Chapter 22 #2
Afew hours later I’ve ensconced myself on the wide stone ledge ringing a private balcony.
Below me, in the center of the city, I watch Daemari move like ants.
None of them seem at all concerned about this Flame Rite.
They’re going to work, carrying satchels of food, leaning down to lecture the kid tossing rocks at the guards.
It’s like looking down at a human city. Everyone moving about their lives.
Or like the time I snuck onto the roof of my high school and looked down at the kids warming up for a soccer game.
A tiny piece of familiarity in a foreign place.
The stone beneath me is sun-warmed and rough, and the wind carries the faint scent of smoke and something sweet I can’t name. I should go inside. I should rest. But the silence out here is the only thing keeping my thoughts from spinning apart until I hear the crunch of boots on gravel behind me.
I glance back to find Caziel. He’s moving slowly, deliberately, like someone approaching a ledge or a wild animal trapped on one. He stops a few paces away, his expression unreadable.
“Are you planning to jump?” The question isn’t teasing. Not really.
I huff a breath. “Would it help if I was?”
A twitch of something crosses his face. Pain, maybe.
Or guilt. But he covers it too quickly for me to know for sure.
He steps closer, folding himself down beside me with the same smooth, efficient grace he brings to the training ring.
We sit in silence for a beat, both of us staring out at the horizon—peaks of dark stone rising like jagged teeth in the distance, the sky molten with approaching sunset.
“I know the trial is coming,” I say. “No one will say it, but I can feel it. It’s in the air.
” And Sarai told me about the courtyard, but I don’t want her to get reprimanded if the information was meant to be private.
I have a feeling it was, or someone else—this smoldering Ember Prince, for example—would have been the one to tell me.
He exhales through his nose.
“I thought maybe if I asked you…” I turn to him. “Will you tell me what it is? What to expect?”
His jaw flexes. He opens his mouth and closes it again. Nothing comes out. I frown.
“Caz?”
“I… can’t,” he finally says, the words forced and bitter. “My father bound me.”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Magically. I’m not allowed to speak of it. Not the shape, not the scope, not the danger. I can’t even write it down. I tried. It doesn’t work.”
I feel it, then. A chill that crawls over my skin like ash.
“They want me to go in blind?” I ask. “That’s the plan?”
“Yes,” he says. The word is acid.
I can’t stop staring at him. At the fury in his eyes—at how much it clearly hurts him not to be able to warn me.
“He did this to you?” I whisper. “Your own father?”
He doesn’t answer. But that silence is answer enough.
Something inside me breaks open. Not fear, exactly.
Not even despair. Just… sorrow. And something like loyalty.
I thought maybe I wasn’t important enough to be told.
But he’s being silenced. By the man who raised him.
Who rules this realm. It wouldn’t have been necessary unless Caz… I turn my head to hide my smile.
“You’re not upset?” he asks, and his voice is too careful. “That I can’t help you?”
My head jerks up. “What?”
“I know you want to be prepared,” he continues. “And I failed you. I let my father—”
“Stop.” He goes still at the word, and I get to my feet, heart pounding.
“I’m not upset with you. I’m furious for you.
” His eyes finally snap to mine. “You think I care that I don’t get a cheat sheet?
” I ask, stepping closer. “I’m angry because your father doesn’t trust you.
Because instead of having your back, he shackled you.
You—who’ve done nothing but try to help me, who’s given me shelter and training and kindness—he treated you like a liability. ”
Caziel stares at me, stunned.
“I thought…” he begins, then shakes his head. “You’re the one facing the flame. I thought your anger would be about that. About being thrown to it blind.”
“I’m used to people trying to control me,” I say bitterly.
“But you? You were betrayed by family. By someone you should be able to trust.” A slow exhale escapes him.
His features shift, softening with something like awe—or grief.
He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t have to be afraid of the people who are supposed to protect you,” I murmur.
He looks like he’s trying to swallow glass. Then I do something that surprises even me: I reach up and touch his face, and he doesn’t pull back.
I trace the curve of his jaw, the barely-there stubble I hadn’t noticed before. He leans into my palm like he’s starving for it.
“I hate that he did that to you,” I whisper. “That he took your voice.”
His hand comes up to cover mine. “You’re the first person to say that.”
The air shifts between us—something deeper than attraction, heavier than heat. I feel it settle in my bones.
“Will you let me feed you?” Caziel asks, voice low, rough with something that scrapes the edge of desperation. “Please. It’s the least I can do.” I blink up at him. For a second, I can’t breathe. The words shouldn’t feel like that—like an offering. Like a vow.
“Yes,” I say softly. And it feels like I’ve agreed to more than food.
He exhales slowly, and I see it then—how tightly he’s holding himself together. The way his shoulders tense and his gaze doesn’t waver from mine. Like he’s memorizing me. Like this is something he can still control, still offer, when everything else has been taken away.
He starts to step back, to guide me inside, when we hear the sharp echo of boots against stone.
Caziel stiffens. Before I can even register the sound, he’s moving.
A large hand at my lower back, another curling lightly around my wrist as he pivots, places himself between me and the corridor like a shield.
The movement is precise, practiced. I find myself pulled into the hard line of his chest, his body blocking me from view, one arm angled just enough that I can see his fingers twitch with restrained tension.
My hands instinctively land against him—one braced on his chest, the other gripping the edge of his coat—and I’m suddenly very aware of how close we are. His scent, the heat of him, the feel of his breath as it brushes the top of my head.
My heart pounds like a drum line. “Caz,” I whisper urgently, craning my head slightly to look up at him. “What are you doing? They’re going to think we’re…”
Kissing.
Necking.
Fucking.
Something.
“Let them,” he cuts me off, voice like gravel. His eyes are fixed on the curve of my mouth. “It’s all I can think about anyway.”
Before I can even process what that means, what he just said, the guards round the bend. They skid to a stop the moment they see him.
“Oh shit,” one says quickly, looking away, eyes wide. “Apologies my Lord, we didn’t realize—”
Caz doesn’t speak right away. He angles his body further, subtly adjusting his stance so I’m out of sight, his coat falling around me like a dark curtain.
I can feel the thrum of tension in him—controlled but vibrating just beneath the surface.
A prince taking his last few moments of pleasure before he deigns to acknowledge the intrusion. I bite my lip to hold back my laugh.
“Leave us. Now,” he says at last, cold and calm, but with a dangerous edge that freezes the air. “You didn’t see anything.”
The guards bow their heads instantly. “Of course, my Lord.”
“And you won’t speak of it,” he adds. “To anyone.”
“No, my Lord,” the other stammers. “We understand, my Lord.”
They hurry away, boots retreating fast down the corridor and I swallow back my snort.
Still, Caz doesn’t let go of me. We stand there in silence for a long breath, the adrenaline thrumming between us like a second pulse.
The humor is seeping out of my pores, being replaced with heat.
My hands are still pressed against his chest. His arm is still around me, shielding me as if I’m something fragile and precious and not already caught in the fire. Finally, I glance up.
“All you can think about?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to, but his arm around my waist tightens, and I relax a fraction of an inch into the firm wall of his chest. Because it’s starting to be all I can think about, too. And I can’t afford distractions right now.