Page 50 of The Devil May Care

Sarai doesn’t speak as she leads me through the corridors. I haven’t slept since the meeting in the formal chamber, have barely eaten, but she doesn’t slow. She walks half a pace ahead, her steps measured, posture straight. A formal escort now. No stories. No soft commentary. She’s someone else again—someone careful. I don’t try to pull her back.

Whatever warmth was in my room is sealed inside it. Now I’m just a contender. Or a symbol. A mistake they haven’t figured out how to erase yet.

The corridors widen. Stone gives way to something darker—blackened steel and volcanic glass fused into walls that gleam faintly with flickering orange runes. The heat grows too. Not oppressive, intentional. Like everything in this place is just slightly too alive.

Sarai stops at a high, arched doorway. The doors are open. The space beyond—colossal. She doesn’t enter. I glance at her, but she doesn’t look at me.

“They’ll be watching,” she says quietly, then she turns and leaves.

The training wing looks like the bastard child of a cathedral and an arena. The ceiling stretches so high it could hold a mountain. The walls are lined with racks of weapons, suspended platforms, flame-lit tunnels, and what looks disturbingly like a pit full of shifting shadows. The floor isn’t flat, but a battlefield pressed into stone: uneven terrain, scorched scars, ancient symbols carved between smoothed cracks.

The other contenders are already here. Twelve of them. They look nothing alike, and yet they all have that same bone-deep rightness, like they were made to stand here. Whether their bodies are lean or massive or impossibly elegant, all of them move with the kind of ease that says they’ve trained for this since birth.

They belong. And I’m the before photo.

One woman with crimson braids to her knees sharpens twin knives against her own thigh armor. She watches me without blinking. Her fingers tap against the hilt in rhythm with her breathing, like it’s just another muscle reflex. She doesn’t look angry or curious. Just ready. Next to her stands a slender figure in what looks like woven shadow. Their face is masked, their presence like smoke. Utterly ungraspable. I don’t know what they are, and I’m not sure I want to. Farther back, a man with six golden rings through each ear lounges on a perch of stone like it’s a throne. He looks me over once and sneers, like the smell offended him. I recognize a few from the court—glorious and monstrous in equal measure. A man with scaled tattoos and molten eyes paces like he’s looking for something to break. And then there’s the asshole from the night before—blonde, golden, yawning like he’s already bored of all of this.

They turn when I enter. Every. Single. One.

I freeze. Smile too wide. Too tight. Like maybe if I grin hard enough, they’ll forget I’m the anomaly. They don’t speak, but I don’t need words to understand what’s happening. I’m being weighed. Measured. Filed under “amusement” or “threat” or “easy first blood.” And I have no idea which one’s worse.

They don’t speak to one another either, but a few seem to drift closer together in subtle formations. People who’ve fought before, maybe. Lived through a trial. Or simply agreed not to kill each other first. Maybe they’re best friends from ballet class or yearbook or whatever the Daemari equivalent adds up to. I’m not in any of those equations. I’m the variable no one accounted for.

No instructor appears. No steward explains the rules. No one says my name. But the floor beneath my boots pulses faintly. A deep chime sounds. Low and resonant. Like someone struck a bell in the bones of the arena, and every contender stiffens. A gold line glows across the stone floor, carving a perfect circle at the center of the room.

No one speaks. No names are called, but the first pair steps into the ring—braid-woman and the quiet man with the metal-threaded scalp—as a weapon materializes between them. It’s suspended in the air, a long, curved blade glowing red-hot. Neither hesitates. The moment their hands touch the hilt, the weapon splits into two identical swords, and the fight begins.

It’s brutal. Fast. Precise. And over in less than a minute. The man yields with a bleeding cheek and a small nod. The woman doesn’t gloat. Just steps back. Unmoved.

I take a step back too.

I’m not prepared for this. This was supposed to be training. Not fighting. That man bled. What the hell is happening here? No thank you. Maybe it was naïve, but it didn’t occur to me I’d be wielding weapons for this thing.

I back up again, maybe I can make it to the exit without anyone noticing. And then maybe wish the stupid doors open and wish for a portal back home and…

A chime splits the air. Not a real one. Not like a bell or a gong. I feel it more than I hear it—inside me. Vibrating just behind my sternum, humming low through my bones like I’ve been tagged. Then comes my name, clear as glass shattering in a still room. I freeze. Everything in me goes cold. There’s no one calling me. No voice to protest to, and still my name echoes in the recesses of my skull. The glowing ring on the floor brightens, the light fanning out until I can’t see past the intense shine. And the pressure like a hand on the small of my back pushes me forward.

My stomach turns.

No. Not yet.

Not like this

Across the ring, someone steps in. A woman. Red braids past her hips. Crimson-wrapped arms. Knives gleaming like she never learned to put them down. Her presence is quiet, but towering. Balanced. I’m sure if the ground cracked open beneath us, she still wouldn’t flinch.

I don’t move.

I can’t.

The magic pulses again. The others are watching now. No one says anything. They don’t have to. I’m holding up the show.

This isn’t happening.

I step back half an inch, shake my head once—like maybe if I move small enough the universe will take the hint.

“I’m not competing,” I say softly, just to myself, maybe to the room. The ring doesn’t care. “I’m not marked.” Still nothing. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

I wait for someone—anyone—to correct me. To say, “Right. Sorry, we meant someone else. Go back to your very dramatic bed.” But they don’t.