I brace myself, though I am not sure against what. Anger, perhaps. Fear. The sudden awful image of Corin altered by the blast radius of my bond, his mortality rewritten because he stood too close while saving us from collapse. My stomach tightens, but I keep my feet planted.
“Say more,” I demand.
Rhazek stops a few paces away. “During the stabilization ritual, Corin anchored the perimeter and absorbed structural backlash. Some of the merged infernal current interwove with his blood. It is not Maltherion’s corruption.”
“That is supposed to comfort me?”
“It is supposed to be precise.”
“I am not in love with precision right now.”
“Noted.”
My laugh comes out sharp and humorless. “You knew.”
“I suspected. Then confirmed.”
“When?”
His jaw tightens. “Yesterday.”
The air leaves me slowly.
Yesterday.
Not weeks. Not months. Not since the first flicker. I cling to that because I need something that does not feel like betrayal. Still, the hurt burns. He had held the truth in his mouth and given me a smaller version of it, polished and incomplete.
I look at Corin. “And you?”
He steps forward.
The movement is deliberate, no swagger now, no theatrical laziness. Sunlight catches in his pale hair and lays a faint sheen of gold across his eyes before it vanishes. His shadow retracts a little, not fully, but enough to look almost obedient.
“I knew something was changing,” he says.
“How long?”
“Since the merging.”
My fingers curl at my sides. “You both decided I was too delicate for the conversation?”
Corin’s face tightens. “No.”
“Do not insult me by making that sound noble.”
“I wasn’t protecting your delicacy,” he says, and for once there is no polish on the words. “I was protecting your peace.”
That lands somewhere tender enough to make me angrier.
“My peace is not a glass ornament,” I snap. “It does not need to be set on a high shelf while the menfolk go have dangerous little secrets in the yard.”
Rhazek winces faintly.
Good.
Corin exhales. “Fair.”
“Damn right, fair.”
