The tables are packed. A few contenders glance up when I pass, and the looks range from blank to bored to faintly amused. The closest bench has space at the end, but sliding in feels like stepping into the cafeteria on the first day at a new school. The same awkward shuffle, same flash of heat in my cheeks. I sit anyway. No one tells me to move, but no one talks to me either.
The hum of the room wraps around me again, and then I start catching words under it—half-whispers, pitched just loud enough to hear.
“Thought she’d run by now.”
“She’s human, isn’t she?”
“Maybe that’s the point.”
I stab a piece of something crispy and wedge-shaped and keep my head down. The food’s good, but it tastes like nerves. I do my best to block out the comment drifting across the barracks like smoke, but each one stings.
“She shouldn’t even be here. The Flame must’ve flickered.”
Steel clatters to the stone floor, the sound hanging unfinished. Every head turns a little too slowly, like they all want to see what’s about to unfold. I ignore them in favor of my plate. I don’t move. I’m still learning which things you fight and which ones you survive.
“So what?” Varo’s voice cuts through the hall before anyone else breathes. “You worried she’ll make it?”
He doesn’t even look up from the blade he’s cleaning. The motion stays lazy, deliberate. There’s no threat in it—just certainty, like the words are gravity and everyone else is pretending not to fall. His grin is anything but friendly, and I hold my breathe even as I spoon another bite of rich broth. The silence after is heavier than the training floor. I can feel it pressing behind my ribs, waiting for someone to flinch. Lyra’s the one who does.
“The Flame doesn’t flicker, it chooses with purpose,” she says, voice calm as tempered steel. “She’s marked. That’s enough.”
Something in the room settles at that. The others glance away. Shoulders ease. Because that’s what they all believe here—the Flame is never wrong. If it chose me, then I’m meant to be here. If it kills me, then I wasn’t. A modern-day witch trail. Okay, maybe not modern, but still. The kind of blind faith they build kingdoms on—and graves.
“Maybe.” Varo exhales, soft, almost bored. “I guess we’ll see.”
He wipes the blade clean and sets it down like he’s finished a conversation no one else realized they were having. I don’t know which sentiment unsettles me more, Lyra’s certainty or Varo’s doubt.
Lyra and Varo’s words echo long after the sound of sparring fills the room again. Everyone here believes it — the Flame doesn’t flicker, the Brand can’t lie, faith burns clean. You can see it in their eyes, the way they breathe in sync again once the silence breaks. It’s more than belief. It’s survival.
Sarai hesitated when I asked about the Flame. Her voice went careful. She said these same things but didn’t sound convinced. She never said it couldn’t be swayed, in fact, I think she might have implied it can be. I think about that now as Varo’s “maybe” lingers in the air like smoke. They can pretend the Flame’s will is clean, that it burns through lies and politics alike, but I’ve seen enough humans to know power never keeps its hands pure. And, maybe, Demons aren’t any better.
The room seems to exhale as the tension lifts, and I do too, but itdoesn’t settle in me the same way. Because I can’t tell if the fire inside me belongs to the Flame… or if it’s something else entirely, and I don’t know if that matters.
Sleep doesn’t come easily. Not with the ache in my ribs or the burn still simmering under my skin. Not with Elira’s warning still hanging in the air like smoke. I toss. Shift. Breathe shallow and slow. George kneads the blanket beside me, his weight the only steady thing in my world.
Eventually, exhaustion pulls me under. But the dreams are sharp. Crimson and ash. Fire curling around the edges of memory. Caziel, watching from the arena wall with something unreadable in his eyes. A strange man in a metal box, three bigger men staring him down as we fall, fall, fall…
When I wake, it’s still dark, but someone’s there. I know the shape of his silence before I even look. Caziel sits on the low stool near the wall, elbows braced on his knees, cloak trailing behind him like spilled ink. His flame-cast eyes meet mine in the low light, steady and unblinking.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I whisper.
He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Long enough.”
I push myself upright, wincing. “Is this part of the mentorship deal? Silent lurking?”
His mouth almost twitches. “I wanted to check your shoulder. And you were… unsettled.”
“You were watching me sleep?” I blink.
“I watch for movement,” he says softly. “It tells me what words don’t.”
It should be unsettling. But it’s not. It’s just him. He moves closer, kneeling beside the bed.
“Let me see.”
I shift the blanket down, exposing the mottled bruise along my ribs and the stiff line of my shoulder. He doesn’t touch me yet—just studies the damage like it’s a riddle to solve.
“You overcorrected after his first feint,” he says. “That’s how he got under your guard.”
