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“It’s looking for somewhere to go.”

Her grip tightens. Not painfully. Deliberately. Her thumb presses against the pulse in my wrist, and the contact sends a shock through the bond so clean that my vision nearly whites out again.

“Then give it structure,” she says.

I laugh, and the sound tears out of me wrong. “Oh, wonderful. I’ll just organize the soul-fire. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Her mouth trembles for the smallest instant, but her eyes do not leave mine. “Because you are panicking.”

“Sharp observation.”

“Breathe with me.”

“I can’t.”

“You can argue, so you can breathe.”

“Isolde.”

“Corin.” Her voice hardens, crisp and cutting enough to slice through the roar in my skull. “Look at me.”

I do.

The lane blurs around her, but her face remains clear. Rain beads along her lashes. A smear of ink marks the side of her thumb even now, absurd and perfect. Her cheeks are pale, but she does not retreat, does not loosen her grip, does not treat me like a thing that has already failed.

“In,” she says.

I drag air into my lungs because she asks it like a command and because some part of me wants to obey anything that keeps me from turning toward the people behind her.

“Hold.”

The stolen essence thrashes under my skin, searching for a seam.

“Out.”

I exhale, and black-gold sparks spill from my mouth into the rain, where they hiss and vanish.

Her other hand rises to my face.

I flinch before she touches me.

She notices, and the expression that crosses her face is not pity. It is something more dangerous because it has purpose in it.

“I am choosing the contact,” she says, low enough that only I can hear. “You are not taking it.”

My throat works around a sound I do not let out.

Her palm settles against my cheek.

The bond opens.

Energy rushes toward her so fast that panic spears through me, but it does not enter her the way stolen essence entered me. It hits the bond and spreads, redirected through a pattern I can feel but not understand. Her pulse meets mine, not swallowed, not overwhelmed, but steady enough to impose rhythm on the chaos. The stolen infernal heat stops thrashing in all directions and begins moving in a circle between us, slower with each pass.

Isolde inhales sharply.

“Too much?” I force out.

Her fingers tremble against my cheek, but her voice remains controlled. “Not too much. Unrefined.”