I do not challenge it. Not yet.
“Good,” I say. “Because if you collapse dramatically, Rhazek will become impossible.”
“Become?”
“Worse, then.”
“That threat may keep me alive.”
I leave him there with the mirror and whatever golden thing is beginning to look back.
By the time I return to Rhazek, evening has settled fully over the house. The lamps are lit. The hearth burns without flaring, which still feels like a miracle worth respecting. Rhazek is in the study, standing over maps he is not reading. He looks up themoment I enter, and the bond warms in recognition, steady as a hand laid between my shoulders.
“You are troubled,” he says.
“I am observant.”
“That has historically led to trouble.”
I close the door behind me and lean against it. The wood is cool at my back. For a moment, I listen to the house: the pop of the fire, the faint groan of beams settling, Corin moving somewhere down the hall with footsteps too light for a man who should be tired.
Rhazek comes closer. “Sable.”
“I’m not ready to talk about it.”
His eyes search my face, then soften with a restraint I appreciate more because I know how much it costs him. “Then I will not press.”
“Look at you. Evolving.”
“I remain dangerous.”
“Obviously. But now with manners.”
His mouth curves. “A devastating combination.”
I walk into him because I can. Because weeks have passed and the world has not ended. Because my face has not aged, my pulse has stayed strong, my blood has not betrayed me, and the bond has stopped feeling like a rescue line thrown over a cliff. Because the room is warm, and Rhazek’s chest is solid beneath my cheek, and for once nothing in the walls is screaming.
His arms close around me carefully. Then, when I press closer, less carefully.
“What happened?” he asks against my hair.
“Nothing I can name yet.”
His hand moves slowly along my back. “Then name what you can.”
I close my eyes.
The words surprise me by arriving whole.
“I feel content.”
He goes still.
I almost laugh because, of all the things I have said to him—furious things, terrified things, obscene things whispered into the hollow of his throat—that simple confession seems to strike deepest.
“Content,” he repeats.
“Don’t make it weird.”
