“Okay then. You’re allowed to be jealous, but he can keep training me.” I nod.
“My father has quickened the pace of the Rite,” I tell her. “He intends to push trials through any gap that looks like rest and then call it tradition. He wants you off balance. He wants me busy. He wants the crowd to forget what slow feels like, so they think this was always the shape.”
Her brow creases. “He can just—do that?”
“The Rite is older than he is, but he has spent decades convincing people that the story he tells about it is the truth. He does not need it to be true for it to work. He needs repetition and fear. And a pretty ending.”
“What’s his pretty ending?”
“You, on a pedestal long enough for people to clap, then ash. A lesson.” I let the ugliness sit in the air between us; it belongs to him, not me, but leaving it unsaid would make it heavier. “He thinks you want rest. Recognition. A seat that does not bite. That you could be bought with applause. He is wrong.”
Her chin lifts. It is a small motion, but it feels like a banner planting deep in rich soil. A claim.
“He is.”
“Then remember this: if anyone offers you ease, it is bait. If anyone tells you you have earned your rest, they want you still. If anyone puts you above the floor, check for levers.”
“Paranoid,” she murmurs. “You know I could have used some of this before Gilded. It is like straight out of their playbook.”
“Alive,” I correct.
She huffs again, that not-quite laugh. “I suppose alive is good.”
“I need you focused,” I say, and the word lands with a small charge, like a coin warmed by a palm. “Not just on the arch in front of you. On what stands behind it. The arena, Crimson. On me, if there is not a better anchor. Do not let the trial convince you no one is waiting for your return.”
“Is that an order?” she asks, teasing around the edges to cover the way color climbs into her cheeks.
“A request,” I say. “From the man who is not as patient as he looks. Not when it comes to you.”
She nods, quick. “I understand.” And then. “I’m not all that patient when it comes to my demon prince either.”
Her cheeks flame, red streaking across her cheeks, but she does not drop my eyes. I want to pull her close, drag my nose along the curve of her neck. Stroke my tail along the length of her flank. I want to breathe her in. I want to tell her everything.
That my father offered to carve her name on stone before she fell, a magnanimous memorial for a death he has not earned. That he delightsin imagining me listening to the Arena’s roar and deciding which part of it is her voice. That if I could, I would rip the law across my own throat and drag her out under the mantle of a bond and dare the Flame to stop me. Her safety is my weakness, but I will not lay that burden at her feet.
Instead, I say, “Eat. Sleep if you can. If you cannot, let me stand next to you while you try.”
“Don’t go?” she says, too casual to be anything but brave.
“I’m not leaving,” I answer, and it is the only truth I have that does not feel like a blade. “Not of my own choice.”
She exhales, something unclenching in her shoulders. “Good.”
George hops down and head-butts her calf as if to declare ownership in front of the gods. I do not argue with cat or god. My father will quicken the Rite. He will starve us of breath and call it mercy. He will try to turn her into the knife he wants to hold. Let him try. If he wants her broken, he will have to do it through me. And I do not break.
We are not bonded. I repeat it one more time for the part of me that thinks saying a thing makes it truer.We are not bonded. The flame did not wrap us. There were no witnesses. No declarations. No offered truths.
And yet when the lamps pop and settle and her breath evens on the other side of me, the heat under my sternum answers. A heat, a pull, a tug I have never felt before. Not even when the flame first had me branded.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
KAY
I’m still sweating when I get back to the barracks. The cool stone does nothing to ease the heat along my spine, or the buzz in my limbs from sparring. My shirt sticks to me, damp under the arms, my braid half-undone. I probably smell like a boiled boot, but there was something cathartic about training with Varo, his quiet, steady rhythm, the way he didn’t flinch when I cracked his jaw by accident. I didn’t expect to like him. I still don’t know if I do. But we work.
I tug my curtain back, ready to collapse, and stop short.
There’s a slip of parchment on my cot.
