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He laughs once under his breath, though the sound strains at the edges. “You really do say insane things calmly.”

“You absorbed a demon in the middle of a public street.”

“It was an accident.”

“Yes,” I say dryly. “I gathered that from the panic.”

His mouth twitches despite himself, but the humor vanishes quickly. He presses one hand against his sternum and squeezes his eyes shut.

The bond spikes with pain.

I cross the room before caution can finish objecting.

“Do not,” he says immediately.

I stop two paces away.

His breathing roughens. “Isolde, I mean it.”

“You are destabilizing.”

“I know.”

“You’re overheating.”

“I know that too.”

“Then perhaps stop treating observation like criticism.”

His eyes open again, brighter now, gold nearly swallowing the pupils entirely. The hunger brushes against me through the bond in uneven waves, not violent exactly, but desperate enough to make my skin heat beneath my clothes.

“You should go,” he says quietly. “Right now.”

“You said that in the alley too.”

“I was less dangerous then.”

The honesty lands heavily between us.

Water drips somewhere deeper in the tunnels. The old chamber smells of damp stone and scorched parchment, but beneath it all I can still sense the lingering infernal heat rolling off him in restless currents. Every pulse of it answers something buried inside my own blood.

Recognition.

I kneel slowly in front of him.

Corin immediately shifts backward against the wall, moving away from contact rather than from me.

“Isolde.”

“I am thinking.”

“That expression worries me.”

“Everything worries you.”

“Correctly, most of the time.”

I study him openly.