Finally, she nods once. “Fine.”
The word has sharp edges.
“Sable—”
“No. You said you need more information. Get it.”
“I will.”
“And when you have it, you tell me.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes remain on mine. “All of it.”
The promise catches in my throat before I force it out. “All of it.”
She looks away first, gathering the papers with more care than necessary. I watch her hands move, the ink on her finger, the pulse at her wrist steady beneath skin that no longer ages by ordinary rules. My chest aches with the cowardice I dressed as caution.
Outside the window, the yard lies silver under moonlight. Somewhere below, Corin continues his evening drills, iron cutting the air in measured strokes as if nothing has happened. The sound rises faintly through the floorboards, steady, disciplined, and wrong enough that I cannot stop hearing the second rhythm underneath it.
Sable sits beside me, close enough to touch and far enough to feel the space I have made.
The secret hangs in that space, breathing softly.
29
SABLE
Corin punches through the target like it insulted our mother.
One moment he is moving through an ordinary practice sequence in the yard, all polished footwork and irritatingly elegant blade transitions, and the next his weapon is on the ground, his fist drives forward, and the wooden training dummy detonates from the inside out. Splinters explode across the grass in a violent fan, striking the fence, the iron stakes, the old stone path. One piece whistles past my cheek close enough that I feel the air split beside my skin.
I stop walking.
Corin stands with his arm still extended through the ruined center of the target, pale knuckles buried in a hole no human fist should have made. Sunlight falls cleanly over him, bright afternoon gold, and his shadow stretches behind him in the wrong direction.
The sun is overhead.
His shadow should be short.
Instead, it runs long across the yard, thin and dark, crawling over the grass like spilled ink looking for a drain.
“Corin,” I say.
He lowers his arm.
Bits of canvas and wood slide off his sleeve. His breathing is steady, but the air around him has changed, gone dense and warm at the edges. Beneath the skin of his forearm, faint sigils flicker once, barely visible before they vanish—thin gold lines surfacing under stress like embers seen beneath ash.
He looks at the destroyed target, then at me.
“Well,” he says, “that one was poorly constructed.”
I walk straight toward him.
His expression shifts into something lighter, automatic, the usual charming curtain sweeping into place. “Before you begin, I would like it noted that the target attacked my pride first.”
“Show me your arm.”
