it hard to tell where they end and the world begins.
Caziel’s glamor flickers when he loses control, like cracks in a mask.
Nyxen’s shadows, though, are not a disguise.
They’re part of them. A living outline that moves when they breathe.
“Morning,” they murmur. Their voice carries the calm of a still lake.
“Is it?” My voice sounds rough in comparison.
A pause, then the faintest tilt of their head. “You slept.”
“Define slept.”
That earns the ghost of a smile. “Dreamed, then.”
I look down at my plate. “Something like that.”
They study me for a moment, not the way Caziel does, searching for strategy or strength, but like they’re tracing the shape of a ripple.
“You’ve been touched,” they say quietly. “The shadows remember.”
My throat tightens. “What does that mean?”
“The ring around your irises.” Their gloved fingers motion vaguely near their own eyes. “Not Flame. Reflection. Obsidian recognizes its own.”
Obsidian. The thread? I lift my hand as if I can wipe the evidence away. I’m not sure why, it’s not like Caziel would have broken any rules just to help me, right?
I force a shaky laugh. “That sounds ominous.”
Nyxen hums. “Only if you fight it.” Their silhouette softens, the air shimmering faintly where the torchlight meets their shoulder. “You see truth when others see light. That’s all the realm asks — to remember what was lost and not look away.”
Something in me stirs at that. The dream. The hum under my skin. The way Caziel’s magic flickered like it was breaking open, not apart.
“You talk like you’ve been there,” I say.
Nyxen’s gaze drifts toward the hall’s dark corners. “In a way, I never left.”
The warmth in my chest falters.
“That supposed to be comforting?”
“It’s supposed to be honest.” They rise, tray in hand, their outline already blurring. “Eat. You’ll need the strength. Obsidian doesn’t test what you can fight — only what you can carry.”
Movement across the hall catches my eye.
Varo is halfway down the long table, boots on the bench rung, leaning back like he owns the world.
I contain my eye roll, barely, because sprawled under his chair—George.
My cat. Happy as a sun-warmed stone. Varo breaks off strips of dried meat and drops them one at a time.
George bats, misses, pounces, wins. Varo smirks like he’s training a recruit.
I blink. “Why is my cat with the one person here who actively hates my existence?”
Nyxen doesn’t look up. “Varo doesn’t hate you. He hates effort. You take effort.”
“That sounds like hate.”
“George requires no effort. Varo respects efficiency.”
No effort? I’d like to see the man trim George’s nails or feed him his heart worm meds. I watch Varo flick another piece. George chirps. Varo leans down and scratches under his chin like they’ve done this before.
“Did he steal him?” I ask.
“No,” Nyxen says. “If Varo took something, you’d know. Someone gave him the cat. Or he volunteered.”
“Varo volunteered?”
Nyxen finally looks up, amused. “Maybe the cat picked him.”
George glances over, catches my eye, and meows like where’ve you been, slow human?
This guy has snacks. Varo follows the cat’s line of sight, sees me, and lifts his chin in a lazy salute that manages to be both mocking and weirdly…
respectful? I don’t know what to do with that, so I look away first. George is still curled under Varo’s bench like he owns the place.
The dried meat is gone, and now he’s licking his paws while Varo sips from a dark ceramic cup, unreadable as ever.
I cross the room before I can second-guess it.
Varo doesn’t look up. “If you’re here to reclaim your animal, you’ll have to pry him loose.”
“He’s mine.”
“Sure he is,” he says flatly. “He just doesn’t seem to care.”
George chirps and winds around Varo’s ankle like a traitor. I crouch, reaching for George, but Varo shifts his foot, blocking me. The move is not harsh, but precise.
“He’s not done,” he says simply.
“He’s my cat.”
“You left,” he says. “He stayed.”
Something in his voice needles. Not cruel. Not fond. Just… deliberate. George chirps and noses at Varo’s hand. The guy tears off a piece of his bread roll and flicks it toward him.
I straighten slowly. “You’re seriously feeding him table scraps?”
“He likes it.” A beat. “And you do it all the time.” My breath catches. Varo’s gaze sharpens. Just slightly. “Something is different about you.”
I fold my arms. “You’re not the first to say that.”
He sets his cup down. Still not looking at me.
“Don’t be cute. I don’t care what happened last night, but something left its teeth in you.”