The first strand burns to nothing.
“One above!” I shout, seeing the second coil toward the beam.
Rhazek does not hesitate. Fire threads upward and skewers it against the cracked plaster. The strand blackens, curls, and vanishes with a sour pop that makes my teeth ache.
The third strand dives low, slipping under Corin’s guard toward my ankle. I feel its cold before it touches me, a slick grave-cold kiss against the air over my skin. Panic clenches my throat.
Corin drops to one knee and pins it with the iron rod.
“Now would be grand,” he snarls.
Rhazek steps forward, and his shadow swallows the firelight. His eyes burn like twin furnaces.
“You are finished,” he says.
The flame that leaves his hand is not a blast but a verdict. It pours over the pinned remnant in a clean, merciless ribbon, and through the bond I feel him deliberately open to me rather than shield me away. His magic meets mine. My anger, my terror, my love—gods help me, my love—rushes into the fire with such force that the shard collapses instantly. No scream this time. No whisper. Just annihilation.
Corin remains crouched for another moment, breathing hard. Then he looks at the empty floor.
“I despise this house,” he says.
“We are not in a house,” I manage.
“I despise whatever structure currently has the misfortune of containing us.”
My hands shake. I hate that they shake. I curl them into fists until my nails bite my palms and give the fury somewhere honest to go.
Rhazek takes one cautious step toward me. “Sable.”
I look at him, and something in his face nearly breaks me open. He is not sorry in the cheap way, not in the way men are sorry when consequences finally bother them. He looks ready to be condemned and willing to stand still for the blade.
I do not want him condemned.
I want him alive.
That is the problem.
“You should have told me,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Before.”
“Yes.”
“Before you made me the clock on your life.”
His eyes close for a moment. When they open, the red in them is dimmer, banked behind grief. “I thought it was the only way to keep you alive.”
“And what am I supposed to do with that?” My voice climbs, thick and shaking. “Thank you? Kiss you? Smile sweetly because you found a romantic way to turn my death into a double funeral?”
Corin makes a pained sound. “Sable?—”
“No, don’t soften it. Don’t anybody soften it.” I step away from Corin’s shelter, though my knees feel unreliable. “He does not get to make that sacrifice alone and then stand there looking tragic and gorgeous and doomed like that settles the matter.”
Rhazek’s mouth tightens at gorgeous, which is infuriatingly inappropriate.
I point at him. “Do not enjoy any portion of this.”
