Page 155 of The Devil May Care

“Captain Varo has shown consistency. Restraint. Command.”

Another Elder leans forward, hood casting a shadow across her mouth.

“He understands the burden of legacy. He carries it well.”

And Kay? Kay carries nothing but her own weight. Her own will. And that terrifies them more than any corrupted flame. They would rather elevate someone with clean lines and buried grief than risk a spark they did not ignite themselves.

I stare straight ahead. This is not about merit. It never was. It is about control. The kind you breed. The kind you train. The kind you shackle in gold and parade through the courts while telling the people it is for their own protection. Eyes shift to me. Kay has nothing, but I had everything. And still turned my back on it. I wonder how many of thecouncil members in this room know the truth. About Isaeth, about my father’s conflated border wars, about all of it.

“Of course,” my father adds, voice velvet-smooth, “the Rite remains open. The trials determine the outcome, but it would be… unwise… not to consider the Realm’s long-term needs.”

Needs. As in safety. Purity. Stability.

As in submission.

The room chills.

I think of Kay’s eyes, dark and steady as she faced the Obsidian trial. Of her voice breaking through illusion. Of the way she still flinches sometimes, not because she is weak, but because she expects pain. She is not learning to fight to win, not in any arena I have put her in. She is learning to expect hurt. To face it head on anyway. And I am the one who did that to her.

She was never trained for this, but she learns. She survives. And worse, she sees us. She sees me. She is not meant to win, not by their rules, but rules are not always just, and blood does not always tell the truth.

The flame in the chamber flickers off rhythm. Subtle. Barely more than a breath. But I notice. So does Solonar. So, I suspect, does my father. The Asmodeus has not withdrawn. He watches from his carved obsidian throne, one arm resting along the side, his fingers drumming the skull of some long-dead beast as if it helps him think. He has not spoken in several minutes; he is letting the elders stew in their concern. Around us, the low murmur of voices grows legs.

“She still made it through Cobalt,” one councilor whispers. “There’s no precedent for that.”

“Not for a mortal,” says another. “Or anyone who didn’t belong there. The only way through is to block the influence. Can she do that without Flame?”

“Perhaps she does belong there,” someone mutters, and a few turn to look. “The mark accepted her. The trials shift around her. You can feel it. Perhaps it is a human thing. We could study—”

“She’s not Daemari. That’s the end of the argument.”

“It should be,” says a quieter voice, “but the Flame—”

“—reacts,” another finishes.

No one dares speak too loudly. Not with my father present. But thatdoes not stop them from wondering. And what they do not say is louder still. They are afraid. Not of Kay. Of what it means if she is real.

Solonar folds his hands behind his back. His voice is calm and clipped. “Engagement with the trials is not a flaw. It is the very purpose of the Rite. And she has engaged.”

“Too much,” one of the older advisors says. “She’s not skimming their surface. She’s sinking.”

“She understands them,” another adds. “That’s unheard of.”

My father smiles, the kind of twist of the mouth that belongs to a blade just before the plunge.

“She dares,” he repeats, softly. “Yes. And that is the root of the problem.”

He rises slow, graceful, deliberate. His black-red robes ripple around his frame like dying smoke. The flame bends toward him, then back like a recoil. It flinched.

“Compassion,” he says, voice low but cutting, “is not strength. It is a liability. A soft spot becomes a target. Empathy blinds the mind to truth. You cannot lead if you bleed for every trembling voice. That kind of softness invites suffering. If she cannot hold against the other realms, if she attempts to breach them, imagine what can sneak back in upon her return.” No one interrupts. “She wouldn’t even need do it on purpose, but we must be very clear. There is a reason Rite contenders do not engage with the realms.”

He paces once before the central Fame. It should be steady. It is not. I watch the coils shift and shimmer as if the flame is listening, but not to him. It hears the oily lies that coat each word.

“She survives,” he continues. “But survival is not supremacy. It is not even resilience. And I caution you all not to confuse reaction with relevance.”

The Flame twists and brightens. Only slightly, but it is enough. A few councilors glance at it, then away.

“She is not a candidate,” he says. “She is a foreign body. We allowed her to stay out of kindness, but she has shown she is a fracture waiting to widen. And if she continues to deepen her influence with the realms—”