That he wants to let me.
I'm so wet it's uncomfortable.
"Tonight." I keep my hand where it is. I don't want to move it. "We take Seris tonight. He doesn't get to keep her."
Koshin's head tilts at that wrong angle. His smile shifts, losing the manic edge, finding something sharper. "He dies."
Not a question. Not asking permission. Just—he dies.
My stomach clenches. The good way.
"He dies." I match his certainty. "But not here. Not public. Not where it becomes a spectacle for Coin to leverage."
Behind us, my father is retreating, pulling Seris with him. Every instinct screams stop him, don't let him take her, she's not safe—
Tonight.
Koshin's hand comes up. His fingers wrap around my wrist—not pulling my hand away, just holding. Contact. His thumb presses against my pulse point and I know he can feel how fast my heart is going. I know he knows exactly what this is doing to me.
His smile curls wider.
Bastard.
"The kill is mine." The words come out before I've finished thinking them. "Not yours. Mine."
He goes still.
I've surprised him.
Good.
I've surprised myself.
But I mean it. He's my father. He sold me. He beat me. And now he's hitting Seris because I'm not there to absorb it anymore.
I left, and she paid for it. So this is mine.
Koshin studies me for a long moment—that tilted head, those silver eyes, blood drying on his hands. The Mad God of Discord covered in proof of what he is, standing in the wreckage of the House he just destroyed, listening to me claim a murder.
He should talk me out of it. Tell me I don't have it in me. Offer to do it himself because I'm fragile, breakable, mortal.
Instead, he reaches into his coat and pulls out a folded document. Old parchment, formal seal, writing I recognize even from here because I've seen it before. Because I've held it before.
The Solyne Compact. The contract that sold me to Discord. The debt, the terms, the signature that made me property. All of it, folded neat and clean, held out to me in a bloodstained hand.
"Yours." No ceremony. No explanation. Just the word. "To use as you want."
I take it. The parchment is warm from his body, light in my hand. It doesn't feel heavy enough for what it is—the piece of paper that started all of this, the signature that traded my life for debt relief.
Now it's mine.
I want to kiss him. Right here, in front of the corpse and the fleeing faithful and the Coin observers taking their little notes. I want to grab his bloody coat and pull him down and taste whatever madness is still on his tongue.
So I do.
I fist my hand in his coat and yank him down and his mouth meets mine and—
Oh.
