Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
KAY
Itry not to take it personally. Really, I do.
Maybe she was warned. Maybe someone saw us talking too easily.
Maybe she’s just afraid. I can’t blame her for that.
Fear is one thing this place has no shortage of.
But still, there’s something brutal in the way Sarai doesn’t look at me now.
Not quite rejection. Worse. Recalibration.
Like I’m no longer something human. Just a task.
A responsibility she didn’t sign up for.
I’ve felt this shift before. It’s like a current going slack. You’re laughing with someone, leaning into warmth, and then one word, one look, one complication—and suddenly the walls are back up.
You’re not a person anymore. You’re a risk. An obligation. A thing to step around.
My first foster family used to do that. They were careful, friendly, but one too many questions and they’d smile just a little less.
Hold me just a little looser. The minute I started getting comfortable I’d see it.
That tightness in their posture. The flicker of calculation.
The way they’d start speaking to me like a patient instead of a daughter.
As if I’d gone from being theirs to being someone they were managing.
My second foster family always kept me at arms length, but I still felt that step back from friends at school.
We could hang out right up until the point they learned that my parents were dead. Then things changed.
That’s what Sarai feels like now. She used to meet my eyes when I joked.
She used to smile. She used to tell me stories no one else would say out loud.
And now? She won’t even acknowledge me. She won’t meet my gaze as she fastens the last clasp at my shoulder, hands precise and practiced like I’m a mannequin.
I want to say something. I don’t. I know better than to beg for softness from someone who’s been told not to give it.
It’s easier, safer, to tell myself that she’s put up walls because she isn’t allowed to be my friend.
That her employer or the Daemari don’t want her talking to me, the strange human girl who most definitely doesn’t have fire marks—whatever that means—but still apparently needs to train for the death cage fight.
I know she’s been sent to prepare me for the next steps, but maybe they warned her about fraternizing?
Maybe they don’t want her giving me any insider info. Maybe it’s nothing personal.
I let my voice drift back up into the usual range. Cool. Dismissive. A little too bright. Safe. I tuck the hurt and rejection under a layer of bravado, self-deprecating humor, toothy grins.
I tuck the ache behind my ribs and say lightly, “So just training today, or are we doing the full demon death match?”
She blinks once and answers with nothing at all. Doesn’t even smile, just turns away and begins folding my discarded sleeping tunic. Neat as a hotel maid in a five-star hell. I watch her work in silence for a few seconds.
“In my world, we usually explain things to people before throwing them into magical battle simulations.”
Her shoulders go still for half a breath. I press on.
“Or at the very least, give them a pamphlet. ‘So You’ve Been Abducted Into a Flame-Based Trial of Champions.’ Maybe a little Q&A at the bottom.”
Still nothing. Just the whisper of fabric and the sound of my own adrenaline humming in my ears.
“You know,” I say, louder now, “I haven’t been marked. There’s no Brand. No magical flame tattoo. I checked.”
That gets her. A flicker in her posture.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says.
My mouth goes dry. “I thought that’s how the flame chose people.” That’s what they said in the full-castle meeting.
“It is.” She turns back toward me, folding complete, hands loose at her sides. “But it’s not the only way. And it’s never been the full truth.”
I blink. “Care to elaborate?”
She hesitates. I wait.
Eventually, she sighs.
“There are records. Old ones. Histories passed down through my people. In the earliest Rites, not all who competed were marked. Some were chosen. Some volunteered. Some were put forward.”
I narrow my eyes. “Put forward?”
She nods once. “By the court. Or the realm itself. Symbolically. Strategically.”
My stomach sinks.
“You’re saying they can force people into this.”
“Not officially. More like a nomination.”
“And people can turn down the nomination?”
She walks to the window and pulls back the curtain slightly. Sunlight spills across the floor in a golden wash.
Sarai’s voice is soft. “It benefits them to pretend it’s all the flame’s will. They can claim their hands are clean.”
“So no,” I rub my temples. “That’s not horrifying.”
She looks at me, and something flickers across her her face. Cracks in her resolve.
“Do your leaders never lie in your world?” She asks the question with the barest hint of humor so dry it pulls a laugh out of me. Ugly. Short. Real.
“The better question is do they ever tell the truth.”
She smiles. It slips in, uninvited, like a habit she forgot she had. And for the first time since she walked in, she looks like her again. Not a housekeeper. Not a warning. Just Sarai. It doesn’t last.
“You should be careful, Kay.” She straightens, refusing to meet my eyes.
“Yeah, I gathered that from the glowing murder pit.” And the lack of eye contact.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She exhales through her nose.
“You haven’t been officially called. Not yet. But it doesn’t matter. They’re going to treat you like you have a brand.” She must read the question on my shocked face. “They’ll want to test you. To shame you. Or to see what you’ll do when the time comes.”
“And if I refuse?”
That wipes the humor away completely. She doesn’t answer right away. When she does, her voice is thin.
“There is dishonor in stepping down.”
“Dishonor I can handle.”
She meets my gaze. Something hard flickering under the surface.
“You don’t understand. Here, in Crimson, quitting is seen as betrayal. To the flame. To the realm. To the Rite itself.”
“But it’s not quitting if i’m not actually picked, right? And I’m not Daemari, can’t we explain it away as a translating error? A cultural difference?”
“Maybe. Or they can tell Crimson that it’s the flame who will decide your fate. No one would question it. The flame didn’t choose you to compete, but the flame can decide if you’re worthy.”
“Of survival?”
Sarai nods. “Saying no would be an insult.”
“To the flame?”
Her silence confirms everything I need to know. It’s not the kind of silence that hides something small. It’s the kind that wraps its hands around your mouth and tells you to pretend. I don’t look away. And neither does she.
I step closer. Voice low.
“What happens to the ones who quit?”
Sarai’s throat moves, but no sound comes out at first.
“There are consequences.”
“For quitting?”
“For defying the Flame. The rite.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She turns toward the window again, like the view will save her. “They say the flame demands strength. But it’s the realm that punishes weakness.”
“Who?” I hear the tightness in my own voice. “The Council? The Sovereign?”
Sarai doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. I can read the silence now. I’ve been around enough systems built on politeness and performance and plausible deniability. Just because something isn’t named, doesn’t stop it from being true.
“You mean the people,” I murmur.
Still no reply, but her posture crumples. Just a little.
“You said it’s not a fight to the death,” I whisper. “That people don’t have to die in the Rite.”
“They don’t,” she says quickly.
“But they do.”
Her hands tighten at her sides.
I press on. “And the ones who leave—who walk away—they’re punished.”
A slow nod.
“Publicly?”
“Is it considered public if they just disappear?” Her voice is paper-thin. I swallow. “They call it justice,” she says after a long pause. “They say it’s the will of the flame. But the flame doesn’t ask for blood, people do. The powerful do. And they get it because few dare to say otherwise.”
My pulse thrums. All the false security I’ve been clinging to—gone in an instant.
No one is coming. Not to stop this. Not to protect me. If I say no, if I run, if I survive the flame only to walk away am I even guaranteed safety? If the lie is that the flame will decide my worth, my right to breathe the burnt air, then if I don’t walk out a winner, is that proof I don’t belong?
I’ve seen what happens to folks who don’t belong.
I’ve seen what happens at the hands of those who preach kindness and fairness.
Those who claim to be righteous and just. Safety is only guaranteed to those on they inside.
Because it’s easier than reaching out. Because it’s what they’ve always done.
Because someone told them it was the only way.
I sit down slowly on the edge of the bed, hands gripping the mattress. Sarai watches me, expression unreadable. But I can see it now, the line she must walk every day. She doesn’t live here. She survives. And I’m starting to realize those are not the same thing.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask quietly.
Sarai doesn’t speak for a long moment.
“I’m tired of watching people be fed to fire and told it’s a gift.”
Sarai’s words settle into the room like ash.
I look down at my hands, fingers curled into the edge of the mattress, and something starts to ache in my chest. Not sharp, just deep.
Like a bruise I didn’t know I had. Back home, I’ve spent years feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere.
Like I was walking through a world that had rules I couldn’t read and expectations I never agreed to.
But at least the lines were visible. At least I knew the game was rigged.
There are systems in my world that claim to protect the vulnerable—laws, institutions, procedures.
But they fail us every day. They’re built to favor the loudest, richest, whitest voices in the room.
People fall through cracks big enough to swallow them whole and are told it’s their own fault they didn’t climb out.
And when they try? They’re mocked. Shamed.
Sometimes murdered. All because they were too Black, too queer, too poor, too neurodivergent, too “other.” We’ve carved lines in every direction—skin, gender, faith, language, trauma, history, shape, blood.
And then we wonder why we’re bleeding.
I used to think if I ever landed in one of those fantasy worlds I read about, maybe things would be different.
That magic might mean progress. That higher powers would come with higher standards.
I didn’t think it through. Didn’t think at all, really.
Just followed the thread of wonder into a place where even fire has favorites.
Of course this ugliness would bleed into other realms. Why wouldn’t it?
Oppression doesn’t belong to one species.
Power always finds a way to protect itself.
And people like Sarai—innocent, hardworking people—get burned in the name of tradition.
The difference is maybe here I can see it clearly.
Maybe now that I know, I can do something about it.
Even if it’s small. Even if it’s only to make sure someone else doesn’t go through what she has. Even if it’s just surviving long enough to spit in the face of whatever god set this place on fire.
I sit in the silence, still trying to piece together what the hell I’ve been dropped into, when something clicks in the back of my mind.
“Sarai,” I say slowly, “what happens to the winner?”
She looks up from smoothing the sheets.
“The winner of the Rite,” I clarify. “They keep saying they’ll ‘rise,’ but I don’t… what does that actually mean?”
For the first time in what feels like hours, she laughs. Not cruelly. Not mockingly. Just… surprised. A sound full of something between pity and awe.
“You really don’t know,” she says, almost like it’s a question.
I shake my head. Her smile is soft. And sad.
“They rule, Kay. The one who survives becomes the next Sovereign.”
Everything in me goes still. She turns back to her work like it’s nothing.
Like she didn’t just shift the ground beneath my feet.
I stare at her for a long moment, then down at my hands.
I’ve never ruled anything in my life. Hell, I barely keep my rent paid on time.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe ruling isn’t the same as surviving—but maybe it should be.
No one’s asked me to change anything. No one’s handed me a sword and said burn it down. But something here is wrong. Twisted.
It’s the same back home. Too many lies calcified into law.
Too many people like Sarai living with their heads down and their hearts locked away.
Too many powerful beings calling themselves chosen while leaving others to rot.
But it doesn’t have to be. I refuse to believe it’s the only way.
And maybe, if this is real, and I’m about to be shoved into the Rite whether I want it or not, something good could come out of it.
I have no right to any of this. No claim to Crimson. No bloodline or prophecy or ancestral flame. But sometimes… all it takes is a single grain of sand to grind the whole machine to a halt.
Maybe there’s a reason I’m here. Maybe there’s some good I can do before I get skewered by a fire sword. Maybe I want to.