Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
KAY
Sarai’s hands tremble as the bell tolls. She tries to hide it, keeping her movements sharp and functional as she tightens the leather wraps at my wrists, but I can feel it in the way she adjusts and readjusts the same strap twice.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She doesn’t look at me. “I begged them to let me be here for this one,” she says instead. “Cobalt is…”
She doesn’t finish. Just tucks a fold of fabric into place and reaches for the robe that marks me as a contender.
Her silence is louder than any warning. The room is colder than usual.
Or maybe it’s just me. The walls in the hall are lined with dull iron sconces, the candles inside too feeble to chase off the shadows.
Caz isn’t here.
It shouldn’t matter, but it does. I tell myself he’s giving me space, that he’s letting Sarai be the one to ground me because of what this trial is, the wounds it pries open for both of them, but part of me still wonders where he has gone.
Wonder what this trial does to him. If even he has to look away for peace of mind.
War does that. Leave indelible marks on the heart and soul of all it touches.
War destroys, and the battles in Caz’ past are not so distant as to not still burn.
Cobalt.
The word buzzes in my chest, a taste of metal and fear. The realm that strips you bare. Where illusions dissolve, and only what’s real remains. I don’t know how an entire kingdom lives like that. I don’t know how I’m going to survive it.
When Sarai tucks my dagger into my leather belt, I slide the thread Caz gave me from the pocket of my coat and tuck it quietly into my boot.
I don’t know why I hide it. It feels like something that should stay close, but not on display.
I feel it hum, low and tremulous against my ankle, cold snaking up my shin.
I pretend it is not fear making my breath shallow.
Sarai watches me me, but she doesn’t ask.
Instead, she places both hands on my shoulders, guiding me into a stillness I didn’t realize I’d lost.
Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, she says something in Vesperan. The words wind through the air like a song half-remembered, soft and melodic, tinged with grief. I don’t understand the meaning, but it resonates through my bones.
I swallow hard. “Say it again?”
Her eyes meet mine for the first time. “It’s an old blessing,” she says. “One from memory. We say it before we walk into truth.”
She repeats it slower this time, and I try to commit the shape of it to memory. I don’t ask what the words mean. Somehow, I think I already know. When the door opens, George is waiting outside.
“Sneaky little bastard,” I mutter under my breath, but the affection in my voice cracks down the middle. He trots up to me like this is just a casual stroll, not a march toward something I might not come back from the same. Two guards step forward, hands raised to block him.
“He can’t go any farther.”
George hisses.
“S’okay,” I say quickly, placing a hand on his back. “Can he walk with me to the gate?”
The guards hesitate, then relent. Probably because George looks ready to shred them and because everyone in Crimson seems to have a healthy fear of my cat.
“You have questionable timing,” I tell him as he pads beside me, “but I’m glad you’re here.”
I step into the hallway that leads to the arena, his fur brushing my ankles, the only solid warmth in a world that already feels like it’s dissolving. Sarai watches us go but she doesn’t say goodbye.
The archway sits in the center of the arena, ringed in glowing blue flame.
It’s colder than the others. Its blaze shivers, not with heat but with something sharper.
Something that smells like stone and static and rain that hasn’t fallen yet.
Caziel isn’t here. Or maybe he is, sitting somewhere in the crowd just beyond my line of sight. I tell myself it’s fine.
I lie to myself a lot.
George brushes against me again, chirping, before he sits on his haunches. He can’t step through the stone with me. He has to wait here. I take a step forward. Then another. The cold blue fire parts around me like breath. And I start the trial
I wait for the shift. For the dizziness or flash of color, the drop in temperature or the smell of ozone.
The telltale sign that the world has changed.
But nothing happens. I blink. My boots are still on the arena floor.
The worn stones, the crumbling amphitheater, the crowd overhead—all the same. No fog. No mirage. No trial.
I’m just… here.
The silence presses against me first, like cotton stuffed into my ears. The kind that makes my breathing sound too loud in my ears. My heart thuds once. Twice. Too fast. The crowd doesn’t cheer. They murmur. Something’s wrong.
I clutch my arms around myself, suddenly cold.
Not the kind that can be fixed by a blanket.
The kind that settles in your bones. I take a step forward and nothing changes.
Still the same arena. Still the same sky.
Still me. It was supposed to change. My mouth goes dry.
There’s no surge of magic. No sudden shift in the air.
Just the dry heat of Crimson and the expectant hush of a crowd that doesn’t understand what it’s waiting for.
Neither do I. Did I do it wrong? I turn in a slow circle.
“Is this part of it?” I say aloud. But my voice sounds too small, too hollow. There’s no response. Not from the realm. Not from the crowd. Not even from George. He just sits beside the archway, watching me. Calm. Tail flicking slowly.
I look back toward the arch and for a moment it’s gone dark, just stone, and I think I’ve failed already. The silence becomes uneasy. The stands creak. Sand shifts. And then—
“…Did she… go?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Is she broken?”
My mouth is dry. I glance over my shoulder. The arch still burns behind me, crimson red, flickering gently like it always does. But it feels wrong. Like I’m out of sync. Like I missed a beat of something I was supposed to hear.
“She’s wasting our time.”
“Move her along.”
“Pathetic.”
A low ripple moves through the air, like wind over tall grass. The sound of doubt. The voices are soft at first, confused more than cruel. But it doesn’t take long for confusion to twist into disappointment, and disappointment into disdain. My pulse kicks up.
All around me the noise builds—not a roar, but a fraying of tension at the edges. Little rips in the fabric of composure. Laughter. Disgust. Derision.
“She’s the flame’s mistake.”
My chest tightens. The heat begins to rise. Not to warm, to suffocate.
“She doesn’t belong in the Rite.”
“She can’t even begin the trial.”
I take a step forward and the stone feels slick. Like I might fall. Something small arcs through the air and lands near my feet with a dull clink. A pebble. Then another. One bounces off my boot and rattles away. They’re throwing things. The crowd is turning. And I am alone.
My hands start to shake and my knees buckle.
I kneel in the dirt, blood pounding in my ears, pulse erratic.
A sharp sting flares across my upper arm.
I yelp and spin. A small stone rolls to the side.
My sleeve is torn. Blood beads up. I don’t know how many voices there are now.
Too many. Echoing from all around me. A wave pressing in. I can’t breathe.
“Get her out!”
“Unworthy!”
“Send her back to whatever hole they dragged her from!”
Another object slams into the stone by my knee. It shatters—ceramic or glass—and the shards scatter like teeth. One grazes my leg. Another catches my hand. I press one palm down into the dirt, dizzy from the impact, the pressure, the noise.
And then everything goes quiet. Too quiet.
I lift my head.
Caziel stands at the edge of the arena, his silhouette haloed by sun and shadow. His eyes are unreadable. His arms crossed. He looks at me the way a judge looks at a sentence already written. His arms are crossed, expression unreadable. But his eyes are colder than I’ve ever seen them.
Relief stirs, frigid, aching.
“Caz,” My voice barely carries. “What’s happening? Why isn’t it starting?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
When he does, his voice is ice.
“I was wrong about you.”
I blink. “What?”
“You’re not ready,” he says. “You never were. You’ve been coddled and shielded, and the flame doesn’t see you because there’s nothing to see.
” Each word is slow. Precise. Meant to wound.
“You’re not special. You’re not ready. You don’t belong here.
” Each word slices clean and clinical. “The flame doesn’t see you.
No one does. You should never have been brought to Crimson. You don’t belong here.”
My throat closes. He wouldn’t say that. He wouldn’t.
The air shifts and I feel it like a current beneath my skin.
The thread tucked in my boot flashes white-hot.
A searing jolt like lightning spiking through my leg.
I gasp, the pain sharp enough to anchor me.
The pendant pulses once, hot, and sure against my chest. My vision swims. Not from the illusion. From memory. From truth.
This isn’t him.
Not even if he believed every word—he wouldn’t say it like that.
Not like in front of a volatile crowd. It’s cruel, this version of him.
Cold. Detached. The real Ember Heir has never looked at me like I was worthless.
Never once. I press a hand to the burn left by the Cobalt thread and straighten my spine.
“No,” I say aloud, and the falseness of the world shudders.
The crowd freezes. The air distorts. Like something holding its breath.
“You’re not him,” I whisper. “You’re a copy. A trick.”
The fake Caz doesn’t flinch.
“You wanted the truth.”