Page 201 of The Devil May Care

The flicker of flame in the braziers swells, a punch of heat and fire.

“That’s not possible,” I say, but my voice comes out too flat.

“Is it not?” He smiles, slow as oil. “No more rest. No more little reprieves to catch her breath. Not with you cheating. Passing her threads like candy.” His teeth flash white. “Every second you’ve madethis Rite easier for her; I’ve made it harder. She can thank you with her final breath, when she’s bleeding out on the arena floor.”

I do not speak. I cannot. My mind is already in the archways, trying to map her steps, see her hands, hear her voice. Find any proof she is still moving. My father watches my silence the way some men watch a fly struggling in a web.

“Of course,” he goes on, “I told you she could survive the Rite. That it might even prove her worth to stay in Crimson.” His eyes glitter, catching the firelight like cut garnet. “But we both know that was a fiction. A story to keep you from getting in my way too soon.”

He says it with the satisfaction of a man who just pulled the last card in the deck and the truth hits with the same weight as the last war council I ever sat through; the moment I realized Isaeth was never coming back. Kay is not a contender to him. She is leverage. A blade to brandish until it snaps.

“You’re using her.” My voice is rough.

“I’m employing her.” He smiles, “I’m glad you didn’t compete.” The words land with the precision of a blade sliding between armor plates. His smile widens, more teeth than warmth. “My son, the disappointment. If you’d stepped into the Rite, you would have destroyed everything I’ve built for Crimson. Everything I bled for. Everything that’s mine. You’re too soft. Too…weak.”

“Maybe it should be destroyed,” I say before I can stop myself. My voice is low, steady. “There’s rot at the core of Crimson. The flame cannot cleanse it alone anymore.”

For the first time, something sharp flickers in his eyes, offense, quickly smothered under amusement. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, studying me like I am a particularly curious insect.

“Do you think your little human could do it, then? Cleanse Crimson?” His tone is mocking, but beneath it there is a keen, probing edge. “Tell me, Caziel, would you like her to go down in history as the villain who brought down a realm? Or would you like her name etched into the stone, so you can have somewhere to lay flowers for the memory you’ve already lost?”

The heat seems to press closer, hotter. I do not answer. Any words I give him will be sharpened and turned back on me. He leans back again, satisfied in my silence.

“I think,” he says, almost lazily, “it would be poetic. And I’m not cruel. I didn’t realize you’d grieve the other one so. I wouldn’t have erased her so neatly.”

I leave without bowing. The great doors slam behind me, but it is not enough to muffle the echo of his smug voice. Every step I take is knife-sharp, a measured cut into the stone. The air outside the chamber tastes like smoke, like I have been breathing in my father’s rot too long. I want to burn him. To rip the walls down and bury him in the rubble. To make the flame judge him the way it should have long ago. But not here. Not now.

There is only one thing that matters: finding her. If he is telling the truth, the trials are not waiting anymore. No breaks. No breath. She is already in the next one, and I do not even know which realm holds her in its grip. The thought is a brand under my ribs:She is in there, and I am out here.

My father thinks he has won, but he is wrong. He thinks he controls the flame, the magic, the realm. But it barely flickers for him. It responds to Kay. Which means the Rite is the least of her concerns.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CAZIEL

The doors drag themselves shut behind me with a volcanic exhale and the corridor’s cooler air knifes across my skin, shock after the furnace of the throne room. The heat still lives in my clothes, sunk into the leather at my shoulders, the seams of my gloves, the line of my collar where my Embermark throbbed like a brand while he talked. I breathe in, count to five, out to seven. Again. Until the urge to turn around and level that chamber to ash recedes from a roar to a workable burn.

Find her.

It’s not a thought so much as a vector. I set my weight into it and move. Obsidian walls give way under the torchlight to smoke-gray stone, the Citadel’s deep spine unfolding into broader arteries that carry sound as much as bodies. My boots echo against the polished floor like punctuation. Two sentries posted at the landing straighten when they see me and immediately remember they have eyes only for the floor. One of them swallows. I do not look long enough to mark which.

My father’s voice still crawls under my skin. Nomore rest. No more reprieves. She might be in Umbral already. Might be halfway through Gilded. Assuming she crawled out of the first in one piece.He wanted me to hear it alone, without the court, without the varnish of ceremony. He wanted to keep me in that room long enough that, whatever the Rite threw at her next, she’d meet it without me nearby. He wanted me to listen for her fall through the layers of stone.

I lengthen my stride, and the Citadel answers with a low hum from somewhere deep in its bones. Noise from the crowd travels through vents and shafts, shaped into something like surf by distance. The Rite is never silent. Even when no one stands in the sand, a thousand tongues rehearse what comes next.

I hit a cross corridor and nearly collide with a pair of junior aides hunched together in a whisper. Their words snap into clarity as my shadow breaks across them.

“—two trials back-to-back, have they ever—”

“—the human, she dragged—”

“—Varo said she—”

I don’t stop. I don’t ask. Names and fragments go into the ledger behind my eyes. The quick flush of guilt on the younger aide’s face tells me they know how close they came to being noticed by the wrong man. The guilt means they’ll talk again later, somewhere dimmer, with the same thrill. Good. Gossip has its uses.

I take the outer steps two at a time, out from the Citadel’s thick belly into the open colonnade that leads to the practice yards. Night air finds the sweat at my neck and turns hot skin to prickling glass. The city breathes under the stars in a thousand small noises—windows shutter, cartwheels squeal, laughter too high from too much firewine. Under all of it, the arena’s pulse. The same rhythm as my own if I let it be.

I do not. I clamp down. Rage is fuel only when it is quiet.