Page 131 of The Devil May Care

“I’m not—”

“You are. You think because it hurt, it was wrong. Because it shook you, it was weakness. You think the others passed because they walkedaway looking proud.” His eyes burn brighter, irises bleeding into the whites until he’s every bit the Demon Prince. Shadowy somethings seem to curl from the top of his head. I blink twice in quick succession and they’re gone. “But you looked grief in the face. You told it the truth. You walked through it, Kay.”

I look down. My fingers twist in the edge of the blanket.

“Maybe that was a mistake.”

He exhales. Sharp. Furious. Not at me—for me.

“Enough.” Before I can argue, his hand closes gently but firmly around my wrist. “Get up.”

“What—?”

“You need to see something.”

“Caz, I—George is—”

“He will wait.” George blinks at us and flicks his tail, smug and unbothered.

“You can’t just drag me—”

“I can,” he says, and does.

He doesn’t yank, but he doesn’t let go, either. And I’m too stunned—and too exhausted—to resist him. He guides me away from the bench, down a narrow staircase tucked behind a column. We descend through the inner tiers of the arena, the world muffled by stone and shadow and the weight of everything I haven’t let myself feel. I don’t know where we’re going, but his hand is steady. And for the first time since I left the ring I don’t feel alone.

The Ember Chamber—that’s what he calls it as he pushes open a heavy stone door—feels like it was carved into the spine of the world. It’s quiet, but not peaceful. There’s a weight to the stillness. It’s heavy. The kind of silence that sits on your shoulders and doesn’t let go. Caziel leads me through the arched entrance without a word. He’s not dragging me anymore, but he hasn’t let go of me either. His fingers slid down the back of my hand until they can twine with mine. His grip is warm. Solid.

I don’t want to be here, in this room, I also don’t want to still be shaking. Or buried under the weight of a grief I already lived once. But Idon’t mind being with him. I don’t even really mind Crimson. What I am is worn out and pissed off and still trying not to cry.

“Is this some kind of learning experience?” I mutter. “Because I’d really like a rain check.”

“No,” he says, voice even. “It is perspective.”

The room opens around us, circular, dimly lit, and filled with heat that doesn’t touch the skin but curls under it. The walls pulse faintly with emberlight, veins of fire moving through stone like slow lightning. At the center stands a narrow pillar of volcanic glass and crystal, encased in a spiral of forged iron. Flames shift within the structure, patterns flickering, reforming. It feels alive.

“This is the Ember Ledger,” Caziel says.

“Let me guess. Magical scoreboard.”

“Something like that,” he says. “It is a reflection.”

I cross my arms, suddenly aware of how I must look with the blanket still around my shoulders and my hair probably a mess, eyes red. If this thing reflects anything, it’ll show me cracked and pitiful and stuck halfway between breaking and pretending I’m still whole.

“Why are we here, Caz?”

“Because you keep trying to convince yourself you were wrong to survive.”

I flinch. “And?”

“And I am growing tired of watching you lie to yourself.”

He steps forward and presses his palm flat against the glass.

The fire inside shifts. Names begin to appear—thirteen of them—etched in light across the pillar in looping Daemari script. Eleven glow, but two at the bottom are dim: Thyraen Korr and Dravenis Cahl. Not erased, but like someone sucked the shine out of them both.

“They did not make it,” he says quietly. “Not fully. Dravenis made it out, Thyraen did not. The flame rejected both.”

I stare. “Oh, my gods they—”