I stepped closer to the wolfkin who secretly had my heart.
“Thank you,” I told Kaelric. I hoped my tone conveyed how deeply grateful I was.
He just nodded once. “I’m sorry about your home.”
It wasn’t much of a home, but now I missed it. Now it was luxurious compared to having nothing.
We didn’t speak after that.
We just worked.
For hours, we moved between buildings, pulling children from crumbling homes, guiding panicked families out of the Dregs and into the neighboring wheat fields. The fire spread like the wind, devouring everything in its path. Kaelric hoisted beams off collapsed doorways while I tied scraps of cloth around burns. Someone handed me a bucket, and I formed a line as we tried to put out smaller fires to keep them from spreading. It was no use. My arms ached, lungs burned, but I didn’t stop.
Neither did Kaelric. I’d long lost sight of Cassian, but Kaelric stood by my side the entire night, working tirelessly to save as many people as he could.
I stared at the orange and yellow flames and wondered if the fire had been started with magic or just carelessness.Or something worse. I didn’t have time to question it.
By dawn, the fires were mostly out because they had consumed every thatched roof, every crate of wood, every blanket, every hair comb. Ninety-five percent of the Dregs was ash and rubble. Hundredsof families were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
And still no help came from Aerlyn.
The gates of the Elite city stayed shut.
No aid. No shelter. Just silence.
A venomous rage that scared me formed inside my chest. This fury was murderous and all-consuming.
The people who survived the fire, which luckily were most, huddled into the roadways and grain fields across from the Dregs just outside the Elite city.
I found Kaelric kneeling beside a young boy with blistered hands and blood on his cheeks. Kaelric wrapped a scarf around the boy’s shoulders, murmuring something too quiet to hear. I noticed healing magic leaving Kaelric and saturating the boy.
When Kaelric stood, he turned and looked at me.
For the first time in a week, I saw him, not just the wolf, not just the warrior, but the realest part of him, the part that cared for people, the alpha that risked himself for others. My heart ached as I remembered the way we’d kissed, how natural it had felt, and then the crushing words he’d delivered after.
You’re human. I can’t be with you.
I was too poor to be with Cassian, too human to be with Kaelric. Would I die alone? Maybe. I was too tired to care about it right now.
Kaelric and I stared at each other. We were bothfilthy, exhausted, and covered in soot. I didn’t say anything, I just stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as the sun came up over the cloudy remnants of my childhood.
“We have the final trial in a few hours,” I said hoarsely.
“I know.”
“We’re not ready.”
I’d been practicing all week with Cassian and not him. We had barely spoken. We weren’t a team, and this was a trial designed to take me out. I was going to die. My mother was going to lose her home and her eldest daughter all in the same day.
“No one is,” he said. “But we’ll survive it.”
He was so sure. It both annoyed me and gave me hope.
“How can you be certain?”
“Because we have to.”
A low rumble echoed through the smoke-choked air.
