Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
KAY
When the door clicks open, I don’t even look up.
I’m sprawled across Caziel’s bed, limbs heavy, cheek mashed into the pillow that still smells like him.
I’ve been awake for a while, but moving seems optional.
The idea of staying here all day—warm sheets, no trials, no contenders—feels decadent. Almost holy.
“You have been here since I left,” Caz says, shutting the door behind him, a smile teases the corner of his lips.
I make a vague sound into the pillow. “It’s called a break. You should try it.”
There’s a pause as he drops his glamor, then his voice comes closer, laced with suspicion. “The Umbral thread.”
I roll onto my back, blinking up at him. It’s still disorienting, that moment where the man I’ve been staring at all this time becomes something more. My stomach does a strange, warm flip.
“Yes, you gave it to me.”
“I know,” he says, crossing to the bed, “but I did not expect you to let it dig its claws in this fast.”
“Excuse me? I’m fine,” I say, even though fine apparently means I’d rather sink into the mattress than train. “Besides, I’ve needed exactly zero self-defense so far. Let me have my staycation.”
His mouth curves, faint but knowing.
“The threads are meant to affect you ahead of the trial. That is half the reason I give them to you, so you will know what to expect when you step through the archway. It makes the difference between awareness and drowning in it.”
“And the other half?” I ask warily.
His eyes hold mine in a way that makes my pulse skip. “If you are going to face it, I would rather you face it here. With me.”
The Umbral thread hums again, urging me to sink back into the pillows, to let him come closer, to let everything else fade. He is watching me too closely, like he knows exactly what it is doing to me, and maybe he does. I just can’t bring myself to care right now.
That makes me blink. “Wait, you agree with me?”
“Yes,” he says simply. “But you have been training for a reason. The other contenders grew up versed in combat. It is universal here. Every Daemari learns to fight. I needed you to be able to defend yourself if one of them decided to make you their next demonstration, or if the Rite decided to fight back with claws.” His gaze lingers, a flicker of something like pride there.
“You have done well enough that none have tried.”
That unexpected note of approval sends a little spark through me, but I shake my head. “So, no more sparring?”
His expression shifts. “Not for Umbral.”
I frown. “And why not?”
“Because Umbral does not strike with a blade,” he says, voice lower now. “It does not force you into a fight. It convinces you there is no need to have one.”
I laugh once, short and disbelieving. “That’s not exactly terrifying.” Honestly? It sounds like a dream. A good one.
“Not now,” he agrees, studying me like he’s trying to measure how far the thread has gotten under my skin.
“But when you are knee-deep in it, you will not notice you have stopped moving until it is too late. Stillness can kill as quickly as steel. You will not see it coming. You will not think to fight.”
There’s an edge there I don’t usually hear from him, a note of genuine worry he is trying to bury under logic.
I open my mouth to argue, but the weight in my chest makes it harder than it should be.
The Umbral thread hums again, urging me to sink back into the pillows, to let him come closer, to let everything else fade.
He’s watching me too closely, like he knows exactly how heavy my limbs feel, and maybe he does.
His jaw works, but instead of snapping at me, he sits on the edge of the bed. “No weapons this time.”
I lift a brow. “Oh?”
“No point. You will not need to fight anything you can stab. I can teach you here,” he says. “If you do not want to get up, we can use the bed.”
There’s a thread of challenge in his tone, but the way he braces one knee on the mattress makes it feel less like training and more like something else entirely. He leans over me, close enough that the heat rolling off him could burn away whatever lethargy has settled in my bones.
“Umbral convinces you to be still. To forget what matters. You will think you are simply taking a rest, but you can bleed out before you realize you have stopped moving.”
I swallow. “So don’t stop.”
His mouth curves, but it’s not a smile.
“Don’t stop,” he agrees, voice low. “Not even when rest feels good.”
That lands somewhere dangerous. My skin prickles. The line between training and something more starts to blur as he takes my wrist and guides my hand up between us. Not to grip a weapon, but to rest against the steady beat of his heart below the Embermark.
“Anchor here,” he says, his voice quieter now. “If you can remember this, you can remember to move.” The air shifts with him—heavier, warmer—and it takes effort to remind myself to breathe.
“What are we doing?”
“Teaching you how to stay awake in Umbral,” he says, but there’s a faint rasp in his voice now, like the idea costs him more than he wants to admit.
I glance toward the door. “You’re not exactly subtle when you drop the glamor. Someone might walk in.”
“Then we should give them something to talk about.” He says it so casually that heat spikes in my cheeks and my stomach before I can stop it.
The air between us feels thinner. Laced with that same tug in my chest, the thread’s pull amplified by him standing so close.
My body wants to lean into it, into him, even though my brain keeps whispering that this is a bad idea if I want to concentrate.
He straightens only long enough to strip off his coat, and it feels like the room exhales. He’s taller, broader, darker, every inch of him shadow, and emberlight. Horns curving sleek above his head, as the Embermark flares faintly along his throat. My breath catches without permission.
“Still tired?” he asks, and the way his voice wraps around the words makes the Umbral thread vibrate in my chest.
“Maybe,” I say, though it comes out softer and far breathier than I intended.
“Then we start here.” His hands find mine, warm and steady. “Focus. Feel the thread’s pull. Do not fight it, that wastes energy. Acknowledge it. Then remind yourself why you are here.”
He guides my palms up to his chest again, just over the steady burn of his embermark. His skin is hot under my touch, every beat of his heart grounding in a way that has nothing to do with magic.
“This is what stillness will feel like,” he murmurs. “Comfort. Heat. Safety. But you will be in an arena where that comfort is a lie.”
His tail curls lazily behind me, just brushing my leg, deliberate enough that I know it’s not an accident. My pulse trips, my body leaning in even though my mind keeps trying to back away from the invitation.
“And if I let it?” My voice is hushed now, almost as if the shadows have swallowed the rest. He studies me for a long moment, eyes hooded but burning.
“Then Umbral wins.”
For a second, I think he’s going to kiss me, and the thought alone is enough to make me forget why we’re doing all of this. Instead, he leans back, breaking contact. The loss is sharper than it should be, and I have to drag in a breath to keep from pulling him back.
“You see?” he says quietly. “That’s how fast it happens.”
And just like that, the tension in the room becomes something else entirely.
A line stretched taut between wanting and warning, both humming in my chest like the thread itself.
The space between us feels like a living thing now, not just the pull of the Umbral thread, but something warmer, sharper.
Caziel’s gaze flicks over my face like he’s cataloging every shift in my expression.
The way my breathing grows ragged. The way I haven’t backed away.
“Again,” he says. “Take the thread. Let it tug.”
This time, when his hands find mine, they don’t stop at his chest. He traces my fingers down the ridge of his sternum, slow enough that my pulse hitches in time with the movement. I feel the faint heat where the embermark sprawls across his skin, steady and alive beneath my touch.
“Comfort,” he murmurs, eyes still on mine. “The illusion will make you think you are safe. Wanted. Needed.”
The way he says it, low and certain, makes my stomach flip. My thumb brushes his skin and he exhales — not sharp, but controlled, like he’s forcing himself not to give in to something.
“Now,” he says, “remember the truth.”
“What truth?” My voice comes out breathless, too honest.
“Umbral does not give without taking. There is nothing in the arena will touch you like this.” His fingers slide to the back of my neck, warm and steady, coaxing my face closer to his. “And if something does, walk away.”
I should. I know I should. But the way he’s looking at me makes it impossible to remember why.
His horns cast shadows over us, the embermark a faint glow between us. The thread hums low in my chest, lulling me into stillness, and the warmth of his hand at my neck makes me want to sink into him and never surface.
“Is this still training?” I ask, trying for wry, but it comes out more like a whisper.
His mouth curves in that slow, dangerous way that always makes my pulse trip. “It’s the most important lesson you’ll learn.”
I don’t know if I lean in first or if he does, only that we end up close, so close that my lips almost graze his. The air between us is heat and shadow and the echo of things neither of us will say out loud. Then he stills. Pulls back just enough that the absence feels like a drop.
“Let nothing and no one take your will,” he says quietly, and the flicker in his eyes tells me he’s not just talking about the trial.