“Do not.” My voice comes out raw, much too small for the devastation clawing through my ribs. “Do not touch me right now.”
He stops.
The obedience hurts worse.
Corin steps between us halfway, not blocking Rhazek, not quite shielding me yet, but ready. His eyes move quickly, measuring the cracked windows, the hearth, the dark shiver crawling along the ceiling beam.
“Sable,” he says carefully, “breathe.”
I laugh, and it is an ugly sound. “Oh, wonderful. Yes. Breathing. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I am aware the advice lacks poetry.”
“You knew?”
His mouth tightens.
My stomach drops. “Corin.”
“I suspected,” he says. “I did not know the exact terms.”
“That is not a no.”
“No,” he admits.
The room trembles again, softer this time, but the bond is a live wire inside me, whipping between horror and grief and a fury so bright I can barely see through it. I stare at Rhazek, at the immortal demon king who apparently looked at eternity and decided to cut it down to the length of my fragile human life without so much as asking whether I could bear being loved like a catastrophe.
“You tied your death to mine,” I say.
“Yes.”
“You absolute lunatic.”
“Yes.”
“You do not get to agree with me like that makes this better.”
“I am not trying to make it better.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
He stands very still, every inch of him controlled except his eyes. “Not lie to you.”
Another crack splits the nearest window.
The sound slices across my nerves, and something black drops from the ceiling.
Corin moves first. He slams into me from the side, shoving me behind him as the remnant shard lashes down with a wet, snapping hiss. His arm comes up, iron rod horizontal, and the shadow strikes it hard enough to make sparks spit across the floorboards. The impact drives him back into me, and I grab his coat to keep us both upright.
“For hell’s sake,” Corin grits out, “could we have one emotional revelation without a murder garnish?”
The shard thrashes against the iron, longer than the last one, thinner, with a hooked end that claws toward my face. It smells worse up close, like old blood steeped in lilies. I choke on it, eyes watering, while the bond inside me flares in alarm.
Rhazek’s fire erupts, but this time it does not blast the room apart. It curves around Corin and me with terrifying precision, a crescent of white-gold flame that catches the shard mid-lash. The thing shrieks, splitting into three writhing strands.
“Left!” Corin barks.
Rhazek’s hand snaps left. Flame follows.
