Page 133 of The Devil May Care

Idon’t remember walking out of the chamber. One minute I’m surrounded by the heat and flicker of fire and politics, and the next I’m outside, in the shaded alcove beneath the training tiers. The silence here is different. The wind smells like smoke and iron and stone. I lean against the wall, arms crossed tight over my chest. The stone presses against the mark on my back and makes it throb. My legs ache. My lungs ache. Everything feels like too much.

I keep hearing the Elder’s voice.“Your courage was witnessed.”Witnessed, maybe. But not understood. Not accepted. Not respected. They stared at me like I was a stain they couldn’t scrub out.Maybe they’d be better at laundry if it didn’t all fall to the Vesperan.

“Brooding doesn’t suit you,” a voice says behind me. I don’t turn.

“Because it suits you more?” A quiet pause. Then the sound of boots stepping closer. Caziel.

I don’t look at him, keeping my gaze fixed on the horizon. The strange curling vines along the outer wall glow faintly in the shadows.

“Did you follow me out here to tell me I embarrassed you?” I ask.

“No,” he says calmly.

“Good. Because the rest of the room covered that fine.”

Still no reaction. Just his presence, tall and steady beside me.

“You think they are right,” he says finally.

My jaw tightens. “I think they’re polished. Composed. Exactly what a contender’s supposed to be.”

“And you’re not.”

“Obviously. I didn’t fit in back home, why would here be any different?”

“Why? Because you felt something?”

“Because I showed it.”

He exhales. I hear the shift in his stance.

“You survived what they prepared their entire lives to avoid. You faced it without guidance, without tricks. And now you are punishing yourself for not making it look effortless? Fuck that.”

I blink. Hearing my unflappable Demon Prince curse is like a slap to the face.

“You think that’s what I’m doing?”

“I think you’re trying to bury what you did, how you survived, before they, or you, can question it.” That lands somewhere deep in my chest. He’s not wrong, but it doesn’t feel like enough. “Stop handing them your shame like it belongs to them.” His voice is sharper now. Still controlled, but there’s a hot thread running through it. Like something simmering just under the surface. “You think the mark would have taken if you were weak? You think the flame bows for cowards? Say it, Kay,” he demands. “Name your fear. Tell me why you keep shrinking yourself under the weight of something you have more than earned.”

I whip around, my temples pounding. “Because it didn’t feel like winning!” My voice rings off the stone like I shouted it from somewhere much higher. Caziel goes still and I drag in a breath that shakes like glass in a storm. “It didn’t feel like triumph,” I say, lower now. “It felt like drowning. It felt like begging for someone to tell me I was still worth something. It felt like like losing her, again, and knowing it would never stop hurting.”

The silence between us thickens. And then, softer than I expect: “Yeah, I know.” When I look at him in shock, he shrugs. “It hurts. And the pain lingers. That is exactly why you survived.”

I blink at him.

“You did not hide from it. You did not try to perform or outsmart. You were honest.”

“I was a mess.”

“You werereal.”

That word feels heavier than any praise he could have given me. I look down, trying to disguise the heat painting my cheeks.

“They’re going to talk. Say I wasn’t ready. That I don’t belong.”

“Then let them talk,” he says, stepping close. “Because none of them saw what you did,Sæl. And none of them understand what it means to walk out still bleeding and let the fire mark you anyway.”

My quarters are still when I get back. Shadows stretch long across the stone walls. It’s quiet here, quieter than it should be. No wind. No voices. No footsteps from the corridor outside. The silence is too big to be empty. It feels like the room is watching me back.