He leans his head back against the stone wall, eyes half-lidded. He looks tired. Not physically. Like someone carrying the weight of many people’s expectations. I wonder if he ever lets anyone see this part of him. If anyone else ever gets to sit beside the Ember Heir while he admits—in not so many words—that he doesn’t know if he’s doing any of this right.
“Do you ever train like this with anyone else?” I ask.
He turns his head toward me.
“No.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I default to sarcasm.
“What makes me so lucky?”
“You’re expected to survive without a past or a people,” he says simply.
I go still. His words are not nothing. They’re everything.
I look down at the blade resting across my lap. My fingers drift to the rune glowing faintly near the hilt. This is mine. And he gave it to me. Not to earn my favor, or sex, or anything at all. Just to help me live. He stands. I follow, slower. We walk in silence to the edge of the hall. He reaches for the door, then hesitates. Turns back.
His eyes meet mine—just for a second.
“Tomorrow,” he says, nodding once.
I watch him leave. Once the door to the hall shutters behind him my gaze drops back down. I can’t stop staring at the blade. It rests across my palm, light as breath, but the weight of it is something else entirely. Not metal—meaning. Intention. My fingers skim the hilt again, tracing the faint swell where the leather curves to fit my grip. The rune near the guard flares softly beneath my touch, like it’s aware of me. Like it recognizes me. I don’t know what to do with that.
No one’s ever made me anything before. Not like this. Not to keep me safe. Not to help me survive. Not for me alone. I pull my knees up, rest my forehead against them, and exhale. It shouldn’t matter. It’s just atool. A weapon. I’ve been handed plenty of those in my life—paper shields, cheap words, broken promises.
But this one was forged to fit me, and that changes things.
I should be proud. Or flattered. Or snarky enough to brush it off like it doesn’t dig its hooks under my skin, but all I feel is exposed. This kind of care? This kind of unspoken, razor-soft attention? This is the kind of thing you give to someone you don’t plan to throw away and I’ve been tossed back so many times I’m starting to think it’s personal. No one ever stays.
Not when my parents died.
Not when the state took me.
Not when family after family tried to fix me, pity me, pass me on like a too-hard puzzle missing half its box. Too quiet. Too angry. Too broken. Too much grief in too small a body with nowhere to put it. So I learned to put it nowhere; to carry it like armor. I learned to make people laugh, or look away, or think I was fine. To fight like someone who didn’t need saving. I thought that would be the theme of the rest of my life. Me and George against the world
And then Caziel handed me a blade I didn’t ask for. One that fits my hand and balances my weight and carries a rune that pulses when I touch it like it’s glad to see me. I don’t know how to carry that. I drag in a slow breath.
“I know you’re just a sword,” I whisper, “but you feel like something I should protect. Which is deeply ironic, considering your whole vibe.”
The rune flickers faintly, a buzz against my palm. I should ask what it means. Or maybe if I scrunch up my eyes and wish hard enough the flame will translate for me. Human probably. Don’t Cut Yourself. Lost Cause. I laugh, soft and a little shaky. It’s easier to joke than to admit what I’m really feeling. I’m scared of this. Scared of the way he looks at me like I’m not a mistake. Scared of how much I want to believe him. Scared that the second I get comfortable he’ll disappear, too.
I lean back against the wall, the blade still clutched in my fist, and close my eyes. Caz’s hands on my arms. The low hum of his voice correcting my form. The way he said I’m allowed to trust him like that’s something I get to choose. Like it’s not a trap. God, it’s been so long since someone touched me without wanting to fix me or use me or make me small. I want to trust believe him. Believe in him.
A terrifying thought. If I fall for this—for him—and it turns out to be another cruel twist in a story I didn’t ask to be written into…I don’t know if I’ll come back from that. But then I look down again at the way the hilt curves perfectly to my palm. T blade that doesn’t resist me, the small fire-lit rune at the top that catches when I hold it, and I think, Maybe this time… Maybe just this once… The thing I reach for might reach back.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
KAY
The food at dinner is warm. Spiced. Comforting, maybe, if I could taste anything right now. Instead, I stare at it where it appeared on the sideboard. Something soft and root-like, glazed in something sweet. A bowl of rice that isn’t rice. A cup of broth that smells like rosemary and embers. None of it is bad. Most of it I’ve actually liked in the past few days. But tonight, it just tastes like…not home.
I poke at the food with my fork or whatever the Daemari call it. Or maybe I conjured it from my own thoughts of home. Probably by the same invisible magic that made my bed, my clothes, my toothbrush. They got the details right, more or less. But it doesn’t feel like mine. Nothing here does.
Time slips strangely in Crimson. It’s not slow. Just soft. It moves like fog, curling around me in a way that makes it hard to track. I keep thinking maybe if I slept better, or counted meals, or scratched tally marks into the wall like some movie prisoner, I could figure out how long I’ve been here. But the truth is I don’t want to know. Or didn’t, Until now.
“Hey,” I say without looking up. “How long have I been here? In Crimson?”
Caziel doesn’t respond right away. He’s been standing near the outer wall of the room, one shoulder braced casually against the stone, his arms crossed. Watching. Always watching.
