Page 202 of The Devil May Care

Find her. Then decide who to burn.

The practice yards should be dark, but they are not. Lanterns hang at precise intervals, throwing circles of pale gold onto the sand and leaving everything between in thoughtful shadow. Somewhere metal kisses metal with the rhythm of patience. Not a melee; a lesson.

My feet know the way through the north arch even if my mind is five steps ahead, mapping contingencies. If the Asmodeus has accelerated the Rite the way he bragged, then rest is a lie, and breaks are a luxury. It means the edges she sharpened in Gilded are already dulling from lack of sleep. It means—

Her voice finds me like a hand at my spine.

Not loud. Not thrown like a banner. Just a breath of a laugh that catches on a word and turns. It is a sound I have learned is hers when sheis trying not to be pleased with herself. It stings and soothes at once. Then another voice answers, lower, even, pared down to the bones of instruction. Varo. He uses a different cadence when he is teaching than when he is baiting; you can recognize it if you have ever followed him through a city square and watched him soften his shoulders to move a crowd.

Jealousy is unreasonable. I know that. But I take solace that it is not suspicion. I trust Varo’s discipline more than I trust most men’s virtue. It is the hot, unhelpful spark at the base of my throat that says:you were supposed to be the one she turns to. Laughs with.

I catch myself lengthening my stride and do not correct it.

George’s silhouette is perched on the ring’s rail post like a gargoyle carved by someone who liked cats better than saints. Tail swaying, ears canted in judgment. If the world has turned sideways, the cat is proof the axis still exists. His presence lifts something tight in me by a finger-width. Then the ring opens in front of me, and the ache I have been ignoring gets a shape.

Kay stands barefoot in the sand opposite Varo, hair escaped from whatever tie she started with, sweat bright on the hinge of her jaw and the notch at her throat. Her stance is stubborn where it is not correct and correct where stubbornness has finally succumbed to instruction. Varo mirrors her with the exactness of a press mold and then cuts across her guard with two movements that are silver when he does them and iron when she answers. She does not catch the first, she nearly catches the second, but she does catch the third and tries not to smile at herself for it.

Relief hits hard enough my knees go weak for a step.Here. Breathing. Upright.And jealousy threads through the relief like wire, thin and bright and not proud. I let it sting because denying it does nothing but make it worse later. I step under the last arch. The sand gives, cool through the soles of my shoes. The smell here is old rope, clean sweat, oiled leather, the ghost of Viridian mint from some prior lesson that’s sunk into the wood. George flicks an ear without turning his head, the cat equivalent of telling me I’m not worth his attention, not when his person is nearby.

Varo clocks me before she does. He always keeps half an eye on the center of gravity in any room so he can shift into or out of it withoutbreaking step. He adjusts nothing but the angle of his foot. The adjustment plants him like a flag.

“Again,” Varo tells her, and she sets her feet, taps her heels in, drops her chin just enough to say she is listening and also a little bit in love with her own stubbornness. Ready. Raw.Mine.

I do not bite at the pronoun. It will bite back. I let my boots ring a fraction louder on the walkway and step down into the ring proper.

“I didn’t know you were training her now,” I say. My voice is smooth because I leave it no other option.

Varo doesn’t take his eyes off her.

“The rings were empty. She wasn’t.”

Kay turns at the sound of me. The grin is quick, unguarded for a heartbeat, then reined in like she remembered where she is.

“Hey. George found Varo and then we—well, he was already here.” Her chest moves too fast under the sheen of sweat. Her cheeks are pink where the night air has moved across heat. I want to tell her to slow her breathing, drink water, sit down, and I want to tell her to come to me. None of those are useful with Varo three paces away listening.

“You look steady,” I say instead. Praise, not possession. Truth, not claim.

“She is,” Varo says. He answers a question I did not ask because that is his way of putting his hand on a conversation. “Better balance than most who survived Gilded.”

Most. The word slides under my armor and sticks. I will find out precisely who did not and how and why the moment she sleeps.

“Again,” he says, voice low, and she turns back to him without asking me for permission—which is right, even if it needles. I let them have a pass. Two. Three. I watch the way she corrects her movements, how instruction sits in her body and becomes intention in the span of a breath. She has always been a quick study in arenas that do not think of themselves as schools. The Rite is a teacher that loves to be adored. Her trick is refusing to adore it.

I step closer, into Varo’s periphery, and force him to choose whether to continue pretending I do not exist. He does not pretend, but he also does not give me the courtesy of turning his head.

“Your Emberness,” he says, as if the ridiculous title were an old coin he found in a drawer. “Something you need?”

“Yes,” I say. “Her.”

Kay’s head snaps toward me, confusion lining the skin between her brows. Some part of me that is neither noble nor restrained is glad for her reaction.

“Later,” I tell her, before her mouth can shape protest. “It won’t take long.”

She glances at Varo. He does not nod. He does not shake his head. He is leaving the choice on purpose because leaving her agency earns him more in the long run than ordering her does tonight. I make a note to resent him for being right and adjust my behavior accordingly.

“Okay,” she says. Varo steps aside with a flourish pulled straight out of the court manuals.

“We were finished,” he lies.