Corin swears.
Rhazek’s face becomes terrifyingly still. “Maltherion has marked you.”
The words try to take my knees out from under me.
I refuse them.
Corin is already moving. He snatches three iron stakes from the hearth, crosses to the front threshold, and begins reinforcing the ward line without asking for instructions. The hammerstrikes fast and hard, iron ringing against stone with a violence that fills the house.
I remain kneeling in the chalk circle, one hand pressed to my chest.
My breath wants to break apart.
I do not let it.
“Inhale,” I whisper. “One, two, three, four.”
Rhazek’s attention snaps to me.
I hold.
“One, two, three, four, five, six.”
The cold sigil is gone, but the memory of it lingers beneath my skin. I exhale slowly, forcing my pulse down, refusing to give the fear more rhythm than it has earned.
Corin’s hammering continues.
Rhazek lowers himself into a crouch before me. “Sable.”
“I’m steady.”
“You were marked.”
“I know.”
“This changes the threat.”
“Everything changes the threat.” I pick up the red chalk again, though my fingers tremble once before I force them still. “So we change faster.”
His eyes search mine. “You should rest.”
I laugh, quiet and humorless. “Absolutely not.”
“Sable.”
“No.” I press the chalk back to the parchment and resume the anti-siphon sigil from the point where I stopped. The line wavers at first, then steadies as my breathing settles into rhythm. “If he can touch me through fear, then fear is where I start building walls.”
Corin’s hammer falls again at the threshold.
Rhazek does not argue.
I keep drawing.
The chalk scrapes across parchment. The ward sigils glow. My pulse slows under my own command, not his, not Maltherion’s, not the contract’s.
Mine.
12
