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“I’m fine,” I say automatically.

“You are glowing through your teeth.”

“Temporary.”

“Your horns are on fire.”

I blink. “Huh.”

Isolde’s laugh breaks out suddenly beside me, shaky and exhausted and half disbelieving. She presses one hand over her mouth for a second as rain pours down around us.

“You absolute disaster,” she whispers.

I look up at her.

She stands in the middle of the ruined courtyard with soot on her skin, water dripping from her hair, and fierce relief written openly across her face. The crowd beyond the shattered circle watches both of us now, nobles and clerks and servants staring at the hybrid Vaerith promised would destroy them.

Instead, they watched me drag a devourer apart and burn the ritual down around it.

Vaerith stands near the remains of his dais, soaked and ash-covered, with nothing left under his control except the realization that every witness survived long enough to remember this.

I push myself slowly to my feet.

Every muscle protests. Gold light still flickers beneath my skin. Black-gold flame curls lazily from the tips of my horns before fading into steam.

Then I look directly at Vaerith.

“You,” I say, voice carrying cleanly through the ruined courtyard, “are going to have a truly catastrophic audit.”

28

ISOLDE

Rain pours into the ruined courtyard as if the sky has finally decided to wash Vaerith’s lies off the stones.

It will need stronger weather.

The estate grounds are shattered around us, blackened by controlled infernal flame and cut through with the glowing remnants of the summoning circle Corin just burned out from beneath itself. Steam rises from cracked paving stones. Broken ward posts lean at crooked angles, spilling the last red sparks of Vaerith’s failed ritual into puddles already gone dark with ash. The air reeks of sulfur, scorched silver, wet stone, and the bitter residue of stolen soul-energy finally exposed to open air. It clings to the back of my throat with every breath, making me taste the fraud beneath the magic.

Corin stands in the center of the destroyed circle, soaked, smoking, and impossibly alive.

Gold still burns under his skin, though the wild blaze from moments before has settled into deep internal light. His horns remain fully visible, black curves crowned briefly by dying flame before rain hisses the last of it into steam. He looks like every accusation Vaerith ever made and every contradiction to those accusations at once: terrifying, powerful, controlled, and exhausted enough that only pride, fury, and whatever infernal architecture now holds him upright are keeping him on his feet.

The crowd sees him.

That matters.

Nobles huddle beneath damaged canopies and broken ward shields. Clerks clutch wet evidence pages against their chests. Human servants stand near the trade hall steps, no longer pressed entirely behind their betters because disaster has a way of ruining neat social arrangements. Lady Othrel remains beside a cracked pillar with her cane planted like a weapon. Lord Kairven’s nephew is already ordering scribes to preserve the visible sigils before the rain destroys too much of the pattern. Syrenya watches from near the outer rail, emerald silk plastered to her arms, her expression bright with the awful pleasure of someone seeing a rival’s house crack in public.

Vaerith stands near the remains of his dais.

He looks touched by the world. Rain has soaked his silver-white hair to his temples. Ash streaks one cheek. His robes hang heavy and scorched at the hem. He has lost the amplification runes, the devourer, the containment circle, and the clean stage he built to make Corin into a monster.

He has not lost his voice.

“That,” Vaerith says, pointing at Corin with one elegant, trembling hand, “is what I warned you would happen.”

A shocked murmur travels through the courtyard.