Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
KAY
The gold light breaks around us like a dropped goblet, shards shivering midair before they melt into nothing.
One heartbeat I’m choking on perfume and music and the heat of too many eyes; the next, I’m stumbling forward onto rough stone, dragging two full-grown contenders by their wrists.
The arena’s air hits me like cold water.
It smells of ash and metal and sweat. It smells real.
Malrik wrenches his arm free the moment he has his footing, his glare sharp enough to cut.
Rhovan pulls away slower, still breathing like he’s just run a sprint, but his eyes narrow at me like I’ve humiliated him. Fine. Add it to the list.
The roar rises around us, the crowd’s voice jagged and alive, so different from the honeyed applause of the Gilded ballroom it almost hurts to hear it.
My ears are ringing, or maybe that’s just my pulse catching up to the fact that I am, somehow, still on my feet.
I turn, half-expecting the archway to be there, gleaming gold like a door into temptation, but there’s only open air.
The illusion is gone. The arena stretches in a jagged oval around us, and heat from Crimson’s Flame spills into the sand where the magic tore apart.
I push to my feet, and my knees threaten to give.
I force them to lock. No collapsing here.
Not with the crowd watching. Not when—for once—I’m not the only one looking wrecked.
Lyra emerges from another corner of the arena, hair mussed and one sleeve torn at the seam.
Elira’s tunic is dust-streaked and wrinkled, his ink-stained fingers curled like he’s still holding the phantom of a pen.
Even Varo looks like he’s walked through something more than a sparring match—though his gaze slides over me as if to say, “don’t ask. ”
There’s relief in that, a strange solidarity.
It’s not just me this time. A flicker of pride sparks before I can shove it down.
Not the Gilded kind, the syrupy self-importance that soaked that ballroom, but the kind born of surviving something meant to crush you.
I did not walk out alone. I pulled people through with me.
Two people. Three if I include Elira. Are we all that’s left?
Lyra, Elira, Rhovan, Malrik, Varo and… me? Six left from a field of thirteen?
The thought sours the taste in my mouth.
I try to tell myself I did what I could, but the ache in my ribs says otherwise.
The stones under my bare feet are sharp, merciless, leeching away the last of the Gilded comfort.
The pain grounding, in a way, even as goosebumps chase up my arms. A Crimson attendant—real, Vesperan —appears at my side, pressing a coarse wool cloak into my hands.
No silks. No jeweled pins. Just something to keep the wind off.
“Instead of the sheet,” she mumbles under her breath, and her fingers brush mine. I pull the cloak around me, the weight of it anchoring me back into my own skin. My fingers clutch the edge tighter than they need to, as if the cloth might keep the trial from bleeding back in.
The crowd’s roar swells again, but I do not turn.
No one else is stepping out of the wreckage, the arch is gone.
The trial complete. I let the sound wash over me without trying to understand the words.
The syllables blend into boots scuffing stone, armor creaking, someone coughing in the stands.
Real noises. Imperfect, unpolished. My chest loosens a fraction.
I look for Caziel before I can stop myself.
My gaze sweeps the ranks of contenders, the watching Elders, the tiers of the crowd, but he’s not where I can see him.
A knot forms low in my stomach, half worry, half something else I don’t want to name.
Someone jostles past, and I catch a glimpse of the jagged edge where the arena wall meets the sky.
The sun is too bright, or it feels that way after the candlelit gleam of the ballroom.
I squint and try to breathe past the pounding in my skull.
The Gilded trial is over. I repeat the thought twice, just to be sure I believe it. And yet somewhere behind my ribs, the echo of that place hums like a plucked string. The music, the praise, the way it tried to sink its claws in under the guise of kindness. It didn’t win, but it left its mark.
I drag my focus back to the here and now.
Stone. Ash. Cool air. Cloak tight around my shoulders.
We leave the arena in a loose, uneven line, feet dragging on the stone as the crowd’s murmur fades behind us.
No one is talking, not even Rhovan and Malrik who usually fill the silence with complaints or jabs.
George trots at my heel like he’s been waiting there all along, tail swishing with feline offense.
When I crouch to scoop him up, he lets out a pointed little mrrp and blinks at me, slow and unamused.
“I didn’t mean to leave you,” I whisper into his fur. “Didn’t even know I was going, or that I’d left you behind. and I did try to get you out. You’re welcome.”
That’s the part I can’t shake. One moment, I’d been in Crimson—safe enough, or as safe as it gets here—and the next, I was already drowning in the deep end of the pool.
No warning. No arch to step through. No chance to prepare.
Just Umbral smothering me and then Gilded swallowing me whole, syrup-sweet and smiling while it tried to make me forget.
Both were different from the other trials.
Cobalt and the Obsidian’s illusions had been sharp-edged grief; Viridian a promise I desperately wanted to take.
Umbral, a suffocating stillness. But Gilded…
Gilded felt like sinking into warm water you didn’t realize was drowning you.
No teeth. No fire. Just the constant, careful hollowing of your own will.
And I’d gotten out. Without a thread.
The thought is almost dizzying. I want to tell Caz, see the flicker of surprise in his eyes, maybe even the smile he tries to hide when I prove him wrong.
But when I glance toward the arena’s edges, the tunnels behind, even the stands, he’s nowhere.
No tall shadow to fall into step beside me, no steady voice asking if I’m hurt.
Just absence, and the strange ache it leaves.
The shadow that falls across me isn’t an attendant.
Too still. Too heavy. I look up and it’s one of the other contenders.
The one who struck me in Gilded. Up close, he’s all broad shoulders and that slightly-too-square jaw that looks carved for intimidation.
His expression is harder to read now—there’s no golden haze polishing the edges of it, no smug curve to his mouth.
Just a frown pulled tight enough to make his cheek twitch.
Malrik Soldenum, standard poodle, nephew of Elder Solonar. I don’t give him the satisfaction of rubbing the side of my face, even though the bruise throbs in time with my pulse. He shifts his weight, glances at the other contenders bustling around, and then back to me.
“I—” He stops, jaw locking. Whatever he thought this conversation would be, it’s not coming out smooth. “That wasn’t… me.”
I arch an eyebrow.
“You sure about that? Because your hand connected with my face just fine.”
A flicker of embarrassment crosses his features.
“It was the trial. Gilded.” He grimaces like the word tastes sour.
“It gets inside you. Stirs everything up until all you can hear is the worst thing you’ve ever thought about yourself—or someone else—and you can’t stop feeding it.
” His gaze flicks away, then back. “I’m not excusing it. Just, it wasn’t the truth of me.”
The truth of him. That’s an interesting way to put it.
Part of me wants to bite back, to ask if the “truth” of him hits anyone else for sport.
But the other part, the tired part, the part still peeling the gold varnish off my own thoughts, recognizes the cost of saying this aloud.
Admitting weakness here isn’t something the pride-obsessed would do lightly.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “I don’t forgive easily, but you came back to yourself. That’s worth something.”
He exhales like I just handed him a reprieve.
“I still should not have let it happen.” His gaze drops to my cheek, and his hands flex like he wants to fix it but doesn’t know how. “I’ll stay out of your way.”
That’s not what I expected. I’d half-braced for posturing, a challenge to prove I could take a hit and still win. Instead, he’s giving me space.
“Okay” I say, softer than I mean to. He nods once—sharp, almost military—and walks off, lengthening his stride until he reaches the front of the group.
I watch him go, feeling the air around me shift in a way I can’t quite name.
We pass into the outer corridors, the light shifting to warm gold as the day begins to turn.
The air smells of hot stone and dust, real and grounding.
The sharp contrast to the Gilded ballroom makes me wonder again—when did the trial start? How much time did it really take?
George starts to purr, the slow, rumbling sound that works its way into my bones.
It’s the first steady thing I’ve felt since the floor disappeared under me.
By the time the barracks come into view, the tension in my shoulders has started to ease, just barely.
Two trials in quick succession, and I’m still here.
Still standing. That should be enough for now.
But it isn’t. Not without Caz. I adjust my hold on George and keep walking, telling myself he’ll be there next time.
That he’ll see I made it through without him—and maybe understand that I can.