Sable moves above us.
I feel it before I hear it.
Her pulse shifts across the floorboards, steady but alert, the rhythm sharper than it was the night before. She is awake,focused, already turning over the contract in her mind like a blade she intends to sharpen until it cuts both ways.
I adjust my position slightly.
Closer to the doorway.
Closer to her.
The motion is subtle, but Corin notices.
His gaze flicks to me, then to the house. “You moved.”
“I adjusted.”
“Toward her.”
“Yes.”
He studies me for a moment, then smirks. “You’re getting territorial.”
“I am ensuring optimal positioning.”
“That’s not what that looks like from here.”
“What does it look like from there?”
“It looks like you’re making sure nothing gets between you and my sister.”
“That is an acceptable interpretation.”
He laughs under his breath. “You didn’t even try to deny it.”
“There is no strategic value in denial when the observation is correct.”
“Good to know,” he says. “Makes conversations easier.”
A pressure brushes the outer edge of the ward lattice.
It is not the crude, fumbling intrusion of a lesser demon testing boundaries. It is precise. Measured. Deliberate.
I go still.
The yard quiets again, but this time the silence is different. It is not the absence of sound. It is the suppression of it, as though something beyond the perimeter has decided that noise is unnecessary.
Corin notices the shift in my posture immediately. “What is it?”
I do not answer at once.
Instead, I extend the ward lattice outward.
The existing anchors hum as I draw power through them, reinforcing the sigils etched into stone and iron. The structure responds, expanding in layered increments, pushing the perimeter beyond the yard, beyond the immediate road, outward into the surrounding blocks.
One street.
Two.
