Page 4

Toward me.

The moment her eyes meet mine, the pull in my chest surges hard enough to make my vision blur at the edges. Heat floods through me in a rush that leaves no room for doubt, no space for denial. The thing beneath my skin rises to meet it, responding with a hunger that sharpens into something dangerously precise.

I do not look away.

I cannot.

My grip tightens on the bag in my hand until the paper crinkles under the strain, but the sound feels distant, unimportant compared to the force locking my attention in place. Every instinct I have honed over the years strains against it, warning, resisting, trying to reassert control.

It does not succeed.

The connection settles into place with a weight that feels inevitable.

My pulse stutters, then aligns with something deeper, steadier, as though my body has found a rhythm it recognizes even if my mind does not.

“This is… new,” I manage, the words leaving me slower than I intend.

Inside, she does not retreat.

She watches me.

And whatever fragile sense of control I walked in here with fractures under the weight of that attention.

“Yeah,” I murmur, barely aware of the sound of my own voice. “That’s going to be a problem.”

2

ISOLDE

The first warning comes through the wards, not the window.

A pulse moves across the estate’s outer protections. It trembles inside the well beside my hand, a faint circular ripple spreading across the black surface before stillness returns. That should not happen. Lord Vaerith’s wards are layered, expensive, and obnoxiously self-important, like everything else he owns. They do not tremble for delivery boys, petitioners, kitchen runners, or human laborers with muddy boots and lowered eyes.

I stop writing.

The quill remains poised between my fingers, its sharpened tip hovering over a column of figures that suddenly seems much less interesting than it did a moment ago. Across the study, the fire hisses softly in the grate, turning blue around the charwood for half a breath before settling back into a respectable amber. Even that is wrong. Infernal resonance agitates flame first, then glass, then ink, and if the pulse reaches bone, the person standing closest to it usually has the good sense to run.

I do not run.

I listen.

The estate breathes around me in its usual controlled silence. Somewhere beyond the wall, a servant’s shoes whisper over polished stone. A chain ticks softly against a curtain rod. The tall windows remain closed against the morning damp, their panes washed spotless enough to reflect the room behind me: shelves of contract ledgers, Vaerith’s seal chest, the locked black cabinet where failed bargains are stored until they stop screaming, and myself seated like a very obedient little human at a very important desk.

The pulse comes again.

This time, it catches beneath my ribs.

My fingers tighten around the quill until the feather bends.

“Oh,” I whisper, because no better word offers itself.

The sensation is not an attack, though every practical part of my training attempts to label it as one. It has no invasive edge, no parasitic hook, no cold scrape of possession trying to enter through the gaps in my will. Instead, it feels like a heavy knock from the other side of a sealed door, deep enough to vibrate through the hinges and make the lock remember it was made to open.

I lower the quill very carefully.

“Absolutely not,” I tell the room, because it is sometimes necessary to establish standards before doing something foolish.

The room, being wiser than I am, does not answer.