Page 15

The kitchen settles around us, broth bubbling softly and rain beginning to tap against the window in light, uneven fingers. Sable’s hand remains on my sleeve, steady but not trapping. She has always understood when to hold and when to let the other person pretend they are standing alone.

“I am going back,” I say, and the words surprise both of us.

Her brows lift. “Tonight?”

“No. I’m not completely stupid.”

She gives me a look.

“I said completely.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

I look toward the window, where the first traces of evening gray gather in the corners of the glass. The pull remains, faint now but present, stretching somewhere deep beneath my ribs toward a woman I do not know and cannot stop feeling. “Next evening. I need daylight for errands, shadows for stupidity.”

“Corin.”

“I won’t go near her. I’ll observe from a distance.”

“That is what people say before doing the opposite.”

“I am offended by your accuracy.”

“Good.”

I sleep badly, which is to say I lie in bed while my body pretends stillness is the same thing as rest. The pull never vanishes. It quiets, then swells, then quiets again, like a tide answering a moon I cannot see. By dawn, I know two things with ugly certainty: I am afraid of her, and I am going back.

The next day crawls.

Every task takes twice as long because half my attention remains fixed on the invisible line in my chest. Sable watches me over breakfast without saying much, which is worse than interrogation. At noon, Rhazek sends a message through one of his lesser courier imps that appears in the hearth, belches smoke, and informs me in a voice like gravel in a bucket that my recent instability has become “structurally noticeable.”

I throw a crust of bread at it.

The imp eats the bread, insultingly pleased with itself, and vanishes.

By evening, I am at the edge of dark elf territory again.

The sky has deepened into a bruised violet, and lamps burn along the richer avenues with a steady magical glow too clean to be comforting. Rain from earlier has left the stones slick beneath my boots, reflecting the estate lights in broken streaks. I keep to the narrow side paths, head low, coat collar raised, every sense stretched thin.

The pull leads me back to the same wall.

This time, I stop before reaching the window.

I brace one hand against the cold stone of the estate’s outer garden wall and breathe. The hunger stirs immediately, but it does not surge the way it did before. The closer distance changes it. That realization unnerves me more than the violence of the previous day, because the bond does not merely demand proximity. It responds to it.

“Well,” I whisper, watching my breath fog faintly in the damp air. “That’s inconvenient.”

A sound inside the estate draws my attention.

Raised voices.

I move before I decide to, slipping along the side wall toward the row of windows. The glamour over my horns holds steady this time, strained but functional, and my eyes burn hot enough that I keep them lowered until I reach the edge of the nearest pane.

Inside, she stands near the ledger desk.

The sight of her hits me hard, but differently now. Heat pools under my skin, yes, and the need to get closer coils tight in my chest, but the wild edge softens when I see that she is upright, breathing, whole. The hunger steadies into a focused hum, dangerous but not mindless.

Then a dark elf male steps into view.