Page 25 of The Devil May Care

Maybe she knows something about this assessment. Maybe she’s seen what happens to people like me—unmarked or whatever Maybeshe’s not allowed to say anything outright but can show me something. Leave me a hint. I’ll ask next time.

If there is a next time.

The bed is warm now. The silence thicker. My thoughts move slower. I’m still scared. Still angry. Still spinning. But I can’t hold it all at once. I do what I always do when the panic gets too big: I make a plan.

Step one: survive tomorrow.

Step two: ask better questions.

Step three: wake the hell up.

And if this isn’t a dream—if this is real, if I really did fall into another world, if none of this is going to fade when I open my eyes—

Then I’ll find out what they want from me.

And decide if I’m going to give it to them or go down swinging.

CHAPTER SEVEN

KAY

The knock on the door startles me. It is not soft, like Sarai’s. This one is sharp. Precise. The kind of knock that expects obedience. I sit up too fast and immediately regret it. My neck aches. My spine feels like it’s been fused to the mattress. I don’t even remember falling asleep. Not really. More like I blacked out with my eyes open. No dreams this time though.

For a second, I think—hope—it is Caziel. I want to pretend I don’t know why, but I do. He’s easy on the eyes, and while not necessarily kind, he was respectful during our trek through the city. Not to mention an orgasm or two would be a nice distraction and probably help with the stiffness. I’ve clearly read one too many demon romances, but a girl can dream. I definitely wouldn’t turn him down.

I scrub a hand over my face and mutter, “Nope. Not doing that.”

Still, I hesitate before opening the door. Just for a second. Enough to let the hope twist into something quieter. It’s not Caz. It’s not Sarai either. It’s someone I haven’t seen before. Tall, Daemari—of course—with slick dark hair braided over one shoulder and robes so perfectly draped they look like they were poured onto him. His skin is pale gold, and his eyes burn like low coals.

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak. Just steps back and gestures for me to follow.

I almost ask if he is here for the assessment, but I stop myself. Obviously, he is, and the look in his eyes says he has no interest in conversation.I glance at the hallway behind him, then down at myself. The robe from last night is still clean, somehow. My hair’s a little wild, but I don’t think anyone’s grading on presentation.

I follow.

The corridors are unfamiliar. Not that I knew many of them to begin with, but this is a different part of the castle. Darker, deeper, cut from heavier stone.

My escort doesn’t speak. I try once, casually,

“So, just checking, are we walking to my death or to a moderately uncomfortable breakfast?”

He doesn’t reply. Doesn’t even blink. I resist the urge to make another joke just to fill the silence. Instead, I watch the walls. There are few windows. Fewer curves. The walls seem to narrow as we go. There are sconces every few yards, mounted in brackets that look like curling claws. The flames inside don’t flicker like real fire. They move more like water—slow and rhythmic. Like they’re breathing.

Or listening.

As we walk, they shift. Not a lot. Just a tilt here, a bend there. But always as we pass. Like they’re reacting to something. Reaching. Symbols I haven’t seen before line the stone. These aren’t the smooth spirals carved near my room, but sharper ones, more geometric. Some of them glow faintly as we pass, like embers flaring in the dark. I glance back. They dim again once I’ve past.

“Is that normal?” I ask. No answer, of course. “Cool. Love the mystical ambiance. Very mood board of doom.”

Still nothing. He leads me down another hall, this one steeper, and I realize I’m being taken deeper. Beneath the castle, maybe. Or to a part of it that doesn’t want to be found. My stomach flips. Not with fear, with the sense that something’s building. Some weight I haven’t earned pressing against the back of my skull. I keep walking. And I wonder how magic works in Crimson. Something to do with flame with fire. Is it something they study? Channel? Are those glowing runes reacting to me or scanning me or preparing to eat me?

Do they have rules? Do they have limits? Or is everything here just flame and want and the laws of physics screaming quietly in a corner?

We round one last corner and stop in front of a tall, arching doorway. This one isn’t carved from stone. It’s metal—dark and red-black,with a symbol at the top that looks like a stylized flame with a vertical slash through the center.

I swallow. The escort gestures for me to enter. I step forward.

The door opens not with a creak or groan, but a hush—like silk sliding over skin. Inside, the room is massive. Cathedral-high, hexagonal, built of the same black-red stone as the Citadel walls but polished to a mirror sheen. Every surface gleams faintly, like the whole chamber was carved from obsidian and left to soak in firelight. There are no windows. No throne. No banners. Just a floor of inlaid bronze, each tile etched with runes I can’t read, and seven towering braziers spaced around the edges of the chamber. The flames inside them are wrong. Not red. Not yellow. They burn in hues I don’t have words for—colors that feel like heat and silence and grief all at once.