“I noticed,” I mutter.
“Not fast enough.”
He lifts his hand and brushes his fingers lightly along the edge of the bruise. His touch is cool. Gentle. Almost reverent.
“You didn’t hesitate,” he murmurs. “That’s something.”
I look away. “I didn’t win.”
“You didn’t have to. You didn’t break.”
I try to laugh, but it comes out thin.
“You have a weird idea of survival.”
He just smiles, gentle as he smooths salve over my bruises. “Survival isn’t always about winning. Sometimes it’s just about being honest enough to keep going.”
“I feel like I’m out of my depth.” I tell him. “I mean, I knew I was, but now I can see it. I am woefully underprepared for whatever comes next and I don’t fit in here.”I wish I could go back with you.There’s a beat of silence. “I just don’t understand why this all has to be so…” I wrack my brain for the right words, thinking of the way Captain Rehn barked orders at us, “violent.” I shrug.
“You aren’t the first.” He says and my heart stutters. “To think the Flame, the Rite, doesn’t have to be this way.” I wait. Let him take his time. “She wasn’t Daemari either,” he says eventually. “Not exactly. Her blood carried old bonds. Forgotten ones. The kind that come from the in-between—where roots and fire meet. Vesperan.”
I bite my lip to hide my surprise. Vesperan, like Sarai. Like the servers at dinner. Not someone with magic or whatever it is that talks to the mystical, all-knowing fire.
“Her name was Isaeth,” he says. “She was beautiful. Soft-spoken. Brilliant. Not the kind of brilliant that lights up a room. The kind that smolders until the whole room forgets what it was before she entered.”
I blink. That’s vivid. Painful, almost, because I can hear the care in his words. She was special to him. More than I want to hear, but this story is important. I push the prickles of jealousy down deep.
“She believed the flame could be guided,” he continues. “Not wielded through fear but taught, cradled. Nurtured into something sacred again.” The smile on his face is all nostalgia and memory. I feel heavy, my limbs aching as my eyes burn. I swallow once, twice, as if I’m trying to hold back tears. I’m not sure why.
“You loved her?” I immediately want to swallow the words back down. It’s an inappropriate question. It doesn’t matter. It—
“I chose her.” He takes a deep breath. That answer again. Like choosing matters more than love.He said she was Vesperan. Maybe it did.
“And she chose you back.”
“Yes.” The quiet between us is soft now. Not heavy. Just full. “She followed me into the Ember War,” he says. “Refused to stay behind. Said peace was worth fighting for, even if she had to walk into hell to make her case.” My throat tightens. I was to reach out, lay my hand on his forearm. I don’t. “She was taken during a skirmish,” he says. “Captured, supposedly. Killed. That’s the story the realm told.”
“Supposedly?”
He meets my eyes. “There was no body. No ransom. No message. Just silence.” A chill rolls through me. “She was supposed to be forgotten,” he says bitterly. “No funeral. No name in the record-stone. No memorial. My father made sure of that.”
“Why?” I suck in a breath. “Because she wasn’t Daemari?”
“Because she was mine,” he corrects. “And he thought losing her would keep me bound to his war machine. Thought it would keep me blinded by rage and loss. Keep me loyal.” His laugh is hollow. “He misjudged where they lay.”
I whisper, “So it didn’t work?”
“Oh, it did.” He doesn’t look away. “For a while.”
The silence that follows isn’t comfortable. It’s charged—full of all the things he’s never said and the parts of him still scorched by them.
“Is that why you came to me after the brand? Why you stayed? Because I reminded you of—” of what? Of her? Of the fact he couldn’t save her? I should drop this whole conversation. Let it crumble around us like ash. But I can’t.
He doesn’t answer at first. “You screamed like she did.” My stomach knots. “It wasn’t just pain,” he adds. “It was resistance. You weren’t submitting to the flame—you were surviving it.” We sit for a long moment, George flicking his tail between us. He hesitates. “I’m trying to learn from what I lost.”
I nod, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. She was probably the kind of person people followed without knowing why. I hate how much the thought hurts. More than the bruises and sore ribs. OnlyI would fall through an interdemensional elevator shaft and end up with a crush not only on a demon prince, but an unavailable one. A man pining after his long-lost love. I can’t compete with a memory. I can’t even compete with real life.
“I’m not her,” I say softly and his gaze snaps to mine.
