Chapter 44 #2
George hops up onto the basin’s edge beside my hand, the pads of his paws unbothered by the heat.
His whiskers twitch as he peers down into the molten glow, tail flicking in idle rhythm.
I watch him, and for a strange, fleeting moment, I wonder if he can sense the chamber’s pulse as I do.
Can he feel its subtle awareness, the almost sentient quality of its silence?
The Flame-watch is not just a place for numbers or ranks.
It is where the realm itself weighs its champions, and even now, even with my wariness, I feel the tug of that old compulsion: the need to see who stands where.
It is a dangerous impulse. The rankings are more than names. They are power, perception, the lifeblood of politics in Crimson. And in this chamber, the Flame does not lie. Still, I step forward.
I tell myself it is only to take stock of the Rite as it stands, to see how the others fared in Viridian. But the truth is heavier, lodged somewhere in my chest. I want to see her. I want to know her worth is recognized.
The basin’s surface is still and molten-dark, like a banked ember, but it hums under my skin.
It is waiting. I press my palm flat to the brass rim.
Heat licks at my hand, seeping through to my bones.
The basin exhales a slow rush of firelight, and the surface ripples as though I have disturbed a pond.
“Show me,” I murmur.
The molten glow twists, brightens, begins to divide.
Threads of flame unfurl from the center, some thick, steady, and sure, others wavering and frayed.
They reach upward until they hang in the air above the basin like a constellation written in fire.
Eight threads. All that remain. Three more extinguished in Viridian.
I recognize their fading embers at the edges, sharp flashes that sputter once, then vanish entirely into the dark.
The air always goes colder when a thread dies, even here in the heart of Flame-watch.
I scan the survivors, letting my mind catalog them by instinct.
I know the signature of each contender’s fire, the subtle shift in hue or the rhythm of their burn.
But it is the two at the center that hold my attention, and not by choice.
Varo’s Flame burns hot and lean, all precision and hunger.
The kind of fire that would burn itself to ash if no one reined it in.
It is steady, too steady for him to be flagging now.
And beside it, twining, flickering, pulsing, is Kay’s.
I expected to find her holding steady in the middle of the pack, but she is not.
Her Flame is right there with Varo, the two of them neck and neck.
If his Flame refuses to acknowledge her licking at his heels, her Flame refuses to yield even a fraction.
There is something unruly about it, a restless edge, as if it refuses to be told where it belongs.
I should not be surprised. She has been doing this from the moment she stepped into the Rite—ignoring the script, finding her own way through—but seeing it here, suspended in the Flame’s judgment, makes it undeniable.
Even as the council whispers their doubts, the realm refuses to echo them.
The thought I have been avoiding edges closer: Could she win?
It is not a question I have let myself linger on before.
My focus has been on keeping her alive, on maneuvering her past the next trap, the next trial.
I have not truly looked beyond the finish.
She was never meant to be here, a human in a Daemari rite, and yet she has taken everything thrown at her and turned it into something the others cannot match.
Could Crimson follow her?
I let my hand slip from the basin’s edge, but the flame keeps burning, showing me her thread.
It is steady, unflinching. I think of the endless years under my father’s rule, the sense that change would come only when the realm was ready.
Maybe that is a lie we have all told ourselves.
Maybe there is no ready, just someone willing to force it.
The idea leaves a strange weight in my chest.
George hops down from the rim, landing soft as a shadow. He paces a lazy half-circle around my boots before sitting, gaze fixed on the hovering threads. His ears flick when Kay’s flame shivers and pushes ahead of Varo’s for the briefest moment. I catch myself smiling before I can stop it.
It is dangerous, this pride I feel for her. Dangerous to me, to her, to whatever comes after. But it is there all the same, stubborn as the woman herself. And if she keeps climbing like this, the rest of Crimson will have to see it too.
The threads begin to fade as the basin cools, the light withdrawing back into molten shadow. My reflection wavers on the surface, eyes ember-bright in the dim room, the faint curl of a smile that feels like defiance.
She is not supposed to win. But the Flame is not listening to rules.
The basin should go still now, its purpose spent.
Instead, the molten shadow stirs. At first, I think it is the reflection—my reflection—catching on the emberlight from the sconces.
But then the surface brightens, quick and sharp, like someone dropped a coal into water.
The glow spreads in a pulse, not toward Kay’s thread or Varo’s, but toward me.
I feel it before I fully register what I am seeing. The warmth spikes, rushing up my arm where my hand still rests against the rim. Not burning—never burning—but deeper. Like it is trying to sink past flesh and into the marrow. I draw back a fraction. The light follows. That is new.
A memory cuts through the confusion, my father’s voice in the council chamber, that casual cruelty threaded through every word.
Careful, boy. Bonding changes the stakes.
He had said it with Isaeth in mind, dragging her name out into the open like a weapon.
But I am not bonded. Not to her. Not to anyone.
Even if it were possible—which it is not with humans—the Crimson bonds are not like the Gilded’s mate-for-life myths.
We do not have sudden, snapping threads of fate.
Ours take steps, deliberate ones, the kind you cannot just stumble into by accident.
Choice is part of the flame, as much as heat and light.
I have taken no such steps. Neither has she, and yet the glow lingers, pulsing once, twice, before fading back into the basin’s depths.
I tell myself it is nothing. A quirk of the magic. My presence here too soon after hers, the flame still carrying the echo of her trial.
Still….
The thought curls in, unwanted: if it were possible, would that make her safer?
Bonds have protections. In Crimson, blood or bond are the only ways to take another’s place in the Rite.
A loophole. But there is no scenario in which I get to keep her.
George’s tail flicks against my boot, pulling me out of the spiral.
He is staring at the basin like it just told him a joke I would not understand. Maybe he is right.
I run a hand over his fur, grounding myself in the ordinary warmth of him. “Come on,” I murmur. “We’ve seen enough.”
The basin’s surface still ripples when I turn away.
The doors seal behind me with a low, final thud, the lock sliding into place like the chamber itself is exhaling me back into the world.
Flame-watch always leaves a trace—heat under the skin, a faint ringing in the ears—but today it is something else. Something I cannot name.
George pads ahead as if he owns the corridor, tail flagged high, the pads of his paws whispering over the crimson-veined stone. He does not flinch at the occasional guard we pass. He does not even look at them. He has decided, somehow, that this place belongs to him.
“Stay close,” I murmur.
He stops dead, ears swiveling back at me, then deliberately turns and walks slower. The audacity.
I have seen the Rite grind contenders down to shadows of themselves. Kay is not fading, she is sharpening. Every trial hones her into something new. That is the kind of momentum one cannot fake, the kind that can turn into inevitability if no one gets in its way.
The corridor narrows as it curves upward, light spilling in from slitted windows. George bounds ahead, tail lashing, then disappears around a bend. A heartbeat later, he reappears, trotting back toward me with a sound that is suspiciously close to a scolding meow.
“I’m not the one who ran off,” I tell him.
He blinks slowly, as if judging me, then resumes his lead, this time with a little more patience.
I cannot remember a time before my father sat the throne. Before his shadow swallowed the citadel whole. But there must have been rulers before him. There must have been change, once. What would it look like if she were the one to bring it?
I can see it, unbidden: Kay at the council table, not draped in crimson silk like a decoration, but standing, leaning forward, her voice cutting through the noise. She would demand answers. She would listen. She would not surround herself with sycophants.
Would Crimson follow her? Or would it break her for trying?
A faint tang of iron drifts from the armory below as we pass another stairwell.
George presses against my leg, brushing fur over my trousers, and I reach down to scratch behind his ears.
He tilts his head into it, rumbling deep in his chest. The vibration is grounding.
I had not realized how much tension I was carrying until it eased beneath my palm, diffusing into his soft orange coat.
The flame’s reaction in the chamber tries to push back into my thoughts, but I shove it aside.
Bonds in Crimson do not just happen. My father was baiting me then, same as always, dragging Isaeth’s name into his games because he knows it stings like ash in an open wound.
I take the last set of steps two at a time, needing the motion, needing to keep from getting lost in the weight of it all.
George keeps pace beside me now, his stride matched to mine, a little sentinel in fur.
There is no such thing as the “right time” for change.
Maybe Crimson will never be ready, but she is.
George glances up at me then, as if he has read the thought, eyes catching the dim light like twin embers.
I almost ask him what he sees, but he is already trotting ahead, leading me toward the one place I want to be.