The cold seems to sharpen around us.
I stare at her, and the bond tightens, wary but attentive. “Shared ritual.”
“Yes.”
“Define shared.”
“Not you carving yourself apart while I scream outside a wall of fire. Not me being dragged along by a contract written in three languages of manipulation. We go in together, conscious, equal, and very much alive. We merge by choice.”
The word choice moves through the bond like a hand smoothing a wrinkle from cloth.
I look back at the circle. Its damaged runes pulse faintly beneath the soot, remnants of my failed attempt still lodged in the ground. “This place is contaminated by severance.”
“Then we rewrite it.”
“It will resist.”
“So will I.”
“That is precisely what concerns me.”
She steps closer, and her sleeve brushes my arm. “Rhazek, if the hidden clause requires conscious consent after merger, then we need a ritual that lets both of us give it without the contract twisting the terms.”
I drag my gaze over the circle again, measuring angles, fractures, residual heat. “A shared stabilization rite would require symmetrical inscription. Equal lines. Equal offerings. No dominant caster.”
“Good.”
“You say that as if it is easy.”
“No, I say that as if it is necessary.”
Corin shifts his weight and watches us with the alert stillness he uses when pretending he is not worried. “Theoretically, she is correct.”
I turn on him. “Do not encourage her.”
“I am not encouraging anyone. I am stating that a consensual equalization rite is less catastrophically deranged than whatever flaming self-sacrifice pageant you attempted last night.”
Sable folds her arms. “See? Corin agrees with me.”
“That should alarm you.”
“It does, a little, but I’ll take what I can get.”
I close my eyes for a moment. The dawn wind moves over my face, carrying cold into the torn places last night left behind. Inside my core, the immortal strands sit restored but sore, like muscles after a brutal fight. Beneath them, Maltherion’sremnants lurk in their corners, quiet enough to be mistaken for harmlessness by someone optimistic or recently dead.
A shared ritual will draw them out.
A shared ritual will require me to stop holding the bond like a sword hilt.
A shared ritual will place Sable beside me inside a circle that has already tasted her blood, fear, and defiance.
I open my eyes. “If we do this, you follow the structure exactly.”
Sable’s mouth tightens. “If by structure you mean the ritual architecture, fine. If by structure you mean your orders, absolutely not.”
“You are impossible.”
“And yet you keep up.”
