“That is because it is a heart with hooks in it.”
“I was hoping for a more academic answer.”
“The academic answer is that it is a sympathetic cardiac severance diagram designed to interrupt a living tether through rhythmic interference.”
He looks at the page again. “I liked hooks better.”
I point to the outer ring. “This is the entry point. If Maltherion needs my pulse pattern, he needs a way to match it or force it.”
“Can he do that from outside the wards?”
Rhazek answers from behind us. “Not easily.”
Corin turns his head. “That means yes.”
“It means not easily.”
“Sable?”
I trace the diagram with one finger. “It means yes, if he has enough power, enough time, or enough of me to work with.”
Corin’s expression hardens. “Hair, blood, breath, all the delightful things we talked about last night.”
“Yes.”
“Great. Love that.”
I pick up a stick of red chalk and begin tracing anti-siphon sigils onto a fresh sheet of parchment. The line must be continuous, pressure even, no breaks where hostile energy can slip through. My hand steadies as I draw. Fear has a use when it stops thrashing and starts listening.
The chill slides under my ribs without warning.
I stop breathing.
It feels like cold fingers brushing the inside of my chest, not touching flesh exactly, but grazing whatever the contract has made visible in me. My skin prickles from throat to stomach. The kitchen dims at the edges.
Rhazek stiffens.
Corin turns toward the window so fast his knee scatters three papers.
“What?” he says.
I press a hand over my sternum. “Something touched me.”
Rhazek is beside me immediately, though I do not see him cross the space. “Do not move.”
“Wasn’t planning a dance.”
Corin grabs the nearest iron stake from the hearth. “Window?”
“No breach,” Rhazek says, but his voice has gone flat in a way that frightens me more than shouting would.
The cold returns.
It brushes my aura, and this time I feel it clearly, a searching pressure that slides over the surface of me like fingers testing fabric for a seam. I force my breathing to remain even, but revulsion crawls across my skin.
A faint black sigil flickers above my sternum.
It hangs there for less than a second, suspended over my skin like ink burning in air, then vanishes.
