Chapter 4 #2
The crowd parts wider now. I catch another flicker of movement—someone bowing their head, someone whispering. Caz doesn’t look at them, but I can tell he feels it too. The way the realm itself seems to notice me, the way the air tastes different now that I’m here.
We keep moving through the streets. It’s not a long walk—Crimson seems to stretch forever, but the towers rise above everything, impossible to miss. Still, each step feels heavier. Like I’m sinking deeper into something I can’t name.
Jokes aside, every time someone stares, I stare right back. Not in challenge, but survival. I can’t afford to be small right now. Not in a place where everything is watching. But eventually, the weight of it all gets to me.
“I’m not dangerous,” I murmur under my breath, reminding myself more than anything else. “Just under-caffeinated.”
“You’ve said that before,” he says.
“Well, I’m nothing if not consistent.”
He’s quiet for a beat. Then: “You were afraid earlier.”
“You think?” I blink. “I’m still afraid.”
“If not for your scent, you’d hide it well.”
My scent. Right. Shudder.
“I try,” I say. “Keep walking. Keep talking. Pretend you belong until someone buys it.”
Caziel doesn’t offer reassurance. Doesn’t tell me I do belong, but he doesn’t disagree either and somehow, that’s easier to take.
Ahead, the main castle glows like a heartstone—massive, warm, and terrifying.
Its gates yawn open in welcome or warning—I can’t tell.
For a moment I consider turning on my battered heel, fleeing down the stone streets until Crimson, the daemari, Caziel, are nothing but a distant memory. I wouldn’t make it ten feet.
The keep swallows sound.
That’s the first thing I notice when we slip into the courtyard—how quiet everything becomes.
The walls are high and smooth, the floor dark stone veined with glowing red, and the air tastes like cold iron and firelight.
Even our footsteps seem reluctant to echo.
There aren’t any Daemari—other than the guards—milling about in here.
Not even to study the murals painted on the high stone walls.
Maybe they’re too used to them, the art now just forgotten scenery.
I study the image closest to me. A great beast wreathed in flame faces off against a man in gilded armor.
The beast’s mouth is open wide, roaring or hissing its displeasure as the man seems completely at ease before it.
Even painted with giant curved claws, I recognize the compact, rounded design of the beast's paws. Some sort of cat. On fire.
I let my eyes trace the shape of two pointed ears and for a moment the image bleeds away, leaving angry George in its placing, hissing angrily at the armored man memorialized in paint.
When I blink the flame cat is back. I shake my head willing my vision to corporate.
Brain injury and potential dehydration aside I can’t start hallucinating now.
Three guards stand near an arched gate on the far side of the space.
They’re dressed like they mean business—more rune-inscribed bone-white armor, swords at their backs, faces open but watchful—but they also appear to be playing some sort of game with small clattering objects that they toss and catch.
It kind of looks like Jacks, not that I’ve ever played the game myself, and I try desperately to stop my brain from wondering what their pieces are made of. Clay, rock, bone…
They notice us immediately. Or, more accurately, they notice me. One tilts his head, eyes sliding over me like he’s assessing a meal he didn’t order but might eat anyway. I step closer to Caziel.
“That her?” The guard murmurs. Not quiet. Not loud. Just pitched enough to carry.
“Has to be,” the second one replies. “Don’t see many soft things in Crimson.”
My jaw tightens.
“Delicate, too,” the first continues. “Look at her. Could leave a bruise just by breathing wrong.”
The third chuckles. “Reckon she bruises easy.”
“Wouldn’t take much.”
Their tone is light, almost playful, but their eyes are not. My stomach turns. The little obsidian shard in my pocket suddenly feels less like a comfort and more like a joke.
I keep walking. One step. Two.
Then the third guard lifts his voice, just slightly. “No mark. No flame. Wonder what she is good for.”
“Depends on how she’s built. But we can guess.”
The breathy laugh stops me cold. Caziel, who’s been walking beside me, halts too.
He looks at me first, assessing, and it takes me a solid minute to clock that his eyes are no longer human, the irises swallowed by swirling black.
I swallow reflexively, my throat aching.
His jaw shifts, or maybe it’s his glamor moving again.
I force a smile. This is nothing. I’ve dealt with worse.
Maybe not in a strange place where I’m pretty sure I’m woefully outmatched, but men are men no matter the species.
Caziel doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
The air shifts with him, pulling tight like a snare wire as he pins the three in place with one look.
The guards straighten.
“Ember Heir,” the youngest says, smile widening like he can bluff his way out of it. Even as his voice cracks on the title. I may not be from here, but I know it holds weight. “We meant no offense.”
“Poor taste,” the second adds. “Curiosity, nothing more.”
Caziel looks at them for a long moment.
“She is under protection,” he says. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. The air tilts around him when he speaks—sharpens like a blade honed on bone. The guards go still.
“Apologies, my Lord,” one says quickly. “Just passing time with idle talk.”
“Talk carries weight,” Caziel replies. “You’d do well to remember that.” There’s no threat in his voice. Just finality. “Perhaps you need more duties if you have time to ruminate on acts of violence.”
“No, Sir.” The first guard shakes his head. “It won’t happen again.”
The guards bow slightly. Not deep. But deep enough. We move on. I don’t say anything until we’re through another archway, out of their sight, the low thrum of flame-lit halls surrounding us again. Then I exhale. Slow. Controlled. My hands are fists in my sleeves.
“They were joking,” I say. “But not really.”
Just like when they say it won’t happen again, they don’t mean it. They’ll just make sure Caziel isn’t around to hear them.
“No,” he replies. “Not really, but they won’t hurt you.”
I glance at him. His expression hasn’t changed, but there’s a tension in his jaw now. He felt it too.
“That’s… optimistic.”
“Optimism implies uncertainty,” he says again.
His voice sounds the same, measured and calm, but this time I hear something else beneath it. Not comfort. Guarded promise.
“You’re so sure they wouldn’t try anything?” I say, more quietly now.
We walk another few steps before he answers.
“No,” he says. “But I am sure I would not have let them.” I stop walking for half a second. Just long enough for the words to hit. He doesn’t stop with me. Just keeps going, slow, steady, like he knows I’ll follow. And I do. Because what other options do I have?
“You’re really bad at comfort, you know that?” I mutter as I catch up.
“I am not here to comfort you.”
“Right.” I walk in silence for a few moments, the heat of the city folding around us. “But thank you,” I add quietly.
The Daemari are not going to be my friends.
Not at first. Maybe not ever. I’m too different.
Too human. Too other. And whether they treat that with fear or fascination, it still leaves me on the outside.
Alone. I glance ahead at Caziel. He hasn’t said a word.
He doesn’t slow his pace, doesn’t look back, but I know he felt it too, that moment where something sharpened between us and the guards, something ugly.
And still he stepped forward. Not with fire or fury, but certainty.
They wouldn’t have touched me, not because they didn’t consider trying, but because he wouldn’t have let them.
That’s the part I keep circling. The part that scares me just as much as it calms me.
Twice now. He’s intervened twice without hesitation.
Without question. Not to win favor. Not to scold.
Just to shield. And maybe that should unsettle me more than it does.
Maybe relying on a stranger—one who may or may not be playing the long game—is reckless at best. But it’s all I have.
I know better than to put my safety in the hands of someone else.
I know better than to need someone to stand between me and a threat.
But right now I’m alone in a world I don’t understand, surrounded by people who see me as a curiosity at best and vulnerable at worst. And Caziel is the only one who hasn’t tried to diminish me, yet.
So yes, it’s flawed logic.
Yes, I’ll probably regret it.
But for now, the only thing I know for sure is this:
He hasn’t hurt me. Yet. Which makes him my best option.