“You’re becoming a bit of a legend, you know,” Sarai says casually as she pours me tea. “Among the Vesperan, I mean.”
I snort. “Me?”
“You’re an underdog. You don’t belong here, no offense, but you keep surviving. Fighting. We see that.”
My throat tightens. “But I’m not one of you. I’m not Vesperan.”
“No,” Sarai agrees. “But you’re other, like us. That’s enough.”
I sip the tea to cover the silence that follows. It burns, just a little. Steadying.
“I keep wondering,” I say quietly, “what people can actually see of the trials. It feels like I’m being watched, but I don’t know what they’re seeing. Like, I know there’s an audience. They sit on the stone steps around the arches and watch me walk through and fall back out, but I’m not in Crimson for the trial.”
“They see pieces,” Sarai says. “Impressions. But most of it’s obscured unless you’re attuned to the Flame.”
“Then how do the Vesperan engage at all?” I ask. “You don’t have flame, right?”
Sarai’s expression doesn’t change. “Not officially.”
Something sharp prickles at the edge of my thoughts. “What does that mean?”
She stirs her tea with one finger, then licks it clean. “It means there’s more to truth than what the citadel allows to be written down.”
She’s talked like this before. Caziel has too. The truths not written into history.
I lean forward. “Are you saying Vesperan can be called to the Flame? The Rite?” It seems like something too big to have been overlooked.
Her voice turns cool. “I’m saying you shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”
I blink, caught off guard. “But I do. Want the answers, I mean.” Sarai places her mug down on a nearby table. “If Vesperans can be called, if everyone is wrong, isn’t it something the Daemari should know? It could change everything for you. You don’t have to be second-class citizens, not when you can burn just like everyone else. Why wouldn’t you want people to know?
But Sarai is shaking her head.
“It’s not that simple. Those answers? The truth? It gets people hurt.” Her eyes flash. “You think surviving the Rite is hard? Try surviving when your name is a curse in the mouths of the court. When your existence is grounds for exile.”
The air chills. I swallow. “But if the flame rose for a Vesperan contender—”
“They would never admit it,” Sarai cuts in. Her voice is quiet, but sharp enough to flay skin. “Because if the other contenders found out, they’d turn on them. Because the Elders would use it to prove some twisted point about purity or control. Because people would claim it was a trick, or a curse, or a threat to the realm. That’s if the information got out at all.”
“You’re saying—”
“The people who have the power, the privilege, they don’t just give it back. Not when they seize it through lies, Kay.”
The heat in my chest fizzles into something heavier.
“I didn’t mean—” I start.
“I know you didn’t.” Sarai exhales hard, her jaw tight. “You’re kind, Kay. You have a big heart and it’s in the right spot. But kindness won’tkeep my people safe. Silence might. We haven’t exactly given up, but these things take time.”
I nod, slowly. “So, I shouldn’t ask…”
“Not yet.”
“But you are telling me someone might be—”
“I’m telling you to watch. Look for the ones who really see you. They won’t say it out loud, but they’ll fight beside you anyway. It’s a dance, see? If the Flame called to…” she doesn’t say it aloud, “and they chose to answer the flame, they’d have to keep is secret.”
“Until they either win or can trust the one who does.”
