"She absolutely did. And you finished it beautifully." He squeezes my hip. "Sage is going to love you even more when he hears about this."
The mention of Sage makes something warm bloom in my chest.
Sage.
My pen pal.
The first person to know me—really know me—without flinching.
But there are other things on my mind.
Darker things.
The alliance. The deal. The enemy we're supposed to destroy together.
"If we play our cards right," Blaze is saying, steering me down a corridor I don't recognize, "we can be out of this academy in a week. Take down Kai's dad in a nutshell, get you to that audition, getallof us somewhere that isn't this nightmare."
Take down Kai's dad.
The words echo in my skull.
I think about what that means—really means. Not just politically, not just strategically, butpersonally. For Kai. For all of them.
"Is he truly okay with killing his own father though?"
The question comes out quiet.
Fragile.
Like I'm afraid of the answer.
Blaze doesn't respond immediately.
We keep walking, his stride steady, his arm still secure around my waist. The corridor narrows, then opens into astairwell that leads upward toward what I assume are the classroom levels.
Finally, he looks back at me.
His expression has changed—the humor gone, replaced by something older. Wearier. The face of someone who's seen too much and understood too little, who's made peace with horrors that shouldn't require peace-making.
"In our world," he says quietly, "it's either kill or be killed. Family sadly doesn't mean shit. Or at least—" A pause. A breath. "—we're finding out the hard way, I guess."
The words settle into the space between us.
Heavy.
True.
I know about family not meaning shit.
I know about the people who are supposed to love you deciding you're disposable, deciding your life is worth less than their convenience, deciding to end you like you're a problem to be solved instead of a person to be protected.
My parents didn't betray me.
They diedforme.
But Kai's father—the man who raised him, who shaped him into who he is today—looked at his own son and decided he was better off dead.
That's a different kind of hurt.
