Page 146 of The Devil May Care

I’m just… here.

The silence presses against me first, like cotton stuffed into my ears. The kind that makes my breathing sound too loud in my ears. My heart thuds once. Twice. Too fast. The crowd doesn’t cheer. They murmur. Something’s wrong.

I clutch my arms around myself, suddenly cold. Not the kind that can be fixed by a blanket. The kind that settles in your bones. I take a step forward and nothing changes. Still the same arena. Still the same sky. Still me. It was supposed to change. My mouth goes dry. There’s no surge of magic. No sudden shift in the air. Just the dry heat of Crimson and the expectant hush of a crowd that doesn’t understand what it’s waiting for. Neither do I. Did I do it wrong? I turn in a slow circle.

“Is this part of it?” I say aloud. But my voice sounds too small, too hollow. There’s no response. Not from the realm. Not from the crowd. Not even from George. He just sits beside the archway, watching me. Calm. Tail flicking slowly.

I look back toward the arch and for a moment it’s gone dark, just stone, and I think I’ve failed already. The silence becomes uneasy. The stands creak. Sand shifts. And then—

“…Did she… go?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Is she broken?”

My mouth is dry. I glance over my shoulder. The arch still burns behind me, crimson red, flickering gently like it always does. But it feels wrong. Like I’m out of sync. Like I missed a beat of something I was supposed to hear.

“She’s wasting our time.”

“Move her along.”

“Pathetic.”

A low ripple moves through the air, like wind over tall grass. The sound of doubt. The voices are soft at first, confused more than cruel. But it doesn’t take long for confusion to twist into disappointment, and disappointment into disdain. My pulse kicks up.

All around me the noise builds—not a roar, but a fraying of tension at the edges. Little rips in the fabric of composure. Laughter. Disgust. Derision.

“She’s the flame’s mistake.”

My chest tightens. The heat begins to rise. Not to warm, to suffocate.

“She doesn’t belong in the Rite.”

“She can’t even begin the trial.”

I take a step forward and the stone feels slick. Like I might fall. Something small arcs through the air and lands near my feet with a dull clink. A pebble. Then another. One bounces off my boot and rattles away. They’re throwing things. The crowd is turning. And I am alone.

My hands start to shake and my knees buckle. I kneel in the dirt, blood pounding in my ears, pulse erratic. A sharp sting flares across my upper arm. I yelp and spin. A small stone rolls to the side. My sleeve is torn. Blood beads up. I don’t know how many voices there are now. Too many. Echoing from all around me. A wave pressing in. I can’t breathe.

“Get her out!”

“Unworthy!”

“Send her back to whatever hole they dragged her from!”

Another object slams into the stone by my knee. It shatters—ceramic or glass—and the shards scatter like teeth. One grazes my leg. Another catches my hand. I press one palm down into the dirt, dizzy from the impact, the pressure, the noise.

And then everything goes quiet. Too quiet.

I lift my head.

Caziel stands at the edge of the arena, his silhouette haloed by sunand shadow. His eyes are unreadable. His arms crossed. He looks at me the way a judge looks at a sentence already written. His arms are crossed, expression unreadable. But his eyes are colder than I’ve ever seen them.

Relief stirs, frigid, aching.

“Caz,” My voice barely carries. “What’s happening? Why isn’t it starting?”

He doesn’t answer right away.