Page 120 of The Devil May Care

Iknow I’m dreaming.

The air tastes too sweet, too heavy—like spun sugar melting into smoke. Music drifts from nowhere. A carousel tune, but wrong: warped by distance, slowed until it beats like a pulse beneath the floor. Lights spin in a ring of gold, crimson, violet—each rimmed in black, as if every color carries its own shadow. The ground hums underfoot. Threads rise faintly through the floorboards, glowing lines of dark glass. They move when I breathe.

Horses circle past—too bright, too still. Their eyes shine like polished obsidian, reflecting light that isn’t there. Each carries a name I almost know. A streetlight. A clinic door. The sound of a bell. The world turns. The air flares with heat.

Caziel stands at the edge of the carousel—half in shadow, half in flame. His outline wavers like he’s caught between worlds, every breath making the darkness bend around him.

“Kay.”

The voice comes from everywhere at once—under my skin, behind my ribs, inside the hum of the threads.

“I’m here.”

When I reach for him, the air fractures like glass. My reflection lingers—eyes ringed with black, a flicker of something living inside the dark. The threads between us stretch, gleaming obsidian shot through with crimson light. They tremble when he speaks again.

“Don’t be afraid.”

A bell chimes. The music falters.

The carousel spins faster. Faces blur into streaks of light: my mother, George’s paw, the man from the elevator. His lips move out of sync with the motion, voice catching in the hum of the ride.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “So sorry.

The lights collapse inward, bleeding toward black.

Caziel’s voice cuts through the dark, closer now, steady and certain.

“Find your way out.”

Everything shatters.

The colors fold into a single thread, black as night and glimmering faintly red where it touches my skin. It hums once, deep and low, before burning away. And I fall—through silence, through shadow, through myself.

Iwake before the bell. The world isn’t spinning anymore, but my stomach still thinks it is. My cheeks are wet, my ribs aching from some remembered fall. No dreams. No sound. Just the weight of silence pressing on my ribs. For a moment, I don’t move. The air feels too still. Like something’s missing. It takes a few seconds before I realize what it is. George isn’t here. My throat tightens as I sit up and scan the space beneath my bunk, checking the corner where he sometimes curls in the shadows. Nothing.

I pat my jacket. Shake out the folded blanket at the foot of my bed. I don’t even think—I just search. Even in places he couldn’t possibly fit, my heart hammering. Like if I move fast enough, I’ll find him. But he’s not here and I feel like I’ve lost him again. The grief that hits me isn’t loud. It doesn’t scream. It just folds itself neatly beneath my ribs, presses in, and stays. Like it was always there waiting.

I swallow hard and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cold against my feet, but I don’t flinch. I don’t do anything. I sit there for a long minute, staring at nothing, hands curled into the blanket. The bunk creaks faintly as I move. The others are still asleep—soft breathing, the occasional shift of a limb or the rustle of sheets—but it all feels miles away. There’s a wrongness in me. A hollow ache where something should be. I’m not crying. Not shaking. But I feel like I should be. And that’s worse.

I get dressed slowly. The uniform still fits, but it doesn’t feel like mine anymore. My hands keep fumbling at the fastenings. My boots are scuffed. Everything’s just slightly off. Like my body forgot how to be mine. I braid my hair too tightly, even though no one’s looking. Just to feel like I’m controlling something. The walk to the water basin feels longer than it should. My legs are steady, but my steps don’t feel right. Like I’m wearing someone else’s weight. Someone else’s history.

I splash my face. The cold bites, but it doesn’t wake me up.

I wipe my hands dry and look down into the basin’s surface, half-expecting something to leap out of the reflection at me. But it’s just water. Just a girl.

Still me.

Mostly.

I don’t know what I expected. Scars? Smoke? A mark across my face?

No. That would be too easy.

I dry off with a cloth and stand there for a while, listening to the slow breath of the walls. The flame always seems to hum in the background here. I never noticed it before, but now I can’t un-hear it. It’s constant. Like it knows something I don’t.

The contender hall hums with low voices, the metallic scrape of utensils on stone, the faint hiss of steam. I keep my head down, tray in hand, and slide into an empty space near the far end of the bench. The table’s warmth seeps into my palms — steady, alive, almost breathing. Someone sits beside me without a sound and when I glance up, Nyxen Vale is staring back at me.

Their presence doesn’t announce itself; it gathers. Light seems to lean away from them, bending just enough to make it hard to tell where they end and the world begins. Caziel’s glamor flickers when he loses control, like cracks in a mask. Nyxen’s shadows, though, are not a disguise. They’re part of them. A living outline that moves when they breathe.