“That was useful information.”
“That was a bad plan wearing a clever hat.”
I glare at him, but my mouth wants to smile despite everything. “You’re getting mouthy now that you can lift furniture.”
“I was mouthy before. The furniture is just new.”
We move deeper into the market with the crowd folding around us, though people make room for Corin in a way they never used to. They notice the difference even if they don’t understand it. A woman who once shoved past him without apology now steps aside with her eyes lowered. A dockhand twice his size glances at Corin’s face, then at his hands, and decides to find interest in a crate of turnips.
Corin notices too.
His jaw tightens. “They’re staring.”
“You look less breakable.”
“I look the same.”
“No, you don’t.”
He looks at me then, and the question under his silence is worse than if he had spoken it. I don’t answer because I don’t know how to say it gently. He looks alive in a way that makes ordinary life seem pale. His skin has color again, his eyes are clearer, and beneath it all there is a faint pressure around him that my senses are learning to recognize as infernal residue.
A merchant at the cloth stall leans toward another man and whispers too loudly, “Essence anomalies, that’s what he’s after. Maltherion doesn’t hunt for scraps.”
I turn before Corin can stop me.
The merchant sees my face and immediately regrets having a voice. He is a narrow man with ink-stained fingers and a measuring cord looped around his neck, and he takes one careful step back when I approach.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“Nothing of consequence, miss.”
“That’s funny, because I heard a name.”
He swallows. “People say things in markets.”
“People say things because they expect somebody else to know what they mean.” I step closer, lowering my voice until it cuts beneath the noise around us. “So you’re going to tell me what you meant.”
His gaze flicks to Corin, then away. “Maltherion hunts essence anomalies. That is all I heard.”
“From who?”
“Dock men. A broker’s runner. I don’t know.”
Corin moves to my side, and the merchant’s fear sharpens. “What’s an essence anomaly?”
The man licks his lips. “Something that should not hold the power it holds. A mortal with wrong magic. A demon with astrange binding. A soul that doesn’t drain right. I don’t make the words, lad. I only hear them.”
I feel the market tilt around me.
“What does Maltherion do when he finds one?” I ask.
The merchant’s eyes refuse to meet mine. “He eats what makes it special.”
Corin goes very still beside me.
The crowd keeps moving around us, buying apples, arguing over fish, laughing at prices. The ordinariness of it feels obscene.
I leave the merchant without thanking him.
