Page 144 of The Devil May Care

His eyes meet mine and his lips quirk in a small, sad smile. I nod, clutching the thread gently to my chest, just over the pendant he gave me. This does not feel like I’m training for a trial. I feel like I’m walking into war.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “For earlier. For snapping at you. For thinking you’d treat me like I was useless.”

Caz looks up sharply. “You are offering apology?”

I nod. “It’s what people do when they screw up.”

He’s quiet for a beat longer than I expect. Then, “Most people do not. Even when they should.”

“That can’t be true.” I protest weakly.

“And yet it is.” Caziel’s arms fold across his chest, like he’s protecting something inside himself. “They think if they admit fault, they lose something. Authority. Power. Pride.”

I tilt my head. “But it’s the opposite. Being able to say you were wrong… it means you’re strong enough not to need to pretend all the time.”

He meets my eyes, and there’s something like respect there—maybe even something warmer, deeper. But it’s caught beneath a layer of hesitation.

“You believe that?” he asks.

“I do.”

“And you live it.”

I nod.

“That is a rare quality.”

We fall quiet again, but the silence is different now. Charged. A thread stretching between us like the one in my hand.

“Thank you,” I say softly, meaning the thread and everything else.

He doesn’t nod, does not smile, but his voice, when it comes, is rougher. Lower.

“You’re not a failure, Kay. Don’t ever speak of yourself like that again.”

I’m still clutching the thread in my palm when I get back to myalcove and sink onto my mattress. My fingers are stiff, indented with the pattern of it—if it even has a pattern. I don’t look. I don’t want to know if it still gleams blue under lamplight, or whether it hums when I touch it, or whether it’s changed now that I’ve agreed to take it.

I haven’t used it. But I feel it anyway.

I sit on the edge of the bed and let George leap up beside me. He turns once in a circle and curls against my thigh, already dozing like none of this is strange. As if this is just another night and I’m not about to walk into a trial themed after fear itself.

The Cobalt Realm.

The name alone makes me cold.

I rest the thread on the table beside my bed, but it doesn’t feel far enough away. It buzzes at the edge of my senses, like something brushing against my mind but refusing to speak. Or maybe it already is—and I just can’t understand it.

What if it’s changing me already?

What if taking it in at all—touching it, agreeing to it—is like stepping onto a road that doesn’t allow for u-turns? One that won't let me turn back. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. Try to breathe. Try to slow it all down. My heart is racing in my chest, twisting my stomach into nauseated knots. I’ve done hard things. I know that. I’ve survived grief that could have swallowed me whole, clawed my way through years of therapy, debt, loneliness, doubt. I’ve started over more times than I can count. I’ve held the hands of dying animals, listened to last breaths, chosen mercy when I had to.

So why does this feel different? Why does this feel like I’m being weighed, measured, and found lacking? Like I’m not going to be tested on what I’ve done, but who I am. What if who I am isn’t enough?

My throat tightens, and I tip backward onto the mattress, still fully dressed. My legs dangle off the edge, boots scraping against the wall. The ceiling above me is cracked and pitted like bone, old torch-scars still charred into the stone like little spirals. I count them.

One, two, three, four—

George shifts, nudging his nose against my hand. His purring is a low, steady rumble against my ribs. It should help. It does help. But nothing quiets the voice in my head whispering what if this is the oneyou don’t survive? Not just the body. The mind. The self. What if the fear is the kind that won’t go away? I close my eyes. Exhale slowly.