He looks down at his hand, flexes it once, then lifts his palm between us. “I didn’t know what I was, Sable. I still don’t, not fully. I knew I was healing faster. Moving faster. I knew my shadow had become a pretentious little bastard. I didn’t want to hand you a nightmare without knowing whether it had teeth.”
“And does it?”
Corin meets my eyes.
Then he opens his hand.
Flame blooms in his palm.
Small.
Gold.
Stable.
It curls upward no higher than his fingers, delicate as a candle flame and impossibly alive. It does not spit or lurch. It does not smoke. It simply burns, clean and controlled, casting warm light over the lines of his hand.
The world narrows around that little flame.
I hear the wind moving through the fence slats. I hear Rhazek’s breath stop. I hear my own pulse, steady but loud, pounding at the base of my throat. The air smells faintly of iron and sun-warmed wood, with a new trace beneath it—smoke, yes, but softer than Rhazek’s, less volcanic, more like banked embers under white ash.
Corin watches me watch the flame.
“I didn’t borrow that from a lantern,” he says lightly.
“Don’t joke.”
His mouth flinches. “Sorry.”
The apology frightens me almost as much as the fire.
I step closer.
Rhazek’s energy shifts behind me, a protective instinct beginning to rise. Through the bond, I feel him catch it before it becomes action. He does not stop me. He does not pull me back. He only stands there with his fear held in both hands like something sharp he has finally learned not to throw.
The flame trembles when I near it.
Corin’s eyes flick to my face. “It won’t hurt you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you lying to make me feel better?”
“Probably a little.”
That sounds more like him, and somehow it helps.
I look at the flame again. “Does it hurt you?”
“No.”
“Does it feel foreign?”
He considers. The flame bends with his breath, then steadies. “At first, yes. Now it feels like discovering a room in a house I’ve lived in all my life and somehow missed. Which is irritating, because I pride myself on noticing doors.”
My throat tightens.
