No, you were not,but I do not correct him.
Varo grins like he heard my thoughts. Kay’s shoulders stay lifted for a heartbeat longer, as if the air itself is a weight she is still learning to set down. Then she wipes the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist and nods her thanks—polite, contained. It is nothing. It should be nothing. But I watched the way the corner of her mouth tugged when he added a quiet correction and the spark of satisfaction it lit in her eyes. It scrapes along my ribs.
“Go,” he tells her, stepping back, all clipped grace. “Drink. Stretch. Don’t sit still or your muscles will freeze.” He does not look at me as he says it. He does not have to.
She finds me at the ring’s edge like she always does, bare feet sure in the sand until she jams her feet into the boots sitting by the fencing. She does not slow. The little reckless twist lives in her stride even when she is exhausted; it has become the way I know she is still herself.
“Hey,” she says, breath slipping over the word like it wants to run. “You missed a lot.”
“I did.” It comes out rougher than I intend, so I fold the sound into a nod and let my mouth flatten into something almost like a smile. She looks up at me with that unstudied relief that keeps surprising me. I want to press it into my palm and keep it. I do not get to keep things. “I’m sorry.”
The training floor hums around us, metal kissing leather, sand scuff, the tidy thrum of a yard that believes in every correction it makes. Thescent is sweat and oiled and flame sunk into the wood. George sits on the rail like a carved idol someone made from mischief and stubbornness. His tail sways once, emperor slow. I count the beats and breathe with it because otherwise I will reach for her without thinking. Possessiveness I understand. It is a habit drilled into princes and soldiers both: putyour body between the thing that matters and the thing that wants it.Jealousy is different. Jealousy assumes the thing that matters might turn toward someone else and choose them, not because of threat but because of want.
Jealousy is a childish ember. It is not a common flaw among my kind. Not in me. Not before now. I recognize it, but I do not admire it. It flares anyway, small and hot and stupid, asking questions I have no right to ask. I tell myself it is only because the Rite eats what you want most and calls it honor. Because Varo has always known how to stand just close enough to a fire to look warmed by it without ever risking a burn.
I am not jealous. Unless—I cut the thought clean before it finishes forming. A dangerous path. I taste ash at the back of my throat and choose a different flavor.
If we were bonded, the jealousy would make sense. It is fairly well-recorded when the flame first marks both. Probably some mystical, magical, biological need only brought forth by the bond itself. Bonds are for life. That is the first truth the old songs teach a child.Ask the flame to tie you, and it will tie you until one of you is ash.Not fate, not accident—choice. You stand before the fire. You speak your want and your intention aloud and with the Flame as witness in case you forget. You lay down pieces of yourself no one else gets to touchshame, fear, stubborn hopes. Proof you know what you are offering, proof you know what you are taking. Only then, if the flame deems you honest and equal, does it wrap itself around you both and seal the vow. It is not just ceremony. The flame marks what it touches; it remembers.
Daemari do not stumble into them. Do not wake to find one has grown around us like ivy. Without the steps, there is no fire, and without the fire, there is no bond. I swore—once—that I would never bond. After Isaeth, the vow felt like armor. We had never taken the final steps. Perhaps we would have been denied. Vesperan blood before the Ember Throne, tradition bristling like a cornered animal. Perhaps the flame would have refused us. It is well known the Vesperan do notspark the way Daemari do. I do not know. And ignorance is its own wound.
I thought I understood my father’s angle: push me to bind her, force my hand, make me an acceptable sacrifice. If I were bonded, I could stand in her place. Blood or bond, those are the rules that govern who may take a contender’s place in the Rite. He would get his spectacle and his lesson both: the prince throws himself into the fire to save the human, the Realm applauds the usefulness of softness, then forgets the human completely. But the Asmodeus lies like he breathes. What he wants today is not necessarily what he wanted yesterday. He delights in changing the board mid-game and insisting it was always like this.
Even if I pulled her out by bond, would he spare her? Or kill her anyway to prove a point I have not yet guessed? A bond would give me a lever. It would also paint a target on her skull so bright even the stupidest courtier could find it.We are not bonded. We cannot be. The thought is a mantra I have repeated too many times in the last day for it to sound like anything but protest.We are not bonded. The flame has not wrapped us. I have not spoken want and intent with witnesses; she has not offered the truths no one else gets to hold. We are not—
She looks up at me and the word frays.
“I’m glad you’re here,” and then her words do not tumble so much as pour, like she has been carrying a bucket and did not realize how full it was until someone took the handle from her grip. “I didn’t think—I mean, I didn’t realize the trial had started until I was in it. It felt like a dream at first. Not like Obsidian. Not like Viridian. There was no… stillness. Everyone was being so nice. Which should have been the tell, right? But my brain kept saying congratulations and sit and eat and—” She drags a hand through her hair and huffs, half laugh, half apology. “Sorry. Words.”
“No apologies.” I like hearing her talk and she needs to release. “Breathe.”
She obeys without thinking. In for four. Hold. Out for seven. I do not count it for her. I merely stand where she can see me. The permission she grants herself, to put her needs first, to take care of herself, when I am nearby is both humbling and terrifying. I do not deserve it. I will not waste it.
“Varo was…” she starts, then grimaces. “Helpful. In a Varo way. He says I drop my guard when I think I’ve won the exchange. He’s not wrong.” Her mouth twists. “He’s annoying about it.”
“He was trained to be,” I say, because it is kinder than saying he has always preferred the clean cruelty of accuracy to the muddy mercy of kindness.
She snorts. It snags the corner of my mouth upward against my will. The small sound a proof of life. I take it like a blessing I do not believe in and keep it.
“I do not like you with him,” I say.
It is out before I can dress it. No court polish, no politics, just the bone of the truth laid bare. She blinks. I feel the moment I should flinch and I do not.
“With Varo?” Her brows tip together like she might be sure she heard wrong.
“Yes.” I do not soften it. “I know there is nothing. I know you are safe with him in the ring and he would step between you and a knife without asking. Knowing does not make the heat go out of my throat when I hear his voice next to your laugh.”
A beat. Then her mouth does this complicated slant, wry and startled and so relieved I want to drop to the floor and press my forehead to the sand in gratitude.
“You’re jealous.”
“Yes.” I taste the word. It tastes like iron. “Not of you. Of proximity. Of how easily the Rite will try to use proximity against you. Of how he has learned to make being studied feel like being seen.”
“That’s not fair to him,” she says, because fairness is the bone she will not stop trying to sharpen into a spear.
“It isn’t about fair.” I pitch it soft, so she hears the care under the correction. “It’s… something else.”
Something in her posture loosens. Soft. Warm. Welcoming.
