Page 178 of The Devil May Care

I let my hand slip from the basin’s edge, but the flame keeps burning,showing me her thread. It is steady, unflinching. I think of the endless years under my father’s rule, the sense that change would come only when the realm was ready. Maybe that is a lie we have all told ourselves. Maybe there is noready, just someone willing to force it. The idea leaves a strange weight in my chest.

George hops down from the rim, landing soft as a shadow. He paces a lazy half-circle around my boots before sitting, gaze fixed on the hovering threads. His ears flick when Kay’s flame shivers and pushes ahead of Varo’s for the briefest moment. I catch myself smiling before I can stop it.

It is dangerous, this pride I feel for her. Dangerous to me, to her, to whatever comes after. But it is there all the same, stubborn as the woman herself. And if she keeps climbing like this, the rest of Crimson will have to see it too.

The threads begin to fade as the basin cools, the light withdrawing back into molten shadow. My reflection wavers on the surface, eyes ember-bright in the dim room, the faint curl of a smile that feels like defiance.

She is not supposed to win. But the Flame is not listening to rules.

The basin should go still now, its purpose spent. Instead, the molten shadow stirs. At first, I think it is the reflection—my reflection—catching on the emberlight from the sconces. But then the surface brightens, quick and sharp, like someone dropped a coal into water. The glow spreads in a pulse, not toward Kay’s thread or Varo’s, but toward me.

I feel it before I fully register what I am seeing. The warmth spikes, rushing up my arm where my hand still rests against the rim. Not burning—never burning—but deeper. Like it is trying to sink past flesh and into the marrow. I draw back a fraction. The light follows. That is new.

A memory cuts through the confusion, my father’s voice in the council chamber, that casual cruelty threaded through every word.

Careful, boy. Bonding changes the stakes.

He had said it with Isaeth in mind, dragging her name out into the open like a weapon. But I am not bonded. Not to her. Not to anyone. Even if it were possible—which it is not with humans—the Crimson bonds are not like the Gilded’s mate-for-life myths. We do not havesudden, snapping threads of fate. Ours take steps, deliberate ones, the kind you cannot just stumble into by accident. Choice is part of the flame, as much as heat and light. I have taken no such steps. Neither has she, and yet the glow lingers, pulsing once, twice, before fading back into the basin’s depths.

I tell myself it is nothing. A quirk of the magic. My presence here too soon after hers, the flame still carrying the echo of her trial.

Still….

The thought curls in, unwanted: if it were possible, would that make her safer? Bonds have protections. In Crimson, blood or bond are the only ways to take another’s place in the Rite. A loophole. But there is no scenario in which I get to keep her. George’s tail flicks against my boot, pulling me out of the spiral. He is staring at the basin like it just told him a joke I would not understand. Maybe he is right.

I run a hand over his fur, grounding myself in the ordinary warmth of him. “Come on,” I murmur. “We’ve seen enough.”

The basin’s surface still ripples when I turn away. The doors seal behind me with a low, final thud, the lock sliding into place like the chamber itself is exhaling me back into the world. Flame-watch always leaves a trace—heat under the skin, a faint ringing in the ears—but today it is something else. Something I cannot name.

George pads ahead as if he owns the corridor, tail flagged high, the pads of his paws whispering over the crimson-veined stone. He does not flinch at the occasional guard we pass. He does not even look at them. He has decided, somehow, that this place belongs to him.

“Stay close,” I murmur.

He stops dead, ears swiveling back at me, then deliberately turns and walks slower. The audacity.

I have seen the Rite grind contenders down to shadows of themselves. Kay is not fading, she is sharpening. Every trial hones her into something new. That is the kind of momentum one cannot fake, the kind that can turn into inevitability if no one gets in its way.

The corridor narrows as it curves upward, light spilling in from slitted windows. George bounds ahead, tail lashing, then disappears around a bend. A heartbeat later, he reappears, trotting back toward me with a sound that is suspiciously close to a scolding meow.

“I’m not the one who ran off,” I tell him.

He blinks slowly, as if judging me, then resumes his lead, this time with a little more patience.

I cannot remember a time before my father sat the throne. Before his shadow swallowed the citadel whole. But there must have been rulers before him. There must have been change, once. What would it look like if she were the one to bring it?

I can see it, unbidden: Kay at the council table, not draped in crimson silk like a decoration, but standing, leaning forward, her voice cutting through the noise. She would demand answers. She would listen. She would not surround herself with sycophants.

Would Crimson follow her? Or would it break her for trying?

A faint tang of iron drifts from the armory below as we pass another stairwell. George presses against my leg, brushing fur over my trousers, and I reach down to scratch behind his ears. He tilts his head into it, rumbling deep in his chest. The vibration is grounding. I had not realized how much tension I was carrying until it eased beneath my palm, diffusing into his soft orange coat.

The flame’s reaction in the chamber tries to push back into my thoughts, but I shove it aside. Bonds in Crimson do not just happen. My father was baiting me then, same as always, dragging Isaeth’s name into his games because he knows it stings like ash in an open wound. I take the last set of steps two at a time, needing the motion, needing to keep from getting lost in the weight of it all. George keeps pace beside me now, his stride matched to mine, a little sentinel in fur.

There is no such thing as the “right time” for change. Maybe Crimson will never be ready, but she is. George glances up at me then, as if he has read the thought, eyes catching the dim light like twin embers. I almost ask him what he sees, but he is already trotting ahead, leading me toward the one place I want to be.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

KAY