“Yes,” Corin replies, “but apparently some parts of him are committed to being tacky after the funeral.”
I keep one arm around Sable’s waist. I feel no shame in it. Let Corin watch. Let every ghost in this cursed place watch. I have spent too long mistaking isolation for control.
Sable’s fingers lace with mine over her stomach. The gesture is small, domestic even, and therefore more devastating than any battle cry. “Then we burn the rest carefully.”
“Together,” I say.
She looks up at me. “Together.”
The word moves through the bond like a key turning.
Deep within me, the remaining flecks retreat farther into darkness, and for the first time, I feel their fear as clearly as I once felt their hunger.
Good.
Let them learn the shape of the mistake they made.
Let them understand that Maltherion did not leave poison in a wounded demon king.
He left kindling between two fires.
19
SABLE
The ash from Maltherion’s remnant disappears before it reaches the floor, and somehow that makes it worse.
I want something to sweep up. Something ugly and physical. Something I can grind beneath my heel until the room believes me when I say he is gone. Instead, the last of him vanishes into the warm air between Rhazek and me, leaving only the scorched tang of old evil, hot iron, and the faint, bitter sweetness of magic burned too cleanly to rot.
Rhazek’s arm remains around my waist.
Possessive, yes, because apparently he is biologically incapable of touching me like a normal person, but not restraining. Not anymore. His palm is open against my ribs, his fingers spread as though he is trying to memorize the living machinery beneath my skin. I feel each place his body meets mine through the bond as a current of infernal heat threaded with gold, steady now, no longer jerking away from me like a wounded animal that thinks teeth are the same thing as tenderness.
Corin stands near the hearth with his iron rod in hand, his face pale beneath the usual veneer of irritation. A lock ofsilver-blond hair has slipped over his brow, and soot marks one cheekbone in a dramatic streak he would absolutely weaponize if he had seen it in a mirror. He watches the air where the shard died, then flicks his gaze to Rhazek.
“Well,” he says, too lightly, “that was a delightful little reminder that none of us get to enjoy a private crisis without an audience.”
I do not answer him.
My attention is on Rhazek’s chest.
Not the torn shirt. Not the bare, smoke-warm skin beneath it. Not the faint glow that moves under his flesh like banked embers behind volcanic glass. I am watching the bond, or rather the place in me that has learned to see it without eyes. There are still dark flecks hidden in him. Fewer now, yes, and afraid of us, yes, but fear does not make a snake less venomous. It only makes it coil tighter.
And Rhazek still has not told me everything.
I feel it in the way his breathing changes when my hand rests over his heart. I feel it in the caution beneath his steadiness, the locked door behind his tenderness, the part of him that keeps trying to decide which truth will hurt me least.
I am done being handled like a glass saint.
I turn in his arms until I am facing him fully. “Tell me what you sacrificed.”
His expression closes.
Not much. Not enough for anyone else to notice. But I notice, because I am standing inside the weather of him now. The heat behind my ribs tightens. The bond draws in, not weakening exactly, but bracing for impact.
Corin makes a quiet noise behind us. “Ah. So we are doing that now.”
“Yes,” I say without looking away from Rhazek. “We are doing that now.”
