Page 59

Vaerith knows exactly what Talen did.

He simply does not care.

I leave before my face can betray anything further.

The bond guides me westward beneath the city noise like a hidden current beneath black water. Every step away from the lane should weaken it. Instead, the warmth grows sharper, more urgent, threaded through with pain I know does not belong to me.

Corin.

The realization tightens my chest.

He stabilized enough to leave, but not enough to recover.

The consumed essence is still moving through him.

I pull my hood lower and take the narrow alleys instead of the main roads, passing beneath dripping balconies and laundry lines heavy with rain. The city grows quieter the farther west I move. Wealth thins here. Stone gives way to warped timber, patched roofs, shuttered windows, and little shrines tucked into alcoves where people still leave candles for old gods too forgotten to collect official taxes.

The drainage arcade waits beneath the western retaining wall exactly where I said it would.

Most people avoid it because the lower channels flood during storms and because the old maintenance tunnels beneath it were sealed generations ago after a collapse. The public portion remains open only because the city never allocates enough money to close dangerous things properly.

That suits me perfectly.

I slip beneath the archway and follow the narrow corridor downward. Moisture beads along the stone walls. The atmosphere reeks of wet mineral, moss, rust, and old runoff from the upper districts. Ward-lamps glow weakly in iron cages overhead, leaving long sections of shadow between pale circles of light.

The bond pulls hard enough now that my pulse starts climbing with it.

“Corin,” I call softly.

No answer.

I descend another level.

The lower archive chamber sits behind an old iron maintenance gate half concealed beneath collapsed shelving and broken drainage records. I discovered it three years ago while tracing missing tax ledgers and immediately claimed it for myself because hidden rooms are the closest thing this estate has ever offered me to privacy.

Tonight the chamber door hangs partially open.

Warmth spills through the crack.

Infernal warmth.

I push inside.

Corin sits on the floor against the far wall with both forearms braced over his knees and his head lowered between them. Steam curls faintly from his shoulders. His glamour has failed completely. The black curve of one horn catches the amber lampglow, and ember lines pulse beneath the skin of his throat in uneven rhythms that remind me unpleasantly of a fever trying to become lightning.

The room itself bears signs of his struggle.

One stone shelf has melted partially along the edge. Hairline fractures spread across the floor beneath him. Several old records near the wall have curled black at the corners from heat exposure.

He hears me immediately. Gold floods his eyes.

For one dangerous second the hunger surges through the bond so violently that my breath catches. It is sharper now than in the alley, refined by the absorbed essence into something hotter and more focused.

Then recognition hits him. The surge stumbles.

“Isolde.” His voice comes out ragged. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“That opinion appears increasingly irrelevant.”