“No,” I snap.
His gaze cuts to me. “Sable.”
“Do not strike it.”
“It is manifest.”
“I can see that.”
“It is attempting to breach.”
“And if you hit it, it fractures.”
His jaw locks so hard I feel the echo of it in my own teeth. The shadow writhes overhead, stretching toward the place where our hands meet. Its edges drip darkness that evaporates before touching us, hissing when it hits the circle’s light.
Rhazek’s flame grows brighter. “I can burn it cleanly.”
“Last time you thought you could do something cleanly, I had to drag your cracked royal ass out of a severance circle.”
Corin barks a breathless laugh. “Accurate, though I object to reliving the image.”
The shadow dips lower.
Rhazek’s fire flares by instinct.
I step closer to him, pulling our joined hands against my chest. “Channel through me.”
His expression changes, horrified. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You said together.”
“This is not what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant. You just hate the part where together requires trusting me with the dangerous end.”
The shadow screams without a mouth, and the circle bucks beneath us. Corin’s ward post lurches sideways, iron shrieking against buried stone. He throws his weight against it, both boots carving trenches in the ash.
“Whatever marital philosophy you two are conducting,” he shouts, “arrive at a conclusion quickly.”
Rhazek leans closer, his voice dropping to that devastating, smoke-rough register that usually ruins my ability to argue like a rational person. “If I channel through you, it will try to burrow into your living tissue.”
“Then I redirect it.”
“If you fail?—”
“I won’t.”
“You cannot know that.”
“No,” I say, and my voice softens without becoming weaker. “But I know you won’t overtake me. Not this time.”
That lands.
I feel it pass through him, through the bond, through the molten places where his fear keeps looking for a throne. His fire gutters, then steadies, still gathered but no longer lunging. The shadow above us twists impatiently, sensing the shift.
