Chapter 55
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
KAY
The light is blinding. Not warm, not cold—just bright, so all-encompassing it feels like stepping inside a sunbeam.
My breath catches. The air here tastes like silver and sugar and rain right before it falls.
There’s no horizon. No sky. Just light stretching in every direction like an infinite blank page.
There’s something unsettling about the perfection of it.
Too clean. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that doesn’t feel empty, but waiting.
I take a step. My boots make no sound. Leave no footprint. I could be standing on glass, on a cloud, on light itself. My fingers twitch toward my pendant for comfort, but stop halfway. I don’t know why.
A hum starts in the base of my spine. Soft. Gentle. But not passive. A presence. Watching. Weighing. The Flame? No—something else. A thread, maybe. Or the realm itself. It isn’t threatening, but it’s not friendly either. It’s curious. As if it’s tilting its head, wondering what I’ll do next.
Click.
A desk appears twenty feet in front of me. Just appears. One moment there’s nothing, the next there’s a sleek, shining desk made of what looks like mother-of-pearl and quartz, edges glinting like polished bone. Behind it sits a woman.
She’s not young, not old. Her skin glows in a rainbow shimmer, like a holographic overlay, and her hair is an intricate weave of silver and white threads, piled atop her head like a crown of woven starlight.
Her eyes are bright. Knowing. Unreadable.
She lifts a hand and gestures to the chair across from her.
It wasn’t there before, but it is now—Crimson velvet against the endless white, framed in gold that somehow doesn’t shine.
I hesitate. Every instinct screams trap.
Test. Trial. But that’s what this is, isn’t it?
That’s the point. I walk forward, the air thickening with each step.
Like wading into a pool made of sunlight and silk. I sit. Slowly.
The woman nods.
“Welcome, Kay of the Other Flame.” Her voice is smooth. Measured. Like a song composed of balance, it whispers like the tickle of wind chimes in my ear. “We will begin shortly.”
She doesn’t look at me when she says it.
Her fingers shuffle a stack of paper that wasn’t there a blink ago.
A silver feather quill scratches across the top sheet without her touching it.
I open my mouth, then close it. I’ve faced illusions.
Nightmares. Longing and grief and the warped face of desire.
But this…this is different. It doesn’t feel like a trial. It feels like a job interview.
Honestly, that makes it worse. I’ve done those.
Awkward silences. Questions designed to box you in.
Smiles that are too sharp around the edges.
They ask who you are, but only want what fits the form.
They’re looking for specific answers but not about to hand you a hint.
The hum returns. The same one from before.
Faint, but persistent. Not outside me now, but inside. A low vibration in my bones.
“You may speak,” she says gently. “Or not. Silence is also an answer.”
The parchment flips. The chair beneath me shifts—just slightly—adjusting to the angle of my hips, as if it wants me to be comfortable. I’m not. Am I supposed to be? She folds her hands atop the papers and finally meets my gaze.
“Do you believe in peace?”
I blink.
“I—of course.” My voice breaks. I clear my throat. Her eyes are every color and no color. I squirm. “What kind of peace?”
The woman inclines her head, “Peace.”
The quill dances across the paper, but no ink appears.
I grip the arms of the chair. My pulse flutters.
The hum is growing louder. Not painful. Not aggressive.
Just present. Like the realm is listening.
Not for what I say, but for what I mean.
The woman doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Only the page before her changes, the quill scratching along its surface like a heartbeat.
She speaks again. Calm. Measured.
“Would you choose comfort, or truth?”
I exhale slowly.
“Truth,” I say. Too fast. “Or I’d try.”
The quill pauses. My pulse kicks. The woman makes no comment—just waits.
“Would you rather protect one life you love, or save a hundred strangers?”
I flinch.
“That’s not—” I stop myself. Swallow. “Depends on the situation.”
She nods, serene. “You must choose.”
“I can’t.”
How could I? How could anyone? Do I have to be the one to end them?
Do I know any of the people being saved?
Does it matter? One life versus a hundred?
It’s that stupid train problem all over again, but I have questions.
Do I pull the lever? Do I know what I’ve done?
Am I being honest with myself? A hundred lives. One I love. The arena. George. Caziel.
The woman waits. The brand on my back burns.
“I’d save the hundred,” I whisper, hoping it’s the truth.
The quill writes it down. My spine prickles. There’s no reaction. No visible judgment. But something’s wrong. It feels wrong. Like the answer doesn’t belong to me anymore, just to the page. Just to them.
“Would you rather be understood, or adored?”
“Understood.” Even as the word leaves my lips I think of Caziel. His fingers brushing a lock of hair behind my ear, his eyes boring into mine. I swallow hard.
The questions keep coming. Black or white.
Right or wrong. Love or justice. Sacrifice or surrender.
Fight or flight. Each one feels like it lops something vital off of me, shrinking me, flattening me into checkboxes.
There’s no room for breath here. No space for the maybe, the gray.
I lose track of the questions and stop answering out loud.
My thoughts spiral faster than I can contain them, but still the quill records… something.
Why does this feel so clinical? I am not in danger, and I still feel like I’m unraveling.
“Would you rather lose your voice or your vision?”
The quill scratches, ready.
My mouth opens. Then closes again. My voice, the only thing I have left that’s mine. The way I talk back, keep people at bay, keep myself from unraveling. But my vision—I need it to fight, to see the thread, to recognize friend from foe.
Can I be heard if i can’t talk? Yes. Unequivocally. Speech isn’t the only way to communicate. And I don’t need my eyes to see, at least not to see things as they are, without the veneer of civility or the shine of lie. Is this a trick question?
I hesitate too long. The page turns anyway.
The next question comes like a wave crashing over me.
“Would you rather die forgotten or live dishonored?”
I flinch again.
“I don’t know.”
The woman says nothing. Doesn’t press.
But the quill keeps writing. Even though I didn’t answer, and I hate that.
“I said I don’t know,” I say again, sharper this time. “That’s not an answer.”
She tilts her head just slightly, birdlike. “It is.”
The ink curls across the parchment like it knows me better than I do.
The hum inside me builds. Not the flame—it’s something subtler.
Deeper. Like static in my blood. Like whatever part of me recognizes magic is trying to scream.
But I can’t make sense of what it’s saying. The woman turns another page.
“Would you rather betray your ideals, or the people who share them?”
I shake my head. “That’s not fair.”
“Is fairness required?”
A chill brushes the back of my neck. I don’t know if it’s real.
“I don’t want to choose.”
The page doesn’t wait for my permission.
“Would you rather be loved and powerless, or feared and in control?”
“Neither.”
“You must choose.”
“I can’t. You said I can stay silent.”
“Silence is still a choice.”
The woman’s hands fold calmly in her lap. But something behind her eyes sharpens, like this is exactly what she expected. Like she’s marking my resistance down, too. I stare at the floor. My own reflection stares back—stretched and blurred in the white shine.
“Love doesn’t make someone powerless. It does the opposite. Love is strength. Your question is wrong.”
What is this trial testing? Logic? Morality? Or something else? It was supposed to be joy.
“Would you rather destroy yourself to save another, or destroy another to save yourself?”
I breathe in sharply. My stomach flips.
“I’ve already done both,” I whisper, not even meaning to say it out loud.
Every foster home I ran from. Every moment I closed myself off, trying not to need anyone. Every time I let someone hurt me, just so they wouldn’t walk away. Every time I pushed someone back before they could decide I wasn’t worth staying for. The page turns again.
“Would you rather be forgiven or be right?”
That one guts me. I’ve been both. I’ve been neither. And I still don’t know which one would have saved me.
When I glance up, the woman is still watching me with the same calm, endless patience.
There is no cruelty in her voice. No mockery.
That almost makes it worse. Like she believes this is kindness.
Like she thinks clarity will save me. But this clarity isn’t real.
It’s sharp enough to cut, but none of it fits.
It’s boxes where there should be rivers. Fences where there should be paths.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t know.
I don’t know, but the questions keep coming anyway. Faster now. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. Hard. Like I can squeeze the thoughts into something that makes sense. Like pressure might stop the unraveling.
“Would you rather endure alone, or collapse in someone’s arms?”
“Would you rather forget your pain, or carry it forever so others don’t have to?”
“Would you rather leave a mark—or be the one who removes them?”
My breath shortens. The room, the light, the chair—they start to warp. Not physically. It’s not magic I can see. But something tilts inside me. Like the ground just shifted under my ribs.