She is afraid.
Not for herself first.
For Corin. For the house. For me, though she has not admitted it even to herself in language clean enough to be recognized. The fear touches the bond with a tenderness that should weaken nothing and yet reinforces everything.
I stand near the doorway and watch her hands.
They are ink-stained from contracts, nicked from work, steady despite the threat now circling her heart. She measures poison, remedy, and defense with the same precision she brings to infernal clauses. The mortal body is fragile, but the will inside hers has teeth.
I cannot lose her.
The thought forms without permission and refuses dismissal.
I have lost assets, territory, authority contests, centuries of accumulated structures, and names better forgotten. None of those losses resemble the sensation that moves through me when I imagine her heart stopping under Maltherion’s ritual. That image does not become data. It becomes violence.
Sable glances up sharply. “What?”
I do not realize I have moved closer until she looks at me.
“Your pulse increased,” I say.
“That is not what you were thinking.”
“No.”
Her fingers pause over the mortar. “Then what?”
The answer is unacceptable in its raw form, so I reduce it to something that can stand in the room without consuming it.
“You are now the primary target.”
Her mouth tightens. “I noticed.”
“You will not isolate yourself.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
“You will not test distance again.”
“I already said I wouldn’t.”
“You will not ingest stimulants, open unwarded windows, answer unknown knocks, cross boundary stones without?—”
“Rhazek.”
Her voice stops me more effectively than defiance would have.
I look at her.
She sets the pestle down and steps closer, leaving the scent of crushed resin and salt between us. “I am scared, not stupid.”
“I know.”
“Then talk to me like you know.”
The tether warms, not from desire this time, but from something steadier and more difficult to categorize. Trust offered in fragments. Anger with an open hand beneath it.
I incline my head. “Maltherion will attempt to interrupt your heart rhythm through ritual means. He will likely require a sympathetic link, proximity, or access to a trace of your blood, breath, hair, or sustained pulse pattern.”
