Page 27 of The Witch They Crave

Quiet. Like she was surprised to find it fit.

Six days. We haven't spoken about it. She trains, I instruct, we maintain the distance like a liturgy. And every session I watch her get stronger and more closed off, and I match the closure because the alternative is walking into tomorrow's tribunal with my hands all over her reputation.

I pull the door shut, careful not to wake her.

And I’m so focused on her that I almost don't hear the footsteps.

The weight is wrong for Corvin—too heavy, too deliberate. Zeva’s got the night off.

Kage…

I’m up the first flight of stairs in an instance, ready to stop him before he gets any closer to Calypso.

He comes around the corner and stops. Six feet between us. The single bulb overhead throws the scar into sharp relief—the whole ruined geography of his face on display. He's bigger than I let myself remember between encounters. Broader. Years and years of breaking things and being a predator has shaped him into one.

And his blood is in her. Twice now. I can feel the bond when she trains—a second frequency running underneath her magic, foreign and persistent, threaded through her system like a vine I can't pull out without tearing something.

He doesn't register surprise at finding me here. He wouldn't.

"No," I say.

Kage looks past me, toward the door.

"She's asleep."

"Good for her." He doesn't move. "Somebody should be."

"You're not going in that room."

"Not here for her." He shifts his weight. Rolls one shoulder, then the other, settling in. "I'm here for you."

His knuckles are scabbed. His lip is split and already healing. He's been fighting tonight—the copper-sweet smell of someone else's blood is still on his clothes.

"Who?"

"Leopold's man. One of them." The half-smirk. "Nobody you'd miss."

"Kage."

"He had a meeting tonight. The Vassard kid." The smirk drops. "I followed him to the old administrative wing—the sealed one, council door, supposedly nobody has a key. Want to know who he was meeting?"

I wait.

"House Vane's advocate. Marcellus." He watches my face. I give him nothing. "Two hours. Leopold brought documents. Walked out without them. The advocate came out looking satisfied. Leopold came out looking like a man who just closed a deal." He pauses. "You know what a blood claim is?"

I know what a blood claim is. I've sat in rooms where they were adjudicated. Watched witches walk in as people and walk out as property.

"They're invoking old law," I say. Flat. Testing whether it sounds as bad out loud as it does in my head.

"Life for a life. That’s how the inquest is going to go." Kage confirms it like he's reading a headstone. "And Leopold is helping them sharpen the blade."

The corridor is quiet. Water drips behind me. Calypso's heartbeat pulses faintly down the stairs and through the stone at my back.

Fuck. I should have been out there too, hunting down Leopold and making him disappear. He’s at the end of every bad thing that’s happened to Calypso since she’s shown up.

He’s a liability. He needs to go.

"You came here to tell me this."