“There wasn’t much to miss back home. Not really. I didn’t have anyone waiting. Just George. I went to work, I came home. Ate cereal out of the box and fell asleep with my clothes on. Woke up and did it again. People talk about missing home like it’s this warm, aching thing,but it’s the people who do that. Relationships. It’s hard to miss things that don’t exist.” I glance back up. “I’m not strong, but my world wasn’t ‘better.’ Sometimes comfort’s just a cage with pillows. It’s not until you’re somewhere else that you realize how small it really was. Or how heavy.”
Caziel doesn’t answer at first, but his posture shifts. His arms cross, brows furrowed in thought. His eyes flick to the horizon, like he’s seeing something beyond it.
“I was sent to Cobalt when I was barely older than you are now,” he says, voice distant. “To help settle a territorial dispute along the border. It should have taken a few weeks.” He swallows, barely audible. “The assignment lasted six months. We were not permitted leave. It changed everything.” I say nothing. “You are right,” he says after a pause. “Familiarity can become a trap, but sometimes the thing you miss is neither a place nor a person. It is the version of yourself that still believed they were safe. That they were doing good.”
He’s right. There’s five-year-old me holding my parents’s hands as they swing me between them, laughs loud and echoing in the sunshine. There’s eight-year-old me standing on a battered stage, hands shaking and cheeks aching as she beamed out into the audience at the couple waving so hard the people sitting next to them were giving them a wide berth. There’s eleven-year-old me turning the pages of her favorite book, sitting at the kitchen counter as her mom flips pancakes on the stove.
The air stills. I feel the thread warm against my skin again, and for one dizzying moment I’m not sure if it’s reacting to him or me, but it’s too much.
“It doesn’t matter how much it hurts,” I say. “No one can go back. Maybe I’d rather do what I can where I can. Lying down and letting the world pass me by wasn’t exactly working.”
He looks at me for a long time. Not pitying. Not judging. Just seeing. I should say something. Make a joke. Break the tension before it tightens. Instead, I think about the last time someone looked at me like that. It was a bar. Six months ago. After a long shift, too much tequila, and a fight with my advisor. His hands were rough, his mouth impatient. I’d kissed him first, trying to prove something. That I could still be touched without shattering. That I could want without drowning. That mannever asked if I was okay. Never looked me in the eye when he said my name—if he even knew it. I’m not sure he did.
This is already nothing like that.
Caziel isn’t even touching me now, but I feel him everywhere. His eyes don’t move. His breath is slow. Measured. Like he’s trying not to startle something between us. And gods help me; I want to shake it up like a bottle of carbonated liquid. Make such a mess that fixing it will seem impossible.
“Is it just me,” I murmur, voice low, “or is it hot in here?”
A flicker of amusement pulls at his mouth. “Crimson is fire, and fire is always hot.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I roll my eyes, maybe he can’t tell that I’m panting, or that I’ve pressed my knees together to relieve the ache between them.
He takes a step closer. The glow from the thread in my pendant casts long shadows across his throat, up along the edge of his jaw.
His voice is softer now. “I told you once that the flame responds to intent. To desire.”
Something cracks in me. The silence grows thick. Tense. Hot. Slick. He hasn’t moved again, but I swear we’re even closer than before. His glamor pulses. The shimmer crawls higher up his cheekbone, flickering like firelight, and for just a second—I see him. Not the polished, perfect Caziel. But him. Marked. Horned. Glorious. Skin flushed a dusky red, eyes deep pools of onyx, the sharp white points of razor-sharp canines behind his full lips.
He’s still watching me. Not like I’m broken. Not like I’m a puzzle to be solved. Like I’m real. Like I matter. And for once, I don’t want to think my way out of it. I don’t want to be careful.
I step closer before I can talk myself out of it. The air between us tightens. His glamor flickers slightly again—the faint shimmer of it like heat haze, but I don’t care. I look past it, past the illusion. I want to. I want to see him. My palm burns and I realize I have the pendant clutched in my fist, but I’m not thinking about Viridian anymore. Not about Rites or threads or Flame magic. Not about Cobalt, Obsidian, the Rite. Or the crown. Or anything at all.
Just him.
My heart is thudding somewhere behind my ribs, unsteady and loud. I reach up, my fingertips brushing his wrist.
“Caz—” His name lands somewhere between a breath and a question.
He still doesn’t move. Doesn’t stop me. His gaze drops to my mouth. That’s all the permission I need. I lean in. The smell of smoke and something sharper, citrus and copper, wraps around me. I close the space between us, lips just brushing his—
His hand comes up gently. Fingers slide along my jaw, warm and careful. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth. Once twice. I lean into the touch.
“Kay Ward,” he breathes. Like it hurts to say my name. “Sæl.”
The pad of his finger catches on the middle of my bottom lip, tugging gently until my mouth opens. My heart thunders in my chest, aching against my breastbone. My eyelids flutter like a Victorian damsel, I can’t physically keep them open as I sway toward him, but it doesn’t matter. His image is burned into the back of my brain. Heat shimmers up my torso, unfurling in my limbs, scorching with need. And…
And he turns.
Just barely. Just enough.
His lips miss mine. They graze my cheek instead. A ghost of a touch.
I freeze.
The moment snaps.
“I—” I pull back slightly, pulse thundering in my ears. “Sorry, I thought—”
