“That is what I am counting on.”
His face goes still. “You would risk cardiac severance to gain information.”
“I would risk ignorance to avoid becoming a corpse in my own house.”
Corin swears under his breath. “Gods save me from clever people with death wishes.”
I reach past Rhazek and set my hand on the door latch. His body remains between me and the world, but he does not touch me. That restraint costs him; I feel it through the bond, a controlled violence turned inward because he knows force would break something no ward can mend.
“I am not passive collateral,” I say quietly. “You both know that by now.”
Corin’s face tightens.
Rhazek looks at me for a long moment, and whatever answer he finds in my expression does not please him. At last, he steps aside.
The door opens into a morning too bright for what we are about to do.
Cold air brushes my face, carrying the scent of wet stone, chimney soot, and the faint rot of whatever remains of the demon corpse in the road. I step over the threshold deliberately. The wards hum beneath my feet, recognizing me, holding me for one last instant before letting me pass.
Rhazek follows.
Not close enough to touch, but close enough for the tether to remain warm and taut between us. I do not look back at him because if I see the way he watches me, I may lose the hard edge of courage that is keeping me upright. Above us, roof tiles shift faintly as Corin climbs, moving with a speed that would have frightened me yesterday and still frightens me today.
“Left,” Corin calls softly from above.
“I know,” I answer.
“Just making sure.”
“You are terrible at rooftop stealth.”
“I’m new to it.”
Rhazek’s voice comes from behind me. “Your footfalls are too heavy.”
Corin mutters something unflattering about demons and unsolicited advice, but his next steps are quieter.
We move through the district in a formation that no one has named because naming it would make the absurdity harder to ignore. I walk the lane alone in appearance, skirts brushing damp stones, knife at my thigh, breath counted beneath my tongue. Rhazek follows at a measured distance, his presence a steady heat at my back. Corin shadows from above, a lean shape passing over chimneys and low rooflines, keeping pace with the ease of something remade.
The first two streets do nothing.
No shadows twist. No sigils flare. No unseen hand reaches for my heart.
That almost makes it worse.
At the third corner, the air changes.
The narrow alley ahead is the one we marked earlier on the map, not because we had found a sigil there, but because the stonework looked too clean after rain. It runs between a shuttered tannery and an old storage house, both walls high enough to cut the morning light into a thin gray ribbon overhead. The alley smells of wet leather, mildew, old urine, and cold iron.
I turn into it.
“Sable,” Rhazek says behind me.
“I see it.”
“You do not see enough.”
“Then watch harder.”
