“Yeah?”
Her gaze is careful. But not unkind. “If the flame ever does speak to you, don’t lie. It will know.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
CAZIEL
Ienter without ceremony.
No herald. No announcement. No crown. Just the soft echo of my boots against the basalt floor and the low ripple of conversation that does not pause for me. Not anymore.
It’s better that way.
I move to the outer tier of the court, taking a place that’s neither central nor hidden. Close enough to listen. Far enough to avoid being drawn in until I choose the time. The chamber is circular, ringed with seats carved from volcanic stone and hung with flame-veined silk. Every banner drips with gold thread, every noble with opinion. And today, all of them are focused on one thing. Not the Rite. Not the Brand. Not even my father’s absence.
Her.
They do not speak her name, I doubt most of them know it, but they speak of her presence. Her anomaly. Her threat.
“She is not unkindled,” says Councilor Erenath, the phrase passed down from the Flamebound like a riddle everyone is too proud to ask aloud.
“Not unkindled,” echoes a younger voice—Lady Taris, silver-haired and hungry. “But neither marked. An emberless spark. A disruption.”
“Unstable,” says another. “A fracture.”
“She could draw the wrong kind of attention.”
“She already has.”
“Let her be tested.”
“The Forge will burn out what cannot bond.”
“She is mortal,” someone offers. “She cannot withstand it.”
“She crossed into our flame. Let her withstand or fall.”
I watch the slow, careful trading of arguments across the chamber. No passion. No fire. Just bloodless calculation. They’re not debating her fate. They’re dividing it.
“She may not survive the trials,” one lord says. “But if she doesn’t, then we lose nothing. It would be the flame’s providence.”
“And if she proves something?”
“Then we take it. Use it. Claim it as the plan from the start.”
No one flinches at the cold calculation. I do not move, but something in me burns icier than the rest of the room. They would feed her to the Rite like parchment to flame.
“She has committed no crime,” says a younger woman near the lower dais. She was elevated to elder only in the last few flame cycles. A whisper, but firm. “She has harmed no one. Why imprison her?”
“Because she is unknown,” someone counters. “And unknowns are dangerous.” It’s a verbal slap, designed to silence, and the murmur of agreement in the crowd is all I can see, all I can hear. Kay asked again and again and again if she was going to be imprisoned. I treated her concern like conspiracy.
“If we cage all we do not understand, we will soon burn from the inside.” The words roll off my tongue into the silence, steady and precise.
A few heads turn. Not many. Erenath does. He always does. “And what would you propose, my Lord Caziel?”
He says it like a compliment. It isn’t. They only use my title to chastise.
“To release her?” comes another voice—Taris again, sharp as ever. “To let her walk the Flamehall and stir the Rite unchecked?”
