I step back into deeper shadow as the square descends into frantic containment. Matron Yselle is already speaking in low tones to two council members, her eyes never straying far from Elowen.
I already know how this will go. I was alive for so long to know they would do anything to get rid of her. First, the case that is forming. Then isolation will follow. Then escalation.
I do not relish revelation. It exposes leverage. It invites complication. But ignorance now is more dangerous than truth. Tonight, I will speak to her. I will show her enough to understand the bond without shattering her with its full scope. She must learn to master her fear. And I must ensure that the next surge answers to command, not terror.
If Briarthorn insists on tightening its grip around her throat, it will discover precisely how far my restraint extends, and how quickly it ends.
5
ELOWEN
The village quiets slowly after the fire. It does not return to peace. Briarthorn simply settles into a tense, watchful silence that feels heavier than the shouting had been. Even hours later, the smell of smoke lingers in the air, drifting across the marsh in thin gray ribbons.
By the time I reach my cottage, dusk has begun to settle over the water.
My hands still tremble.
I cannot stop replaying the moment in the square, the way the flames surged when my pulse raced, the way they faltered when I forced myself to breathe. The memory loops endlessly, refusing to settle into something my mind can dismiss as coincidence. It was connected. I felt it. The fire had not simply burned. It had answered.
Inside my cottage, the air is warmer than outside, the hearth still glowing with low orange coals. I move through the familiar motions of evening out of habit rather than intention, setting my satchel down, washing my hands in the basin, straightening jars that do not need straightening. Normal things. Safe things. But the quiet does not feel safe tonight. It feels expectant.
The thought follows me as I kneel beside the hearth to stir the embers back to life. Flames bloom upward slowly, licking along the dry wood with gentle crackling sounds.
I watch them for a long moment. Then something shifts.
At first, I think it is only the movement of firelight. The flames flicker against the iron kettle hanging above them, throwing restless shadows across the stone floor. But the shape inside the glow does not move like shadow. It grows. I freeze.
Within the dancing light, the reflection stretches taller than any man, the outline broad and unmistakable. Horns curve upward from a massive silhouette, their edges outlined in molten gold. The demon… My breath catches. Slowly, very slowly, I turn.
He stands inside my cottage as though he has always belonged there. The ceiling beams force him to incline his head slightly, but even so he seems impossibly large within the small space. His skin is the color of polished onyx, dark and gleaming in the firelight, faint fissures glowing beneath the surface like embers buried in stone.
His eyes are unmistakable. Sulfurous yellow. The same eyes that watched me through smoke in the square.
Fear prickles along my skin, but it is not the same choking terror Garruk’s grip inspired. This fear is sharper, threaded with something strange and electric that hums beneath my ribs.
The bond.
I feel it immediately now that he stands so close. A rhythmic pressure beneath my ribs, warm and insistent, like a second heart.
“You’re real,” I say before I can stop myself.
His gaze studies me carefully, as though measuring something unseen.
“Yes.”
His voice is deep and controlled, the sound vibrating faintly through the air rather than simply traveling across it. The small room feels suddenly very full.
I push myself to my feet slowly. “You followed me.”
“I did.”
The answer is given without apology. My pulse quickens.
“Why?”
His eyes flick briefly toward the hearth fire, then back to me. “Because you are the source of the disturbances in your village.”
“That wasn’t me,” I say immediately.
