I swallow. It feels like dragging glass down my throat. “Because the bond is not a tunnel from me to you. It is not me spilling poison into a cup. It is…” I struggle, furious at language for being such a small, breakable tool. “It is a forge. When we are aligned, anything hostile caught between us burns.”
Her grip tightens. “Then do not step away from the forge.”
Corin exhales through his nose. “That metaphor is going to get unbearably romantic if either of you keeps talking.”
Sable does not look at him. “Corin.”
“Yes, dearest terror?”
“Shut up.”
“Gladly, though historically no one appreciates what that costs me.”
I lean my forehead against Sable’s. Her breath shakes, then steadies. Mine follows. I taste smoke, salt, and the lingering bitterness of Maltherion’s deathless spite, but beneath it is Sable—warm skin, sharp magic, the faint sweetness of whatever tea she drank hours ago and never finished. She is alive. She is angry. She is pressed against me by choice.
The realization is not gentle.
It breaks something open.
“I will not distance myself again without telling you,” I say.
Her lashes lower. “That is not enough.”
“No. It is not.” I draw her closer, slow enough that she can refuse and firmly enough that she knows I do not want her to. “I will not treat your trust as a weakness. I will not make decisions about your safety and call it love while leaving you alone with the consequences.”
Her eyes search mine. “Say that again when you are scared.”
“I am scared now.”
That silences her.
Behind us, Corin’s expression shifts, the sarcasm fading into something quieter, almost respectful. I resent him for witnessing it, but not enough to stop.
“I am scared every moment you are within reach of what hunts me,” I continue, my voice low and roughened by smoke. “I am scared because you are brave, and clever, and catastrophically stubborn, and you keep walking into the jaws of things that should know better than to open their mouths at you. I am scared because you have become the place my soul goes when it cannot stand itself, and I do not know how to protect that without trying to lock the whole damned world outside.”
Sable’s mouth trembles, though her eyes remain fierce. “You cannot protect me by leaving me.”
“I know that now.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” I press her hand against my chest, directly over the infernal heat beneath my skin. “Feel it.”
She does.
The bond opens, and I let her sense the truth instead of dressing it in pride. The remnants are still there, dark flecks scattered in the deeper reaches of me, but they shrink from her presence. They do not reach for her now. They cannot bear thecombined pressure of us. My fire alone is wrath. Her magic alone is will. Together, they become something old laws fear to name.
Sable inhales sharply. “They’re afraid.”
“Yes.”
“Of us?”
“Yes.”
Her anger does not vanish. Good. I do not deserve vanishing anger. But it changes shape, becoming something steadier, something she can hold without cutting herself. She steps closer until there is no meaningful distance left between us.
“Then we make them more afraid,” she says.
