Page 119 of The Devil May Care

CAZIEL

She was never supposed to feel it. The chamber is still, but the air tastes different now. Not burnt. Not wrong. But it is charged with intention. I pulled a thread that I had no right to. I know what they are, what they mean. My father made sure of it. The threads are not spells. They are not tools. They are the bones of the realms, the emotions that shaped each Sovereign dominion. Obsidian sorrow. Cobalt clarity. Viridian longing. Each one a truth so old it bleeds into flame.

Any Sovereign can reach for them. But even they ask permission. Even they follow the rites and rules. To draw a thread without offering, without ritual, without realm-sanction, especially for someone not of Infernalis, is more than defiance. It is trespass. It is theft. And I did it anyway because she looked at me with those too-human eyes and asked how reading grief would protect her from feeling it.

I knew Obsidian would answer her. Because I knew it would remember her pain. Because I could not let her walk into that realm blind, not when I could show her what waited. Even if the cost was mine alone. And I was right. The thread obeyed. More easily than I expected. It coiled around my flame like it recognized something. And now I carry it. A mark beneath my skin, just faint enough not to show. Just deep enough to change everything.

The chamber is quiet now. The map still stretches across the bench, but its colors seem duller in the low lamplight. The flame in the dish hassettled, obedient again, contained. I stare at the space where she sat, where her fingers trembled under mine and her breath caught on grief she had not prepared for. She is gone now. Said she needed air. Did not wait for me to follow.

Which is good. Because I could not have followed her if I wanted to. I am still trying to breathe. The scorch at the base of my palm throbs softly. I pull my glove back down over it, though no one is here to see. A thin welt remains, crimson threaded with violet, curling like a question mark. Obsidian’s Mark. I will not glamor it away.

I run my hand down the bench’s edge. Cold stone. Not like her. She burns hotter than this realm ever did. She feels everything, too much, sometimes, but she let me in. She trusted me with the thread. I squeeze my fist around the ache in my palm as if it can also calm the ache in my chest. This was not just training. It was not strategy. It was a choice, and it broke more than one rule. If my father knew I gave Kay even a taste of Obsidian’s memory, he—

I stop.

I know exactly what he would do. He would call it weakness. Treason. Love, if he were feeling cruel. But it was not that. Not yet. Not exactly. I wanted to level the playing field. Every other contender has tasted the flavor of each realm. She was the only contestant going in blind. And the thread reacted. It accepted. It recognized her. She did not flinch back from what she was shown. She bore it like fire. Quiet. Steady. Real.

I should be afraid—not of punishment, not even of the flame—but of how easily I have decided I will do it again. Seven realms. Seven threads. Maybe if I find her a way to carry them, she will not feel crushed under the weight of each taste. I move through the palace corridors without purpose. The quiet halls near the library are mostly abandoned, flame-scribes and record-keepers long since tucked into their sanctums. The Emberlight here flickers steady and gold, unbothered by my trespass. But I feel the weight of it in my ribs. A tension I cannot seem to quite exhale.

I took a risk stealing the thread for her, giving it without permission. Obsidian is not a realm that forgives arrogance. It could have rejected her. Could have turned on me. It did not. And now that I have seen the thread take—seen her take it—I know I will do it again. I will call theCobalt clarity and the Viridian hunger. I will let her taste the stillness of Umbral, the chaos of Argent, the beauty and cruelty of Gilded. I will show her everything I was taught to survive, everything I was trained to defeat. She should not have to face it blind. I am not just the Ember Heir. I am the son of a ruler who let me burn and told me to be grateful for the flame, and I will not leave her to the same fate.

And she did not flinch. Not from Obsidian. Not from me.

That should have been the end of it. I should feel nothing more than relief that she has survived until this point. That she did not burn. Instead, all I can think about was the curve of her neck, bowed under my flame. The way her breath hitched when sorrow struck. The sound of it was gutted, raw, real. There was power in her emotion. Not magic. Not ritual. Just her. Honest, unguarded, open.

And I want her.

Not in passing. Not in the way soldiers crave comfort before a battle. I want her in the way the flame wants kindling. Heat curling in my gut. In the way Obsidian mourns the names never spoken aloud. A weight settling in my chest. In the way Crimson burns when it is forced to wait. I wanted to lean in. To place my palm against her chest and see if the flame burning beneath her skin would respond to mine. To see if she would open to it. I wanted to sip from her lips and swallow the sounds I wanted to coax out of her. But I banked the fire. That desire—the hunger and the knowing behind it—was the most dangerous thing I had felt in memory. And once lit there is no putting that flame back in the box.

I called something ancient. I offered her sorrow. She let me see her. And the fire responded.

I press my thumb into the still-healing welt on my palm. The pain grounds me. The court will notice if I keep pulling threads. My father will know something is shifting, he always does. I do not care. Punish me, I can take it. They cannot hurt her while she is bound to the Rite, to do so would dishonor the Flame, but I will be careful. Careful… and committed because I have chosen this path. And her with it. She should understand what she is walking into. Not as a victim. As a sovereign.

***

The sanctum is empty when I step inside. It always is this late. The room sits beneath the heart of the keep, carved from ancient basalt andpolished obsidian, its floor etched with flame-script too old for even the Elders to translate. At its center, a shallow brazier burns without smoke or fuel—Crimson’s flame, pure and unyielding. The oldest fissure point in the keep.

I step toward it, slowly. My footsteps echo off the curved walls, but the fire makes no sound. It waits. Watches. It knows I want her. It responds not just to the magic I pulled, but to the heat still rising beneath my skin—heat that has nothing to do with power, and everything to do with the feel of her trembling under my hand. It also sees what I have done. What I took.

The Flame burns brighter. As if it recognizes the truth I have only just recognized. Kay Ward is not mine. She should not be here. And yet I want her close. I want her alive. I want her for myself. And I am ready to burn alongside her if that is her fate.

I kneel before it without ceremony. No chants. No offering. The wound on my palm pulses faintly. A heartbeat of violet under my skin. The flame flickers once. Then again. It is subtle, but wrong. Its color is not quite red. There is a ripple at the edge. Not bright like Argent. Not dark like Obsidian. Clear. Cold.

Cobalt.

I do not speak. I do not move. I had not meant to call on the realm. I have not summoned its threads. I have not said her name. But still the Flame answers. Still it reaches. I haven’t even told her about Cobalt yet—what it does, how it strips you to bone. But my flame knows. It knows I’ve made a decision. But something inside me—something shaped like her voice, her questions, her grief—has already begun stretching forward inch by inch. One thread at a time. One truth at a time. Until she knows them all.

I close my eyes. Bow my head.

I will do it again.

I will draw every realm into her bones if I must. Until she is no longer walking blind into a Rite no mortal was ever meant to survive. Until she understands every fire she might face. Until she stands before the Rite not as a human mistake, but as someone the fire itself remembers. Until she knows the world that made me.

And maybe—Flame forgive me—until she knows me.

CHAPTER THIRTY

KAY