I turn.
He is watching me with an expression I do not trust because it is too calm. I have seen that calm before on men about to walk into storms and call it strategy.
“No,” I say immediately.
His brow lowers. “I have not spoken.”
“You are wearing that face.”
“What face?”
“The face that says you found a noble and catastrophic solution and expect everyone to admire the architecture.”
Corin looks between us. “Disturbingly accurate.”
Rhazek ignores him. “If the bond requires mutual consent, then I will give mine with the terms corrected.”
My blood chills. “Corrected how?”
He steps closer, and the heat of him wraps around me even before his hands do. But he does not touch me. Not without permission. The restraint makes my throat ache.
“I will sever my immortality instead,” he says.
The words land softly.
That is the cruelest part.
He does not roar them. He does not make them grand. He simply places them in the room like a blade on a table.
My breath leaves me. “Rhazek.”
“If equivalence is required, then it will not be purchased through your life holding mine hostage. I will cut eternity from myself cleanly. I will meet you as you are.”
“No.”
His eyes flare. “Sable.”
“No.” I shove the contract down hard enough that the table legs groan. “You do not get to solve one secret sacrifice by announcing another one.”
“It would be my choice.”
“And what about mine?”
The question cracks through him. I feel it in the bond, feel the way it strikes the old reflex to protect, to decide, to bleed quietly in some private chamber and emerge with the wound hidden beneath silk and arrogance.
I step close enough that the heat of him warms my shaking hands. “You want conscious consent? Then start acting like my consciousness is part of the equation.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then returns to my eyes with visible effort. “It is.”
“Then hear me. I will not be loved like a problem you have to outmaneuver. I will not be saved by being excluded from the terms of my own life. And I sure as hell will not stand here while you chop pieces off yourself and call it devotion.”
Corin coughs delicately. “For the record, I support the lady’s position and would like all immortal self-mutilation postponed until after tea, preferably forever.”
Rhazek’s expression twists, pained and stubborn and unbearably beautiful. “I would rather lose eternity than lose you.”
The fury goes out of me so fast it leaves me hollow.
I reach up and put my hand against his cheek. His skin is hot, rough with the beginning of a beard along his jaw, alive beneath my palm. The bond warms, cautious and aching.
