Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CAZIEL
The viewing room is carved into the upper wall of the training wing.
It’s narrow, dim, and hot with old flame.
No banners. No heralds. Just shadow and strategy.
Private. Intentional. Only a few stand with us: five hand-picked elders, robed in red-gold and authority.
Solonar. And my father—the Asmodeus. They lean against polished stone balustrades like bored gods.
But they are more than watching. They’re taking notes. Calculating odds.
And the girl in the ring? She’s bleeding. Again.
She’s not daemari. Not marked. Not trained. But she is still standing. Still moving. A fact that is starting to concern them.
Solonar’s voice is low and composed. “She adapts more quickly than I expected, even fighting with her weak side.”
My father doesn’t answer right away. His eyes are narrowed, following her every movement. He is not scowling. He is calculating. And Solonar is wrong. The hand gripping the weapon might be opposite of the other contenders, but she isn’t weak there. It’s her dominant side. I’m sure of it.
“She’s erratic,” one elder mutters. “Unrefined. But she learns.”
Solonar smiles faintly. “That may be enough to earn the public’s curiosity, if not their favor.”
“Favor is not required. Intrigue will suffice.” My father speaks finally.
I stiffen, barely. Of all the outcomes I expected—the flame choosing her, her collapse in the ring, the council declaring her a liability—I had not considered this one. Interest. My father, the same man who holds more beings in quiet contempt than any person I know, is intrigued by her.
She pivots. Varo—a favored contender—moves in to finish the match, but she surprises him. Just slightly. Her blade slips across his thigh. The cut is shallow. But it bleeds. And the room goes very, very still.
“She’ll need proper training,” my father says. “If she’s to make it past the first trial.”
One of the elders hums. “You believe she should compete, then?”
“There are thirteen spaces,” my father replies. “We have filled twelve.”
He says nothing more, but the implication is clear. She may not be chosen by the flame. But we may choose her anyway.
I do not speak. Not yet. I do not allow my expression to shift, though my chest tightens by degrees. I had counted on his disdain. His prejudice. His cruelty. But this interest? It’s worse.
“What would you have us do with her, Caziel?” His voice cuts clean across the chamber.
All eyes shift to me. I turn slightly toward him. Not too quickly. Not enough to betray the panic clawing at the base of my throat.
“She has not been marked,” I say calmly.
“But the flame is not always… punctual.” A few of the elders nod, as if that makes perfect sense.
“I recommend she continue to train with the others. For now.” I say it to stall.
To shield her even though she does not know she needs it.
Solonar steps forward smoothly, his voice warm and unbothered.
“There is precedent for ceremony,” he says. “A symbolic competitor. One not intended to ascend, but to demonstrate allegiance.”
My father raises a brow. “To Crimson? Or to us?”
Solonar tilts his head. “Either would suffice. And it would reduce the risk of her… untimely removal.”
The subtext is razor-sharp. Let her stand. Let her fight. Let her lose in public, and with grace. And if she dies? It was never our fault.
I feel the heat building in my core. As if the flame stirs when I think of her. The way she stood back up. The way she didn’t ask for help. The way she looked when she thought no one saw her. My father hums under his breath.
“Perhaps.” He leans back in his seat now, his expression unreadable.
The elders murmur quietly among themselves. Solonar’s gaze flicks toward me, unreadable. And I know this is a game. One I’ve played before. One I’ve lost before. I cannot let her become their story. Their blood-slick pageantry. I take a step back from the balustrade.
“I’ll speak to her.”
My father doesn’t stop me. Solonar watches me go. And I feel the heat at my back as I descend the stairs—not from the chamber, but from the fire I no longer know how to contain.
I don’t intend to go to her. There’s no reason to. No protocol. No command. My words to my father do not count as such, but my feet move before my mind gives permission, and the air still smells of blood and scorched stone when I reach the door.
The chamber is small. Spare. Meant for rest or quiet collapse. She’s seated near a basin, one arm bare, water pink with blood where she’s dabbing it clean. Her braid is fraying. Her tunic clings where she’s sweated through the collar. I should leave. I step inside. She doesn’t look up right away.
“I’m fine,” she mutters. “Unless you’re here to tell me I violated another ancient tradition by falling on my face.” Her voice is dry. Dismissive. But when she does glance up—when her gaze meets mine—she stills. “Oh,” she says. “It’s you.”
That shouldn’t twist something behind my ribs, but it does.
I want to ask who she thought I was? Who she’s been spending so much time with that their presence was expected? I want to grab her shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattle for catching my father’s attention.
I speak before I think better of it. “You were reckless.”
She snorts. “Thanks for the feedback. I’ll log that in my dream journal.”
“You could have died.”
“Yeah,” she says, wiping her arm with a fresh cloth. “I gathered that.”
My pulse is too loud in my ears. I didn’t feel this way when Isaeth fell. Not at first. Not until it was too late.
“You were not chosen. You were not marked. You were not meant to be in that ring.”
That gets her attention. She lowers the cloth. Her elbow is raw and red beneath it, but she doesn’t wince.
“You think I wanted to be there?”
“You stepped forward.”
“I was dragged,” she snaps. “Your realm’s magic pushed me. I said no. I said no twice.”
My jaw locks. Because I remember. I felt it. The circle called her, and she resisted, and still it pulled her in.
“You should have stayed down,” I say.
“I did. Three times.”
“You should have stopped resisting—”
“I should have let them assault me?” she cuts in, eyes flashing. “Beat me? Kill me?”
My fists curl.
“No,” I say, louder now. “You should have let it all go without risking everything. You could have stepped out of the ring at any time..”
She blinks, tilting her head to study me.
Then, softly, “You were watching?”
Silence swells between us. I feel the tremor start in my hands. I press them behind my back.
“Yes,” I say. “We all were.”
Her mouth parts, but she doesn’t speak.
“You don’t understand,” I say, low and furious now. “They were waiting for you to fail. They wanted it. Some of them still do.”
“I’m not marked,” she whispers, more to herself than to me.
“They don’t care.”
I take a step forward, heat rising under my skin, not from anger now but from helpless, useless fear.
“They will make you fight again. They will keep calling you until you can’t stand up anymore. And if you die, they will not grieve. They will use your blood as ink to document their cause.”
She’s still looking at me like I gave her something. Like being seen matters more than any weapon in that room. And I almost let the silence settle. Almost let that be the end. But then I speak and it’s a mistake.
“You are not the only one this affects,” I say. “You think I wanted you to bleed in front of the court? To draw the Asmodeus’s attention? You could have—”
“Oh, fuck you, Ember Heir.”
Her voice rings like a slap.
It silences the rest of my sentence, and something in her breaks open—fast and sharp and livid.
“You don’t get to do this,” she snaps, stepping toward me again, flushed now not from pain or adrenaline—but fury. “You don’t get to yell at me for reacting when you’ve given me nothing to go on.”
I open my mouth. She steamrolls through it.
“You dumped me in a bedroom I didn’t ask for, left me at the mercy of flame-eyed cultists screaming riddles about fate and marks and rites I’ve never heard of, and then vanished.”
Her hands gesture wildly now, half-rhetorical, half-exhausted.
“And then you show up and yell at me when I don’t figure it out perfectly on my own? Really?”
I flinch. Barely, but she sees it. And it drives her harder.
“Am I supposed to be grateful that you brought me out of the lava hellscape only to let me drown myself out here? Not imprisoned you said, could’ve fooled me. There’s rules I don’t know and then consequences when I break them and there’s only so much S—”
She stops short, a name on her tongue. I hear it stall her words. Watch her swallow it back down. The silence rings louder than the yelling. She exhales hard and turns her back to me. I keep my mouth shut because she’s right. And she’s bleeding.
And I left her alone.
When I do speak, it’s not defensive. My voice is quieter than I mean it to be, but perhaps it’s just right.
“I was wrong.”
She turns her head slightly, just enough to hear me.
“And?” she asks, voice tight.
“I was thinking only of what might happen to me. I forgot, ignored, what was already happening to you.”
It’s not an apology, but it’s closer than I’ve come in a long time and for once I mean it. Her throat bobs like she’s swallowing something bitter, but when she meets my eyes again, there’s no fear. Only something quiet and stunned.
“You were scared.”
I exhale through my nose, sharp and silent. “Don’t mistake emotion for weakness.”
“Too late,” she says. “You showed one anyway.”
Her voice isn’t mocking. It’s cool, calm, truth and that terrifies me more than anything else.
Rejecting the flame, turning from it’s warmth, means living a muted life.
Emotions buried deep where they can’t sting and snarl and snap.
But Kay… her very existence here is challenging that well of self-control. I hate it.