“No, we absolutely would not. My reputation is delicate.”
“You have no reputation,” I say.
“I have several. Some are even mine.”
Sable leans her shoulder against me, and I let myself take the offered weight without turning it into a vow to fight mountains. The yard is quiet around us. Beyond the fence, the trees sway in a mild dawn wind. Somewhere far off, a bird begins singing with obnoxious confidence, as though the world has not nearly ended three separate times before breakfast.
Sable looks at the sealed circle, then at me. “No more survival-based bond.”
“No,” I say. “No more.”
“And no more trying to solve love with unilateral catastrophe.”
“I will require reminders.”
“You’ll get them.”
Corin lifts the broken hammer. “I am willing to provide visual aids.”
I look down at Sable, at her soot-marked face and the steady strength in her eyes, and the immensity of my existence narrows into something almost bearable. Not smaller. Never smaller. Simply clearer.
I do not need eternity to prove this.
25
SABLE
Weeks pass, and I begin measuring peace in ridiculous ways.
At first, I do it in secret because secret habits are easier to defend than vulnerable ones. Every morning, before Rhazek wakes fully or pretends not to be awake while tracking my breathing like a brooding infernal metronome, I stand before the mirror and search my reflection for proof that something has changed. I tilt my face toward the window. I lift my chin, examine the corners of my eyes, the skin around my mouth, the soft place beneath my jaw where time is supposed to begin writing itself in fine, merciless lines. I expect to find some small betrayal. A new crease. A dullness beneath the eyes. Some mortal little whisper that the bond may be stabilized, the corruption gone, the ritual sealed, but nature still intends to collect what she is owed.
Nothing changes.
My reflection remains stubbornly itself: dark hair that refuses perfect order no matter how carefully I braid it, mouth too ready to argue, eyes sharper than they used to be and perhaps a little more tired, though that might be less age andmore the natural consequence of loving a demon king with heroic self-destructive tendencies. The burn on my cheek fades to a faint pink line, then to silver, then to nothing unless the morning light strikes just so. Even then, it looks more like a memory than a wound.
On the ninth morning, Rhazek catches me pinching the skin at the corner of my eye.
He says nothing at first.
He is sitting against the headboard, bare chest crossed by old scars and newer faint lines where the severance attempt nearly split him open. His hair falls loose around his shoulders, black as the last hour before dawn, and his expression has the particular stillness of a predator deciding whether the prey before him is in danger or simply being strange.
I glance at him in the mirror. “Do not look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to diagnose me with mortality.”
His mouth curves. “You are pinching your face with the focus of a scholar inspecting counterfeit currency.”
“I am checking.”
“For wrinkles?”
“For evidence.”
He shifts, the sheets sliding lower around his waist, and the bond warms with his amusement before he schools it into something less distracting. “Evidence of what, precisely?”
“That I am not secretly aging in some dramatic accelerated way because we broke six laws of magic, offended at least three dead entities, and rewrote a contract that had no business existing in the first place.”
