“It does not.”
Downstairs, Rhazek stops moving.
I feel the stop in my chest.
His attention turns upward, and the weight of it nearly steals my breath. Not because it hurts. Because it recognizes me too completely. The bond is no longer a thread stretched between us. It is a river moving through both banks at once.
I walk to the door.
Corin follows me into the hall. “Sable.”
“I need to see him.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to try to stop me.”
“No,” he says, and his voice roughens. “I’m going to ask you not to break anything load-bearing.”
I glance at him, and he tries for a smile that barely survives the attempt.
“I heard what happened,” I say.
“You heard what?”
“You dragged us out.”
He shrugs with forced casualness. “I had an excellent morning.”
“Corin.”
His face tightens. “Go yell at your demon. I’ll accept gratitude later, preferably with bread.”
I squeeze his hand before I descend. His fingers close around mine hard, and for a second neither of us says anything because words cannot be trusted with what sits between us.
Then I go downstairs.
Rhazek stands in the kitchen with one hand braced against the table and the other curled at his side. The room is scarred from the last day’s war: chalk lines half-smeared on the floor, resin stains on the table, iron filings glittering near the hearth, and three burned rings where ward charges must have been prepared in haste. He looks more solid than I have ever seen him, and less untouchable. His aura is clearer, yes, but it is also threaded with gold now, the same gold I feel pulsing beneath my skin.
He turns.
The moment our eyes meet, the bond flares.
Not violently. Not like a trap. Like a door thrown open.
“You tied your immortality to my survival,” I say.
Rhazek’s face does not change enough for anyone else to read it, but I feel the impact of my words strike him from the inside. “Yes.”
“You made that decision while I was unconscious.”
“You were dead.”
“That is not a loophole.”
“It was the only available correction.”
“Do not make it sound like arithmetic.”
