“You see it now,” he says, and his voice has dropped into something dangerous—something meant to stay between us. “You know what I am. That means you’re in this whether you want to be or not.”
My pulse jumps. “I didn’t ask—”
“No one ever does,” he cuts in, eyes flicking to the edge of the ring like he’s checking for listeners. “And yet here you are, holding something the court would kill for. Not just to use against me, against every Vesperan still breathing.”
It’s hard to swallow past the knot forming in my throat. I think of Caziel, the secrecy around his family’s history with the Vesperan, thequiet weight behind every mention of the Ember War. “They’d really kill me over this? Kill you? Surely, it’s a misunderstanding, right? If you can be called—”
“If it meant keeping the truth buried? Yes.” His answer is too calm, too certain. “And you won’t see it coming if they decide you’re a problem.”
The air feels heavier now, pressing in like the heat before a storm. “What do you need me to do?”
“You keep your mouth shut,” he says, but it isn’t just an order—it’s a plea. “You don’t tell Caziel, you don’t tell your friends, you don’t hint at it in a drunken slip. The fewer people who know, the longer you live.”
I cross my arms, trying to look steadier than I feel. “And what about you?”
Varo’s mouth twists, almost like he’s amused at the question.
“Me? I’ve been living under that noose my whole life. But you…” His gaze rakes over me, assessing, measuring. “You’re not built for hiding. So be careful. Because now, you’re not just in the Rite—you’re in my war.”
Something in my chest clenches at that. He’s right. This isn’t just a trial anymore. It’s a battlefield I didn’t see coming. I might be the grit of sand in the wheels, but none of this is about me at all.
“I understand.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CAZIEL
The summons comes the way they always do, a smear of living smoke at the edge of my vision, curling into my peripheral like a thought I did not consent to think. It carries heat without light, the embermark’s whisper thrumming through it.Now. No herald, no seal, no excuse to delay, but I almost do not go.
The corridors above the arena are already vibrating—the faint, uneven thunder of a crowd reacting to something it does not understand yet. The Rite moves when it wishes, not when I decide. If they have started another trial early, Kay could be—I cut the thought off hard enough my teeth click. Useless. Dangerous. Want will not open a door where there is not one and I left her curled into the ruin of my tangled sheets.
I turn toward the Sovereign’s private approach. The citadel narrows the deeper I go, stone pulling close to the shoulders, heat thickening with each step until breathing tastes like a mouthful of hot coin. Guards stationed along the descent look at their boots the moment they feel me coming. It is a kindness, or a habit, or fear. I do not examine which.
The obsidian doors to the Throne open on their own breath. The chamber is what it has always been: a black lake of glass veined with slow rivers of gold fire, light shifting like molten metal under skin. It smells of ash and hammered copper. At the far end, my father lounges as if this is a summer veranda and not the core of our realm. He has one leg crossed over his lap, a cup of molten wine hanging lazy from hisclawed fingers, the high spires of his throne flaring like captured horns behind him.
“Caziel,” he says, and makes my name sound like something he could swallow or spit. “Come closer.”
I stop at the midpoint of the floor, where the heat lifts from tolerable to punishing. I do not kneel. I have not knelt since Isaeth. A corner of his mouth lifts.
“No pleasantries, my son? You wound me.”
“I was summoned,” I say. “State your reason.”
He sighs, contented as a cat after cream, and swirls his cup so the surface licks up the rim and settles back without spilling. “Straight to business. Stubborn little Ember. It’s almost charming.” His gaze slides over me, measuring, weighing, looking for edges to press. “Speaking of Flames… how fares your little human?”
The sound in the stone above us spikes, a wave of voices rises and drops, muffled by tons of rock. My shoulders lock before I can stop them.
“She endures.”
His eyes brighten a shade too hot. “You don’t know.”
I let silence answer.
“Has the Flame not told you?” His voice is soft and pitying as he lifts the cup to his mouth, hiding a smile in the steam. “Tsk, tsk. It even told me, and I am but a smolder these days.”
My jaw tightens. “Told me what.”
“My dear boy, that you’ve bonded her.”
