Page 103 of Embers of Midnight
Heat snaps to off. Air rushes back. Bodies stagger when the room changes that fast. Hers does. Balance tips a fraction. Pupils flare for oxygen. Knees consider surrender. That is the hinge I waited for.
I close in. Two fast steps. Weight set. I do not use the blade. I throw a straight right from the shoulder and land it square at the hinge of her jaw. The sound is clean and final. Her eyes blank. Her knees go out. She meets dust without drama and stays.
Silence holds a beat too long. Then the rim remembers how to breathe.
I look down at her because she needs to hear it, and I am done letting lies stand.
“Caelum is mine, bitch. All four of them are.”
I say it clear enough for the first row and quiet enough that it is for her. Then I step back, open my hands, and let the arena see control, not carnage. My knuckles throb. My ribs will yell later. I am still upright. That is the whole point.
Silence. One breath. Two.
The rim breaks into noise because human nature can’t help itself.
I do not raise my hands. I do not bow. I check my own breath. It’s where I put it. My arm throbs. Blood messes my wrap. The rib along my right side complains like a neighbor who hates music. I accept its letter.
I look down at Cassandra to make sure her chest moves. It does. Good. I wasn’t here to ruin her life. I was here to end this part of it.
“I did what I came to do,” I tell the dust, not the crowd. “Now let me leave.”
I slide Pyrelight along my thigh out of habit. There’s nothing to clean. It still feels like punctuation. I turn my back on the bowl and climb.
The rim rises too fast when the adrenaline starts to lose interest. My vision tightens at the edges when I stop moving at the top. My ribs argue with deeper breaths. The cut at my arm decides red looks good on me and makes more of it. The world tries to tilt. I tell it to pick one axis and it mostly listens.
Ash gets to me first and remembers that I hate being touched when I run hot unless I ask. He stops just out of reach and robs me with his eyes instead. His grin goes soft enough to be illegal. “You were disgusting,” he says, reverent. “I loved it.”
“Frame that,” I mutter, voice rough.
Ronan’s palm finds the back of my neck, careful of the wrap, careful of heat. The pressure is a line thrown at a drowning person without the drama. “Water,” he says. The bottle appears in my hand like we rehearse this kind of magic. I drink until the world sits back in its chair.
Darian studies my pupils, not my mouth. “Infirmary,” he says, steady. No argument in his tone. Only certainty.
I open my mouth to push back because walking out under my own power matters. My rib answers for me with a sharp little letter that makes my eyes water. “Okay,” I get out.
Caelum slides in on my other side and offers a shoulder. He does not press it into me. He lets me choose. I lean. The relief is immediate and embarrassing; he pretends not to notice. “Anchor,” he murmurs. I put the word in my mouth and breathe around it. Two short. One long. The ground quits tipping.
We move through faces I don’t need to memorize. Taya’s eyes shine in a way that says murder with love. Laz mimes an uppercut with form so bad I snort. The noise makes my rib glare. I soften it, keep walking.
The infirmary is cool and smells like antiseptic and cotton. The healer on duty takes one look at my arm and my chest and points at a cot. I sit because the room will forgive me faster if I do.
“Shirt,” she says, already reaching for gauze. I peel fabric away from clotted blood and do not hiss because I’m trying to be that person today. Her hands are quick, not cruel. The cut along my bicep is long and shallow. The frost bruise on my ribs is ugly already and going to get uglier before it stops. She cleans, strips, wraps. “No stitches,” she decides. “You don’t need new lines. Keep the old ones honest.”
Ash makes a wounded noise from the doorway. “She’s already devastating.”
“Out,” the healer says, without looking. “Unless you’re here to hold saline.”
He clutches his own chest and staggers back two steps on principle. Ronan catches his collar and tugs him another half step because he can. Darian parks himself at the end of the bed and doesn’t blink while she works; his stare has been known to scare infections out of bodies.
Caelum sets a paper cup in my hand and helps me get it to my mouth without making me feel like a sad toddler. “Drink.” The word lands soft and heavy.
The salve on my ribs burns for three breaths and then pays rent. The wrap goes on tight enough to convince my lungs to behave. The tremor in my hands decides it isn’t needed.
“Observation,” the healer says. “An hour. Then you can go be brave somewhere else.”
“Not on today’s list,” I tell her, and lie back against the pillow.
The room softens its edges. The ceiling is just a ceiling. Sheets scratch in the way infirmary sheets always do. The bright part of the pain dims to a duller complaint I can live with until it gets bored and wanders off. My eyelids weigh more than they should. Good. The bill is paid, and the body is doing math I can live with.
