He watches.
And that is the most dangerous part of all.
Because if he were certain I was wrong, he would have said so already.
Instead, he lets me keep thinking.
I dip the quill again, my pulse steadying as focus replaces panic. “If the contract can change once,” I murmur, “it can change again.”
Corin glances at Rhazek, then back at me. “You’re planning to renegotiate with a demon.”
I don’t look up.
“I’m planning to win,” I say.
6
RHAZEK
By the second night inside the mortal house, I know the rhythm of Sable’s pulse better than I know the shifting of several infernal courts.
The awareness is not a choice anymore, and pretending otherwise would be an exercise in vanity rather than discipline. Her heartbeat moves through the tether from room to room, each variation translating itself into structural information before I can decide whether to examine it. When she works at the kitchen table, her pulse steadies into a focused cadence that sharpens around irritation whenever infernal phrasing refuses to yield to her logic. When she climbs the stairs, it rises just enough to remind me of distance, walls, and the intolerable fragility of a body that can be injured by gravity. When she pauses outside Corin’s room, concern deepens the rhythm into something heavier, and my manifested form responds with a stability that feels too much like relief.
I stand in the lower doorway as she moves above me, quill scratching faintly through the ceiling boards while she copies contract fragments by lamplight. The house smells of old wood, iron nails, drying herbs, and the faint trace of bloodroot that stillclings to the sickroom despite Corin’s recovery. Outside, cold mist gathers along the yard, carrying the wet mineral scent of stone and the distant brine of the docks.
Corin is in the yard again.
He should be resting, according to every human standard I have observed. Instead, he has stripped down to a linen shirt and rolled his sleeves to the elbows, dragging sacks of firewood from one side of the yard to the other as though labor can reveal the edges of what he has become. His breath fogs in the night air, but it does not shorten. His muscles tire, recover, and strengthen again within a span that should not be biologically possible.
He drops one sack near the fence and turns toward me. “You’re staring again.”
“I am monitoring.”
“That is what people say when they are staring but want to sound official.”
“You are exhibiting increased stamina.”
He grins, sweat darkening his hair at the temples. “I carried three loads without feeling like my lungs were full of broken glass. I’d call that a good evening.”
“I would call that an acceleration curve.”
“You make everything sound like a funeral held inside a law office.”
I step out beneath the overhang, keeping my position within the tether’s tolerance. Sable’s pulse remains steady upstairs, though it quickens faintly when the floorboard above me creaks. She knows where I am. She pretends not to care.
“You are not merely recovered,” I say.
Corin wipes his forearm across his brow. “We covered that part.”
“You are adapting to infernal exposure at an abnormal rate.”
“Is there a normal rate for being cured by demon nonsense?”
“There are expected ranges.”
“Of course there are.” He picks up another sack and hoists it onto one shoulder with insulting ease. “You demons have charts for everything, don’t you?”
“Categories prevent avoidable errors.”
