Page 93 of The Devil May Care

I go still. My stomach knots.

“For tomorrow?”

She nods. “I came to see if you needed anything. But maybe you already have everything.”

I really don’t, but I nod anyway. I can fake it. Pretend I have everything handled. Like I’m not fraying at the seams. Sarai studies me for a second longer, too perceptive for her own good, but she doesn’t push.

“Tell me what to expect?” I swallow back the urge to apologize for the demand. “No one tells me anything. I don’t know if it’s by design to keep me lost, or on accident because they don’t know I have no idea what’s happening, but…” I lick my bottom lip. “Please. Will I see the other contenders again? Will I have to answer questions? Fight? Is it a pageant? An interview? An execution?”

“Oh, nothing like that,” Sarai laughs lightly but she carefully avoids my eyes. “This is more ceremony than anything else. The contenders are presented to the Flame.”

“I already did that.” I point out. Sarai shakes her head, shimmering strands of hair whipping across her face and neck. “No I did, remember? Not marked but not unkindled?”

“Those were the Flamebound. The scholars of the Flame, of Infernalis. They were trying to determine what you are and how you made it to Crimson.”

I narrowly avoid rolling my eyes. “And just the other day I had to deal with Coriolanus Snow 2.0 but I still have no mark.” I hold my eyes arm. “See?”

“Be careful,” she whispers and slips through the door.

The moment she’s gone, the weight I’ve been holding in my chest uncoils all at once. I sit on the edge of the bed and press my hands to my thighs, grounding myself with the pressure. George butts his head against my knee like he knows I’m unraveling. His fur is warm. Soft. Familiar. The only thing here that feels like mine. I didn’t ask for this. Any of it. Not Crimson. Not the flame. Not the pressure building like a fuse just waiting to be lit.

I sure as hell didn’t ask to become some kind of symbol, but maybe I should’ve known. My whole life, I’ve watched systems meant to protectpeople leave them behind. I’ve seen families break apart under the weight of what’s “supposed” to help. I’ve seen the cruelty people justify with rules, borders, old gods, new governments.

I used to think that ugliness was uniquely human. Like maybe the rest of the universe had evolved past it. Of course that was wishful thinking. Rot bleeds outward. Power hungry systems are the same no matter what plane they sit on. The faces just change. The rules, the names, the magic—they’re all different shades of the same poison, and I didn’t even think to look for it when I landed here. I just thought I’d stumbled into something otherworldly. Something better.

Now I know better. And knowing better comes with responsibility.

I have nothing tying me down. I’ve probably already lost whatever job I had to return to. No parents waiting at the door. Just George, a cat I love like my whole damn heart, who will outlive me in a hundred different ways if I’m not careful. And besides, he’s here now. I press my forehead to his side and breathe in the dusty, slightly sulfurous scent of him. Crimson air baked into his fur. He purrs, steady and soft.

“Guess we’re both stuck here, huh?” I murmur.

His only response is to sprawl farther across the bed like a king claiming land. I laugh under my breath. And then I swallow it down because if I’m stuck here, and I have to walk into that trial tomorrow—unbranded, unprepared, unknown—then I need to stop pretending I’m powerless. I may not be marked. I may not be chosen. But that doesn’t mean I have nothing to offer. Sometimes the smallest grit in the gears is what brings a whole machine to a halt.

No one’s asked me to rise, but maybe… just maybe… Crimson is ready for someone like me to try.

Afew hours later I’ve ensconced myself on the wide stone ledge ringing a private balcony. Below me, in the center of the city, I watch Daemari move like ants. None of them seem at all concerned about this Flame Rite. They’re going to work, carrying satchels of food, leaning down to lecture the kid tossing rocks at the guards. It’s like looking down at a human city. Everyone moving about their lives. Or like the time I snuck onto the roof of my high school andlooked down at the kids warming up for a soccer game. A tiny piece of familiarity in a foreign place.

The stone beneath me is sun-warmed and rough, and the wind carries the faint scent of smoke and something sweet I can’t name. I should go inside. I should rest. But the silence out here is the only thing keeping my thoughts from spinning apart until I hear the crunch of boots on gravel behind me.

I glance back to find Caziel. He’s moving slowly, deliberately, like someone approaching a ledge or a wild animal trapped on one. He stops a few paces away, his expression unreadable.

“Are you planning to jump?” The question isn’t teasing. Not really.

I huff a breath. “Would it help if I was?”

A twitch of something crosses his face. Pain, maybe. Or guilt. But he covers it too quickly for me to know for sure. He steps closer, folding himself down beside me with the same smooth, efficient grace he brings to the training ring. We sit in silence for a beat, both of us staring out at the horizon—peaks of dark stone rising like jagged teeth in the distance, the sky molten with approaching sunset.

“I know the trial is coming,” I say. “No one will say it, but I can feel it. It’s in the air.” And Sarai told me about the courtyard, but I don’t want her to get reprimanded if the information was meant to be private. I have a feeling it was, or someone else—this smoldering Ember Prince, for example—would have been the one to tell me.

He exhales through his nose.

“I thought maybe if I asked you…” I turn to him. “Will you tell me what it is? What to expect?”

His jaw flexes. He opens his mouth and closes it again. Nothing comes out. I frown.

“Caz?”

“I… can’t,” he finally says, the words forced and bitter. “My father bound me.”