Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
KAY
Idon’t slam the door when I come in. Mostly because it’s made of etched metal and would probably break my hand before it made a satisfying sound.
But the desire is there. Every part of me aches.
My thigh is bruised from Lyra’s staff, my ribs still smart from where Varo slammed me down in yesterday’s bout, and the pads of my fingers are raw from gripping a sword that’s too long and too heavy for me.
If this is supposed to be the part where I’m growing stronger, tougher—when does it kick in?
My schedule told me to meet Caz here, in the keep, and I’m grateful for the reprieve of privacy.
I round the corner into the study chamber expecting another brutal form drill or worse, a sparring partner who isn’t actively trying to murder me but doesn’t mind if I look murdered by the end of it. Instead, Caz is waiting alone.
He’s standing beside one of the curved tables, a stack of thick, dusty books and parchment rolls spread in a careful arc around him. There’s something ceremonial about the way he lays one out, just as I step inside.
I blink. “We’re… reading?”
He glances up. “Studying.”
“Same thing.”
“Both necessary.”
I limp closer and fold myself onto the bench across from him, groaning the whole way down.
I’m grateful for the break in physical training, but I’ve never been a good studier.
I don’t learn well from reading a text or hearing a lecture.
I learn by doing. I pick the first book off the top of the pile.
“Please tell me this isn’t another language.”
“It’s your language,” he says, tapping one of the books.
I cross my arms across my chest, trying not to wince at the pull in my biceps. Caz’s jaw tightens. “And what language is that, Mr. Ember Heir?” I ask, I’d grin if my lip wasn’t split nearly in half from a well-placed hit from Nyxen Vale.
“English, one of the west-Germanic languages, and a defacto Lingua Franca for humans in your world. You speak a version from the continent of North America, specifically the Midwest region of the United States of America.”
The fuck.
He opens the first text and turns it toward me as if he didn’t just metaphorically pat me on the head like I’m a posturing kitten.
A map of the Infernalis fans out across the page, jagged edges, twisting borders, each of the seven realms inked in a different color.
Crimson flares like blood in the center.
“The Rite is held here,” he says, tapping a long, finger over the scarlet heart of the world. “But the trials are not just of Crimson. Each is shaped by another Realm’s influence.”
I blink again, slower this time.
“So, we’re still in this one,” I place my hand the center of the map too, my fingers almost brushing his.
“But fighting through the others? Like a board game?” He frowns and this time my smile is involuntary.
“Which part is tripping you up?” I lean in, pausing as his face shifts.
Not away from mine. It literally glitches in front of my eyes.
A moment and then gone. “Is this a lost in translation thing? Or a my-daddy-didn’t-play-with-me thing? ”
He shakes his head a me, muttering something, but he’s smiling too, smooth lips almost buzzing as they curve. His glamor is acting up again.
“Knows the details of a language but can’t place board games.”
It’s Caz’s turn to lean closer. “In my lexicon, board games are two opponents using pieces to best each other in a game of strategy or wits. But the Rite does not have a single opponent.”
“And it’s a good thing chess wasn’t the game I was referring to.
” I trace a line from Crimson through the other six realms. A lopsided little spiral.
“A lot of board games are about getting from point A to point B despite obstacles. Others are a race of sort, doing laps and collecting points. And unlike chess, most of those game boards are covered in cartoons and color.” And require a fair bit of luck, but I keep that part to myself.
“Are you saying the sacred Rite that choose the ruler of my realm, is like a children’s pastime?”
I gesture to the map. “If the rainbow fits.” The laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, and Caz tips his head in question. “Nothing.” I shake my head, but the giggles get stronger.
“Tell me.”
I shake my head again, my hair sticking to the sweat still coating my cheeks. “It’s bad,” I say. “Like horrible humor. I’m going to…” I look around. “Well, Nevermind.”
Caz’s smile is wicked. My stomach twists like when I used to throw my head back while on the swings as the rundown playground across the road from my foster family’s apartment building. A flip of anticipation.
“I’d like to know.” His breath is warm over my chin. I shiver anyway. “You are learning about my world. It seems only fair. And I did brave the artillery store without artillery.”
He’s right. He braved a department store. An overstimulating one with fluorescent lights and piped in music. When he’s used to stone and ash and magic. He bought me tampons. I’m not even sure Crimson has tampons, and I know many human men who wouldn’t have done that for the women in their lives.
I shake my head, grinning. “It’s just—Hell is a rainbow.”
He blinks, clearly amused. “You are going to have to explain that one. Like board games.”
I wave a hand at the parchment. “Look at it. Seven realms, all color-coded, each more dramatic than the last. Crimson, Viridian, Cobalt—Hell is literally a rainbow.”
He tilts his head, still not getting it, which only makes it funnier. “And this… is humorous to you?”
“Yes,” I say, a little too eagerly, considering. “There are people back home, on Earth, who think rainbows are evil. Like actually evil. That they’re some sort of moral threat.”
He stares at me in silence. Not confused anymore. Just… stunned. “You mean the symbol of light fractured into wavelengths? That rainbow?”
“Oh, absolutely,” I say, biting back another laugh.
“Because back home it’s associated with queerness.
Being free to be who you are and love who you love regardless of gender or sex.
A lot of us use it to show that we’re part of the community or that we support it.
But some people—bigots, mostly—see it as corrupting or dangerous.
Like they tell us we’re going to…uh…here.
” I gesture around us, wiggling my fingers.
There are entire movements to erase it from schools, cities, people. Outlaw it. Ban it.”
“Ban rainbows?” Caziel slowly lowers his gaze to the map again, jaw tight. “I thought…” He hesitates. “I assumed humans had moved past that.”
“Some have,” I say quietly. “A lot haven’t. Especially where I’m from.”
He looks back at me, eyes sharp but clouded. “So, you celebrate a rainbow, and they punish you for it.”
“Pretty much.”
“And who you choose to love, or how you exist in your own skin, can make you a target?”
I nod once. “People have died for it. People are still dying for it.”
“For love?”
“For the people we love. For who we are. But it’s not all bad. There’s still some beauty left. Pride, for example.”
He doesn’t speak for a long time. Just stares at the colors bleeding across the map like stained glass, war and magic and fire wrapped in every shade.
“In Crimson,” he says finally, voice low but sure, “you could stand in the street and claim your heart as loudly as you wanted. No one would question it. Male and male, female and female, it matters not in Crimson.”
“Provided you’re both Daemari?” The laugh that slips out this time isn’t amused. It’s hollow. “How messed up is it that we call you guys the bad ones. The punishment. And yet demons—Daemari—can be more accepting than humans.”
His expression shifts—something wounded, something full of fire. “We are not perfect. We are still full of judgment and rules and violence, but we are not what your world made us out to be. We are not all monsters.”
“I know,” I say. And I do. “No group of people is all bad or all good. I don’t even think individuals are. We all have shadows and darkness.”
He’s still watching me. Not just my face, but something deeper. The quiet admission beneath my words. Maybe the part of me that never got to be loud about it.
“You, Kay Ward, are exactly who you were meant to be. Only the non-worthy would believe otherwise.”
And just like that, I forget to breathe.
The warmth between us sharpens. He doesn’t reach for me, doesn’t move, but something seems to reach for me—his voice, maybe, or his gaze.
“I would not tolerate a world that feared you, demonized you.” he says. “But I could burn it down.”
My throat tightens. He doesn’t mean me me.
He means people in general. Caziel has shown he is a compassionate man, even if he buries it down in the depths of his heart.
It’s there, the care he has for others. He’s helping me, after all.
He doesn’t look away from me, even as silence settles in the heated room.
I’m not used to being looked at like that, like I’m not a riddle or a risk or a mistake waiting to happen. Just something, someone, worthy.
His hand shifts slightly on the map between us, brushing a crease from the parchment.
And then, very deliberately, he lifts it and places it—lightly, carefully—over mine.
Not a claim. Not a question. Just contact.
His palm is warm. Callused. He doesn’t grip, doesn’t press.
He simply lets our hands touch in the hush between his world and mine.
I exhale slowly.
“Do you celebrate it?” he asks, voice softer now. “This Pride. In your world.”
I nod. “We try. There are parades, art, music… even glitter. A lot of glitter.”
He tilts his head. “That sounds… chaotic.”
I smile. “It is. Beautifully. Loudly. Sometimes messily. But it’s also healing. It’s about being seen. Being yourself. And not apologizing for it.”
He studies me for a long moment. “That sounds like the Rite.”
That catches me off guard. “The Rite?”