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The other demon backs toward the passage mouth. “Vaerith will want that.”

“No,” I say.

The word rolls through the lane with enough heat to make rain flare into steam.

Isolde’s eyes flash to mine. “Corin.”

“I’m here.”

“Controlled.”

“I know.”

The demon turns to run.

This time, the hunger wants to chase, but the bond gives me something else to do with the power. I lift one hand, the one Isolde is not holding, and draw the stolen essence into a narrow thread instead of a blast. It tears across the lane and strikes the stones ahead of the fleeing demon, erupting into a wall of black-gold flame that does not spread beyond the line I set.

The demon skids to a stop, shrieking.

The injured one bolts the other direction, abandoning its companion with admirable moral flexibility.

I let it go.

That choice costs me. The hunger rages at the opening, at prey escaping, at power unused. Isolde’s palm warms against my cheek, and the bond turns that rage in on itself until it becomes pressure instead of action.

The remaining demon looks between us, fear shredding the last of its borrowed human face. “He will break you.”

“Tell him,” Isolde says, and her voice is so cold that even I feel it, “his mirror calibration is faulty.”

The demon blinks.

I bark a laugh despite the heat still tearing through me. “That’s your threat?”

“It is an insult.”

“It’s a very accountant insult.”

“It will annoy him.”

“Fair.”

The flame wall drops.

The demon flees so fast it nearly falls over its own wrong-shaped feet.

For several seconds, I do not move. I do not trust myself to. The stolen essence still burns inside me, but it is no longer a storm ripping through every wall in search of escape. It circles the bond, thinned and cooled by repetition, shaped by the rhythm of Isolde’s pulse against mine.

Her hand slips from my cheek first.

I miss it immediately, which is a problem for another day, assuming I get one.

She does not release my wrist.

“You absorbed him,” she says.

Her voice is quiet now, less command and more analysis, though I hear the strain beneath it.

“I didn’t mean to.”