“I am not panicking,” I say.
Corin looks at me. “Your aura is doing the magical equivalent of kicking furniture.”
Sable takes a step toward me.
I take one back.
Her expression fractures.
The bond convulses.
Every candle in the room goes black.
For one breath, the chamber is lit only by the hearth and the dull red glow beneath my skin. Then the shadow comes out of me.
It tears free from the center of my chest, not through flesh, but through energy, a shard of darkness shaped like broken glass and smoke. It hits the air between us with a sound like wet silkripping. The stench follows instantly—rotted roses, grave soil, burnt sugar, and the sour metallic reek of old blood left too long in a ceremonial bowl. Sable gags and clamps one hand over her mouth. The shard spins, thin and jagged, with Maltherion’s hunger twitching inside it like a spider trapped under skin.
“Down!” Corin barks.
Sable ducks on instinct as the shard whips toward her.
I move.
So does Corin.
The iron rod slams across the shadow before it can reach her throat, pinning it midair against an invisible pressure point in the contract’s weakened weave. Corin’s boots skid across the floorboards, his teeth bared as the thing shrieks against the metal.
“Rhazek!” he grinds out. “Burn the damned thing!”
I am already burning.
Fire surges from my hands, but I do not unleash it blindly. Sable is too close. The bond is too raw. One careless blast could scorch the part of me that is now also her. So I draw the flame tight, compressing it until it becomes a white-hot thread edged in crimson, thinner than a blade and meaner than prayer. I drive it into the shard where Corin’s iron holds it.
Maltherion’s remnant screams.
The sound is not loud. It is intimate. It crawls into the ears and roots behind the eyes, whispering in voices I know and voices I have murdered. For an instant, the room is full of phantom mouths.
Mine, it hisses.
Sable staggers.
My control nearly breaks.
Corin snarls and twists the iron rod. “Do not listen to the melodramatic fungus.”
The absurdity of it cuts through the poison just enough.
I push more fire into the thread. The shadow shard curls around the iron, fighting to split itself, but I follow every fracture, every escaping filament, every slick little attempt to survive. I know how parasites flee. I have hosted enough divine curses and infernal bargains to recognize cowardice wearing teeth.
“You do not get her,” I say.
The shard pulses.
My fire turns gold.
Not because I summon it. Because Sable does.
Her power rises through the bond, not timidly, not waiting for permission, but with furious precision. It meets my flame and steadies it. The instant her energy joins mine, the fire sharpens from violence into judgment. The shard shrieks again, but this time the sound breaks apart, losing its shape, losing its malice, losing its claim.
