Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CAZIEL
The door shuts behind me with a soft click, and I freeze in the hallway. The warmth of her room lingers in my skin longer than it should. A scent I cannot name clings to the edges of my cloak. I tell myself it’s the cat. It is not the cat.
I should go.
There are other things that require my attention—preparations, meetings, patrols. My father expects a report on the contenders by sundown. Solonar will want a private word before then. And yet I remain, standing in the hallway outside her chamber like an uninvited sentinel.
Inside, I can hear muffled movement. The occasional thud of small paws. A soft laugh that shatters something inside my ribs. She is fed. She is grounded. She is safe for now. This is what I wanted. What she needed. So why does it feel like I’ve placed a blade at my own throat?
I draw a slow breath and let it sit in my chest. Stillness has always been my shield.
Detachment, my inheritance. But she—Kay—disrupts that.
Without trying. Without knowing. She asked for nothing, and I crossed realms to deliver it anyway.
I didn’t even know if it could be done, if the magic would recognize the beast, but I tried.
That is not who I am. That is not who I am allowed to be.
The crossing was not gentle. For the beast, sure, but not for me.
My head still feels heavy, clogged with fragments of want and tendrils of the realm that tried to halt my journey.
She doesn’t know that part. She doesn’t need to.
Let her believe it was a simple errand. A conjured portal. A quick snatch-and-return. Let her think the satchel was a convenience and not the result of bargaining with a veiled entity who asked for more than I wanted to give. More than I probably should have given.
The flame felt the cost. Not the blaze in the chamber—that one watches me always—but the deeper current that stirs in my blood. The one that has been quiet for years. It moved when I reached across worlds. It moved because I reached for her and now I don’t know how to shut the lid again.
Small mercies are never small in Crimson.
I shift my stance and push off the wall, finally forcing my limbs into motion.
Three steps down the corridor, and I pause again.
Not because I’ve changed my mind. Not because I doubt what I’ve done.
But because a part of me—sharp and treacherous—wants to go back inside her room.
Not to explain. Not even to speak. Just to sit in the quiet with her.
That is unacceptable. I resume walking. There’s no place for indulgence in a world like this.
And even if there were they would not be mine.
The summons arrives wrapped in black wax and veined with crimson thread. The thread disintegrates as I touch it. A warning. The Asmodeus does not summon when he wishes to talk. He summons when he wants a show.
I find them in the inner council chamber, just as expected.
My father sits slouched across the seat that was carved for his weight and his weight alone.
Solonar stands beside him, hands behind his back, as still and unreadable as the great iron statues lining the walls.
They look like men who have already been speaking about me.
I step forward and bow my head—just enough to satisfy formality.
“My lord.”
“Caziel,” my father drawls. “My son. My thorn.”
His voice is warm. It never means warmth.
“You’ve been busy,” he says.
Solonar does not look at me. That is my first warning.
“I’ve been fulfilling your command,” I answer evenly.
“Have you?” my father muses. “It’s interesting, then, that your ‘command’ has taken you to the human’s door so often.”
A long pause. Too long.
“She’s quite the thing, isn’t she?” he adds. “All that soft skin. How many times have you tried to find out if it burns?”
My jaw tightens. I do not react. That is what he wants.
“I’m sure you’ve inspected her thoroughly,” he continues, grinning now.
“I mean, we’ve all seen the way she looks at you.
Even Solonar agrees—can’t miss it, not with how much she leaves exposed.
” A calculated glance toward his companion.
Solonar does not smile. But he also does not object.
“You could bend her to your will with but crumbs of your attention.”
My stomach twists. Solonar had always been careful. Distant, yes—but measured. Strategic. Now, for the first time, I cannot tell if his silence is loyalty or complicity. What did I say in his presence? What did I give away? My father leans forward.
“You are certain,” he says, “that she bears no mark?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve searched every inch?” Another lewd chuckle. “Tell me, does she beg prettily on her knees?”
My hands clench at my sides and he sees it. He likes it.
“You used to be harder to provoke,” he says. “What happened to all that ice?”
Her.
I close my eyes and force the flame down. Not the magic. The rage.
I speak carefully. “She is not marked. If she were, I would know.”
“You think you would,” Solonar says, finally speaking. “But we have seen how the flame behaves when she enters a room.”
“She is not Daemari,” I say. “If the flame chose her, it would have to change its nature entirely.”
“Perhaps it already has,” my father murmurs. “Perhaps it’s grown soft, like you.”
My vision narrows, but I keep my mouth shut. I will not give him the satisfaction. Not yet.
“The next trial is imminent,” Solonar says, redirecting.
It’s either a deliberate save or a deflection. I can’t tell anymore and I should be more alarmed by that change. My father waves a hand like this is trivial.
“Yes, yes. The flame will rise. The contenders will be tested.” He lifts his eyes to mine. “All of them.”
My blood turns to frost. We still only have twelve marked. They can’t possibly mean— “She is not—”
“She will stand in the ring,” he says, “same as the others.”
“She is not in the rite.”
“No?” he sneers. “Then she has nothing to fear, has she not?”
It’s a trap. I see the outline clearly now.
They’ll put her on display to humiliate her.
Let her fail, let the people turn on her.
Brand her as unworthy and remove her through public shame, not decree.
It’s cleaner that way. It doesn’t stain the rite.
It just stains her. I press my lips together.
The only thing worse than death in Crimson is dishonor. They know that. They’re counting on it.
“She will not be warned,” my father says suddenly, his voice sharper now.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I did,” I say tightly. “I just assumed you weren’t stupid enough to issue a binding—”
He lifts his hand and speaks a word in the old tongue.
My throat goes tight. A pulse strikes behind my eyes.
Magic coils around my ribs like iron wire, humming with heat and silence.
I cannot speak of the trial. Not to her.
Not now.Not at all. I glare at my father, pressing my hands together until my nails leave bloody crescents in the skin of my palm.
“She will stand where the flame calls her,” my father says, voice calm again. “And you will watch.”
“You will obey,” Solonar adds, quiet but absolute.
I want to kill them both. Instead, I nod once, then turn and walk from the room. Each step is a scream held behind my teeth. She is not marked. They cannot force her to compete. They will humiliate her. Shame her. But she will walk away.
It’s more mercy than I could have begged my father to give.
That alone gives me pause. I don’t trust him.
I shouldn’t, but is there anything he can do?
My father is ruthless intelligence and cold cunning.
There is no price to steep for him to maintain control over the realm and it’s people.
And now he has no choice. The Flame has called forth others, and he must step down.
No amount of posturing, of underhanded politicking will save his reign.
The Flame decides for Crimson as it always has. Anything else would be treason.
The flame does not call for nothing.
And she is no longer invisible.
I hear his steps before Solonar speaks. Light tread. Perfectly timed. Like he wants me to know he’s coming.
I don’t slow. The hall is long and dim and silent. The kind of space that encourages secrets.
“I didn’t expect you to follow orders so easily,” Solonar says behind me.
I stop. I don’t turn.
“You mean the gag,” I say.
He hums. “So crude when you say it like that.”
I do turn now, just enough to catch his expression. Polite. Measured. Unbothered. I’ve seen the same face on diplomats seconds before they order blood spilled. I’m not impressed.
“You let him do it,” I say.
“Did I?”
“You said nothing.”
“I said nothing in public,” he replies smoothly. “You assume silence means consent. I thought you knew me better.”
“I thought I did.”
He gives me a look I can’t decipher. “And now?”
“I’m not sure which game you’re playing.”
“Have you figured out which one you’re in?”
We stare at each other.
The torchlight flickers between us, painting his features in pale gold and deep red. His eyes look older than the rest of him. Tired. Sharp.
Dangerous.
“She doesn’t belong in the trial,” I say carefully.
“She’s already in it,” he replies. “The question now is whether she survives.”
“I won’t let them kill her.”
“No,” Solonar says, with something like regret. “I didn’t think you would.”
He steps closer. Too close. His voice lowers.
“Tell me, Caziel. Is it just about protecting her? Or is it that she’s done something you didn’t expect?”
I say nothing. He smiles. Not kindly.
“She’s not like Isaeth.”
I freeze and his eyes gleam.
“I was there, remember?” he murmurs. “I saw what she meant to you. I saw what it did to you.”
“This is not the same.”
“No,” he says softly. “It’s not. And maybe that’s what frightens you.
” The silence between us turns to stone.
He tilts his head, gaze unreadable “You may want to consider choosing your side before the flame does it for you. She is human Caziel. Even if you do not stand with your father, you must stand with the realm. We are counting on you and she is an outsider.” He steps back.
His footsteps fade and I’m left with the heavy, burning truth: I don’t know what side he’s on. Not my fathers, but not Kay’s either.
The sky is darkening as I reach the edge of the citadel. A storm brews in the lowlands—heat-lightning over the broken ridges that mark the borders of Crimson. The clouds burn gold from within, pulsing like a heartbeat.The kind of storm that doesn’t just strike. It remembers.
I find the overlook I used to haunt in my first century of grief.
Back when I believed mourning was a task that could be completed.
The stone here is raw. Cold. The flame does not run beneath it.
There is no echo, no whisper of desire or judgment in the earth.
That’s why I chose it then. It’s why I come now.
I sit with the silence. Let it wrap around me. Let it remind me what I promised.
Isaeth.
Her name lives in a part of me that does not speak.
She was never mine to claim, not officially.
But we would have bonded, had the war not stolen her first. Had my father not decided that my service was more important than her life.
He did not tell me she had been captured.
He did not allow me to search. He let her die so that I would stay on the front lines, so that I would keep winning.
I stayed for duty and she paid the cost.
I swore I would never feel again. That I would never bond. Never want. I told myself I would never reach for something the flame could twist into a weapon. I buried every part of me that loved. And now…Kay.
I close my eyes.
I do not mistake what this is growing between the human and myself.
I would have bonded Isaeth because I cared for her.
Because I admired her mind and her steadiness and the quiet understanding between us, but I did not ache in her presence.
I never felt the pulse of fire beneath my skin when she laughed.
Never let my shields slip just to hear her speak my name.
This is different.
Kay is chaos. Sharp-tongued and irreverent.
She challenges everything I’ve been taught to revere.
She is untrained. Unmarked. Ill-prepared.
And I cannot stop thinking about her. This would be easier if I didn’t respect her.
If I could dismiss her as an accident, a strange mortal swept into the game of kings, a puzzle to be solved.
But I’ve seen the way she endures. The way she refuses to break, even when she’s terrified.
The way she laughs in the face of power because it never protected her.
She is not Isaeth.
And that’s what makes her dangerous because I did not bury my grief in war after Isaeth died. I buried it in resolve and Kay is untying those knots strand by strand.
I curl my hands against the stone ledge, feel it bite into my palms.
My father forbade me from warning her about the first test. It was not a suggestion.
Not something I can ignore and pay the price later.
He bound my tongue. That alone should not be enough to rattle me.
I’ve carried burdens heavier than silence, but Kay trusts me now.
Not blindly. Not with reverence. With hope.
The rarest thing in all the realms.
She will stand before the flame soon. And when it does not call her, she will be shamed.
That is the plan. I’ve seen it forming behind every sneer and subtle nod in the council hall.
Let the human girl stumble. Let her be a curiosity turned embarrassment.
Let the people reject her, so no one has to draw the blade.
That is the mercy they’ve designed. But what if I am wrong? What if we all are?
What if the flame does rise for her? What if I stand there, frozen, watching it choose her as the crowd begins to howl? What if they turn on her and let her die? What if I cannot stop it?
The wind howls across the overlook, and I press my eyes shut.
I tell myself this is not love. Not yet, but I know the signs.
I know what it feels like to want someone more than you want your name, your rank, or your place in the world, and I know what happens when you let that feeling go unanswered. When you wait too long.
So here is the truth I cannot unmake: I will not lose another innocent to my father’s throne.
I will not let them take her. If they come for her, they will have to go through me.
And if that means I take my place in the arena…
If it means I ignite the flame they so desperately want from me… Then so be it.
Let Crimson burn.