Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
KAY
The forest doesn’t want to let me go. I feel it in the way the light shifts behind me, golden and green, soft and aching.
The air hums like breath on my skin. A heartbeat ago, it offered me everything I’ve ever wanted, and I said no.
That should feel victorious. It doesn’t.
My boots hit the worn stone of the archway, and I swear it resists me.
The world at my back pulses with want. I close my fingers tighter around the pendant at my chest. It’s warm from my body.
Real. I remember that now. Crimson is real. Caziel is real. Pain is real.
I step forward and the world fractures. Light splits sideways, like glass catching flame.
My stomach lurches. For a second, I think I’ll be sick and then I’m through, blinking into the mute light of the arena as my knees slam into the hard ground of the amphitheater.
I land like a puppet with its strings cut.
Gasps echo above me. Distant, distorted.
The crowd sees something, but it’s not me.
I’m barely here. My hands tremble. The brands on my wrists glow faintly, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, or the Flame’s.
I can’t tell anymore. Everything feels too close.
My skin is too tight. I feel like I’ve been cracked open, scraped raw, then stuffed back inside a too-small shell.
They tried to take me. Not just with fear this time, or grief, but with want. With desire. With a lie that looked too much like the truth. My breath catches, and I drop my forehead to my knees, fighting for composure.
Get up. I tell myself, don’t fall apart here. Not here.
“Kay.”
Caziel waits just beyond the archway. Not fake.
Not made of longing. Just him. I shut my eyes because this is almost worse.
He is looking at me like I’m breakable again.
Gentle, quiet, too careful, as if he thinks I’ll shatter if he breathes too hard.
I might, actually, but I’m pissed he sees it too.
The tenderness makes something cold flicker inside me.
I don’t want him to be gentle. I want him to be… normal. Blunt and maddening and clipped at the edges. I want him to roll his eyes or scold me for letting my guard down. Not stand there like I’m some fragile thing he doesn’t know how to touch.
“Kay,” he says, voice low.
I nod, too stiff, too hollow. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
His mouth tightens at the corners. He hears the strain I did not mean to show.
The words taste strange coming out. I don’t feel like me.
I don’t know if I ever really did. I keep waiting for someone else to point it out.
The silence stretches. I want to ask him what he sees when he looks at me, but I don’t trust the answer.
I don’t trust anything right now. The forest stole that from me.
I search his face for signs. For anything that might flicker or change or shift into something false.
But all I find is him. Real. Quiet. Tired around the eyes.
Footsteps. Then warmth. His hand hovers over my shoulder.
Not touching, waiting for permission. I give the faintest nod, and he sinks down beside me, slow and careful. Like I’m glass again.
“You made it.”
I shake my head. “Barely.”
The pendant pulses once in agreement. He notices it too this time, and I see the muscles in his jaw jump as he clenches his teeth.
“Viridian does not show mercy.”
“None of them do.”
He doesn’t argue and I finally lift my head to meet his gaze.
Caz’s eyes are dark and steady, searching mine.
There’s no triumph there. Just quiet. His hands are uncharacteristically busy.
They push through his hair, flatten down the front of his coat.
I can’t stop watching them. The same ones that held me—almost—and the same ones that didn’t stop, even when I asked.
It wasn’t him.
He’s watching me too, his eyes full of something soft and scared and a little bit lost. He doesn’t know what I saw, what I felt, and I’m not sure if I want to tell him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“Did they hurt you?” he asks.
“No,” I whisper, then correct myself. “Yes. But not like you think.”
He doesn’t push, and I’m grateful. The memory of what almost happened still burns under my skin, too fresh to explain. Too close to shame.
“I thought I was ready,” I say instead.
“You were.” His voice is steady, certain.
I look away. “It didn’t feel like it.”
“You walked out.”
“Because I screamed at a hallucination and scared the trees into letting me go.”
His mouth quirks. “That is one way to handle it.”
I don’t smile. I want to. I want to collapse into his side and forget everything.
But I can’t. Not yet. I can’t look at him for too long.
I’m not ready to know what he sees in my face.
My skin still remembers the feel of illusion; of his body pressed too close.
That version of him who did not stop. Who did not listen.
“I thought I had more time,” I say.
“The Rite is picking up the pace.”
Of course it is, and I bet his precious council is behind it. They’re trying to break me. Break all of us. I let out a shuddering breath; eyes fixed on the ground. My knees still tremble, but I’m not sure if it’s from the trial or him. I’m not sure it matters.
“I need to get cleaned up,” I say, pushing to my feet. There’s something like pride in his eyes. But it doesn’t soothe me the way it should.
“Come on. You need food, drink, rest. All will help.”
“Help what?”
His expression darkens the way it always does when he thinks I’m in danger, making bad choices, or talking back. “Whatever it was that made you look like that.”
I flinch. He notices but pretends he does not.
I hate how much I wish he would, because I know I’m not ready to talk about it.
Caziel says nothing as he leads me away from the arena and toward the citadel.
His stride is measured, his posture careful, like he’s trying not to spook me.
I don’t know how to ask him to stop doing that, either.
My legs ache. My hands are clammy, and there’s a strange sensation in my chest like something’s rattling around in there, something I can’t dislodge.
A ghost, maybe. A memory. A version of myself I’m not ready to look at.
We wind through the castle for an eternity, or maybe minutes, the route is familiar, like coming home. He stops in front of a door I recognize as his, and holds it open for me without a word. I hesitate. Just a second. Do I want to be alone with him? Then I step past him into the chambers.
The heat is immediate. Warmer here than the hall.
Not oppressive, but steady. Comforting, maybe.
I rub my hands together, trying not to notice the fine tremor still in my fingers.
The room smells like smoke and something faintly herbal.
Like the oil he uses. There’s a hearth lit near the back wall.
A book open, face-down on the armrest of the chair beside it.
A blanket folded with military precision on the edge of the low bed.
I don’t sit. I just stand there, wrapped in too much silence.
“You’re safe,” he says softly, closing the door behind us.
“I know.”
A beat.
“Are you alright?”
“No.”
“Are you—”
“Please don’t.” It comes out sharper than I mean. Too harsh, barbed. I shake my head, trying to soften it. “I’m not ready to talk about it.”
I see him bite down on the impulse to push. His jaw tics once, but he nods.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Food? A bath? George?”
“A reset button?”
He huffs a breath. Not quite a laugh, but the corner of his mouth lifts.
“Fresh out.”
I lower myself slowly onto the edge of the bed, keeping my back straight, my gaze fixed on a seam in the floorboards. I’m aware of him watching me, hovering at the edge of the hearth like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to sit. I wish he would.
“I didn’t expect it to be today,” I admit. “The trial. I thought I’d have more time. The bell didn’t even go, I just knew.”
“I didn’t know either,” he says, quiet. “I’d have warned you if I could.”
“Your father?”
He doesn’t deny it. Just steps closer, kneels beside the hearth to adjust the flame, then stands again. When he turns, his expression is unreadable. He’s still glamoured. Still too perfect.
I want to ask him why. Instead, I let the silence stretch between us until it starts to feel brittle.
“Did I…” I stop. Start again. “In the arena, did I embarrass myself?”
Caz’s brow furrows. “What?”
“I just… everyone says the trials reveal who you really are, right? So, if I cracked, if I fell for the trap, what does that say about me?”
“It says you are human,” he says. No hesitation. “It says you still made it through.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I tell him, not in a world where “human” feels like an insult. Something wrong. “And I don’t feel like I did.”
“You did though.” His voice is firmer now, and I feel it settle into something low in my ribs.
“I did not mean human as an insult. The Daemari fall too.” He crosses to where I’m sitting and crouches beside the bed, not touching me, but close enough I can feel his warmth.
“Do you want to tell me what you saw?” he asks.
I shake my head. He nods again, this time slower. “Then don’t. Not until you’re ready.”
I breathe out through my nose. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
Gods, why does that hurt? I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. There’s something in his expression I can’t parse. Not pity. Not concern. Care. Real and steady. The kind that doesn’t demand anything back. It makes my throat tighten.
“I don’t know what I need,” I say, barely above a whisper.
He rises in one fluid motion. “You do not need to. You are safe here.”