At first.
Fire gathers beneath my skin, gold-veined crimson, the old heat that has bent battlefields and made lesser spirits remember appointments elsewhere. I keep my eyes on Sable while the power rises through my core, filling my shoulders, spine, hands. The air around me distorts. Frost vanishes from the gate in a circle. The trees beyond me groan as warmth presses outward.
Before the merging, Sable would have felt the weight of it like a wave striking the chest.
Now she lifts her chin.
Unaffected.
Not untouched; I can feel her awareness of the surge. She senses its shape, its temperature, its direction. But it does not invade. It does not force itself into her body because my power has finally learned the courtesy of a door.
Corin’s eyes widen by a fraction. “Again. Sharper.”
Sable points at him. “Do not encourage him to be sharper.”
“He has to test the edges.”
“Everyone keeps wanting to test edges around here, and somehow I’m the one covered in soot.”
I spike the power.
The ground beneath my boots blackens. Flame snaps up around my forearms, roaring bright enough to turn the morning briefly red. Birds scatter from the trees in a furious burst of wings. The gate hinge melts, dripping onto the path with a hiss.
Sable remains standing exactly where she is.
Then she smiles.
It is not gentle.
Energy pushes back toward me through the bond, clean and deliberate. Her current meets mine with the force of a hand planted squarely against my chest, not rejecting me, not receiving passively, but answering. The feedback loop forms in an instant. My fire travels the channel toward her and stops at the boundary of her consent; her will returns through the second channel and meets my core without being swallowed.
Symmetrical.
Balanced.
Power moves between us like breath shared by two bodies that still remember their own lungs.
The surge forces me to steady my stance.
Sable arches a brow. “Problem?”
My mouth curves despite myself. “No.”
“Liar.”
Corin gives a soft, stunned laugh. “She pushed him back.”
“I did not fall.”
“That is not the standard, Your Majesty.”
Sable’s energy presses again, less forceful this time, curious. It carries her temper, her exhaustion, the lingering ache from the ritual, and beneath all of it a fierce, bright joy she is trying very hard not to display because she has an image to maintain among fools and demon kings.
I lower my power.
The feedback loop settles with me. It does not collapse. It does not snap. Her current remains beside mine, equal in measure, waiting rather than clinging.
Something opens in my chest that no blade put there.
