“You arrived wearing Diablo Levélle magic, carrying no name and no memories, yet you knew Sule had made a bargain. You recognized my title without being told, and something inside you has spoken through your mouth twice.”
Her face paled.
“I don’t know why.”
“Then we begin with what you do know.”
Rhen leaned closer.
“Who are you?”
Her throat worked around an answer that did not come.
“I don’t know.”
The bond pulsed once.
Energy moved through the chamber in a slow, gathering wave, making the embers inside the hearth flare. The silver glyphs beneath her skin emerged again, winding along her arms and throat before splintering like ice beneath pressure.
Rhen rose.
“What is happening?”
“I don’t—”
Her voice broke as the magic tightened around her.
The scent changed first.
Wild witchcraft and rain began to peel away, layer after layer dissolving from the air between them. Something softeremerged beneath it: lavender, firewood, old parchment, and the faint cream worn upon familiar skin.
Rhen went utterly still.
The scent entered him like a blade.
“No.”
The word emerged too quietly to belong to him.
The candle beside the bed flickered back to life and immediately died again, plunging the room into complete darkness.
Rhen reached for the lighter upon the table. His fingers, steady through centuries of slaughter, failed once before striking the wheel.
A small flame appeared.
The glamour gave way.
Her features shifted beneath the wavering light, not changing into something new but returning to the shape the magic had been built to conceal.
Her skin was paler than it had appeared beneath the glamour, marked by faint silver paths that wound beneath the surface like moonlight trapped in flesh.
Rhen stared.
He knew the shape of those eyes.
The curve of that mouth.
The delicate line of her jaw and the faint crease between her brows that appeared when she was frightened, angry, or determined that no one would see either.
