Rhazek’s jaw shifts. “Sable.”
“No.” I set my palm flat against his sternum, and the fire under his skin answers with a low pulse that travels through my wrist. “You do not get to say my name like it is a locked gate. You do not get to touch me like I am your whole damned world and then hide the price tag.”
His eyes darken. “It was my choice.”
“That was not my question.”
“It was necessary.”
“That was not my question either.”
Corin exhales, long and soft. “For what it is worth, demon, she has you there.”
Rhazek’s gaze cuts toward him. “I am not in need of commentary.”
“Tragic, since commentary is what I have instead of survival instincts.”
I press harder against Rhazek’s chest. “Look at me.”
He does.
It nearly hurts when he does. Rhazek never simply looks; he claims distance with his gaze, burns through pretense, ruins silence. But now there is fear there, not the loud, obvious kind that screams and runs, but the ancient kind. The kind that sits enthroned inside powerful men and teaches them to call confession weakness.
“Tell me,” I say.
His hand lifts to my face, then stops halfway as if he has suddenly realized tenderness can be a distraction too. He lets it fall to his side. “When I rewove the anchor, I did not merely bind your life to mine.”
The room seems to inhale.
My fingers go cold against him. “What does that mean?”
“It means the merger required equivalence.”
“That sounds like contract talk, and I am not in the mood to be seduced by vocabulary.”
A faint, pained curve touches his mouth and vanishes. “It means the bond would not stabilize if only you remained mortal and I remained untouched by the shape of your life.”
Corin goes utterly still.
I hear it before I understand it: the change in the chamber, the small creak of wood as the walls settle, the restless lick of flame in the hearth, the tiny metallic hum of Corin’s iron rod responding to stress in the magic. My own pulse becomes enormous in my ears.
“Say it plainly,” I whisper.
Rhazek’s throat works. “If you die naturally, I die with you.”
For an instant, the world loses all edges.
Not darkness. Not faintness. Something sharper. The room remains visible—the cracked stone, the soot-stained mantel, the candles trembling in their holders, Corin’s horrified face—but everything seems too far away, as if I am viewing it through deep water. Rhazek stands inches from me, warm and real and impossible, and his words move through my body after the sound of them is gone.
If you die naturally, I die with you.
My hand flies off his chest.
The bond detonates.
A shockwave rips outward from us so violently that the windows crack in a jagged chorus. Silver lines race through the glass like lightning trapped in ice. The hearth erupts, flames roaring up the chimney in a column of gold and crimson heat. Papers lift from the table and whirl through the air. Corin throws one arm over his face, cursing as a shelf rattles hard enough to spit two brass instruments onto the floor.
Rhazek reaches for me. “Sable?—”
