Page 184 of The Devil May Care

I chase yesterday, trying to hook it on something specific. We trained until the thread started to hum louder than sense. We argued. We didn’t kiss. We almost did. He told me not to let anything take my will, and I said something flippant because if I didn’t, I might have said something true. We lay down like this. We slept. Or I did. He… did he? He looks like he did. He looks like he could sleep for a century.

The thought should make me laugh, but it lands wrong. A century is too close to forever and that is a trap I know better than to walk into.

“I should go,” I tell the room, which is safer than telling him. The barracks. The prep. The ritual of it will get my feet under me. Objects in motion stay in motion, objects at rest stay… that’s a rule I trust.

“I should go,” I say again, and my voice obeys the room, not me. Soft, aimless, a pebble tossed onto a velvet couch.

Caz doesn’t stir. Not the smallest twitch. If I slip out from under his arm I won’t wake him, I think, and something like pride pricks my chestbecause once, I could leave any bed without anyone noticing. The foster houses taught me that. The last place I lived before I stopped calling places home taught me it too. I could lift a sheet, hold my breath, plant a foot on the floor, disappear like a thought.

I slide my hand along his forearm, intending to ease his wrist away from my stomach.

My fingers get distracted.

His skin is its usual heat—banked, contained—but under it I feel the slow, unbothered roll of muscle and a pulse that doesn’t care about my urgency. The sensation is so familiar my body tags it as safe, and safe as stay, and there it is again: the re-labeling of things. The Umbral thread doesn’t shove; it edits.

A memory I didn’t ask for floats up, the first night in the barracks when I couldn’t sleep and counted the cracks in the ceiling like constellations of things that would never be mine. I didn’t have this weight at my back then. I didn’t have a cat pretending to be a doorstop. I didn’t have him.

The thought is cheap, and the room loves it. It rewards me with a hush-lull I can feel in my teeth. I try a different tactic and give myself instructions with the sharp edges left on:Bend your knee, bitch. Move his arm. Sit up. Feet to the floor. Stand. Open the curtains. Say his name. Leave.

The list is neat. It should help. Instead, it looks like steps written by a person who has never completed a single task.

Something like irritation flares—small, defiant.

There you are, I tell it. Fight is a language I speak.Come on then. But as soon as it shows its face, the room gives it a pillow and a cup of tea and a seat by the fire.You can fight later,the warmth says.You deserve to fight later.

I could blame Caziel for this, for how easy it is to fold my spine back into the shape his arm wants. It would be convenient to make him the reason. He’d take it if I gave it to him. He’s too ready to believe everything is his fault.That’s another trap.

It isn’t him. He’s sleeping too deeply to be complicit. It’s the way the air has been coached into kindness. It’s the way the light refuses to sharpen. It’s the way George has become metronome and mettle both.Familiar and wrong,I think, finally putting the two words in the samesentence. The wrongness is gentle. That’s the trick. If it were sharp, I’d have already left.

I turn my head and look at Caziel from an inch away. At this distance he’s just breath and skin and the dark line of his lashes. I want to touch the pale skin at his throat, not to wake him, just to prove to myself the heat there is real and not part of the way the room is curating this morning for me.

I don’t touch him.

Not yet.

I test the word barracks again and it arrives stripped of its urgency, a sign with the arrow rubbed off.

I should go, I think, and the room doesn’t argue. It doesn’t need to.

The stillness shifts. It’s not obvious at first—just a hairline crack in the glassy surface of the moment—but it catches. Holds. The fire is still burning low in the hearth, each pop and hiss threading through my bones, coaxing me deeper into this calm. It’s hypnotic, the way the flames whisper.

But then—Crackle. Hiss. Pop.

And again. The exact same rhythm.

Crackle. Hiss. Pop.

I frown into the pillow, not moving, like the stillness has rules now and I’ll break them if I shift. The fire plays it again. And again. Too perfect. Too… looped. My gaze slides to Caziel. He’s still on his side, back to me, the rise and fall of his chest steady. Almost too steady. His breaths are deep and even—until they aren’t. The rhythm skips, then picks up again, flawless as if nothing happened.

My skin prickles.

I try to focus on George instead, who’s draped across my calves like a warm, purring anchor. He always grounds me, makes everything feel real. I reach down, running my fingers over his side. And pause. His furissoft, but the paw that curls against my ankle, the toe pads are pale. George’s are charcoal-black. Always have been.

I blink hard. Look again. They’re still a soft, pale pink.

“What the hell,” I whisper under my breath. The fire whispers back in its perfect little loop.

I push my face deeper into the pillow, breathing slow, pretending the warmth is still lulling me when my mind is running in tight, carefulcircles. This isn’t right. If this was real, the fire wouldn’t be looping. Caziel wouldn’t breathe like a wind-up toy. George wouldn’t have the wrong damn feet. The room feels… aware now. Like it knows I’m paying attention. The stillness isn’t quite as soft—it’s watching me. Measuring me.