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“Of course it does.”

The exchange steadies him further, and I feel the bond settle into a controlled warmth instead of a consuming blaze. Around us, the crowd is no longer looking at Corin only as a monster. They are looking at the burned runes. At the cracked pedestal. At Vaerith’s exposed lines.

The spectacle has not ended.

It has turned.

Vaerith wanted everyone to watch Corin prove what he was.

Instead, they watched him obey my cadence, burn only the hidden deception, and leave every witness breathing.

I keep my eyes on Corin until the last visible ember fades beneath his skin. Only then do I let myself understand the full danger of what I have just done.

I stepped beside him publicly.

The crowd saw.

Vaerith saw.

And the weapons are still waiting to decide what story they believe.

13

CORIN

Ihold myself still because every eye in the courtyard wants motion from me.

Motion would give them a story they already know how to tell. A twitch becomes aggression. A breath becomes threat. A glance toward Vaerith becomes proof that the monster has chosen its next meal. So I stand in the burned center of his ruined circle with my hands open and my palms visible, letting the last wave of hunger roll beneath Isolde’s rhythm until it has nowhere to go except back into the cage of my own ribs.

The courtyard is failing miserably at trying to smell like perfume. Vaerith’s runes still glow in broken channels under my boots, red light guttering in the cracks where my flame exposed the hidden lines. Smoke curls around my ankles. Somewhere behind the rails, a woman is crying quietly into her sleeve, while a clerk near the west side keeps staring at his half-written notes as if the ink will rearrange itself into a safer version of what happened.

Isolde stands close, steady, furious, and calculating. Her hand has lowered from my chest, but her breathing remains tied to mine, and I follow it because I trust that rhythm more than I trust the crowd, the guards, or the hunger still pacing beneath my skin. In through the nose. Hold. Out slow enough that the sparks behind my teeth die before they reach air.

Vaerith recovers before anyone else.

Of course he does.

He steps forward on the dais, pale and elegant beneath the fractured light of his own burned ward lattice, and his expression has already rearranged itself into outrage. “Seize him,” he says, voice carrying through the damaged amplification runes with a faint crackle. “The hybrid has sabotaged a lawful civic demonstration and attacked noble property.”

A murmur passes through the courtyard.

Noble property.

Not the bound demon. Not the nearly dead analyst. Not the crowd he placed within reach of a staged catastrophe. The ritual pedestal, the runes, the pretty little public lie he thought he could polish afterward.

I keep my hands open.

Isolde’s shoulder brushes my arm once, a warning disguised as proximity. Her eyes remain on Vaerith, but the bond presses one word into my bloodstream with ruthless clarity.

Steady.

Vaerith points toward the cracked pedestal. “You all witnessed the interference. This creature broke the containment boundary, disrupted the ritual architecture, and consumed infernal energy in full public view. This is precisely the danger I warned of.”

“Interesting phrasing,” Lady Syrenya says.

Her voice is smooth enough to cut glass.

The crowd shifts as she steps out from beneath a jeweled canopy near the front rail, violet gauze trailing from one wrist and emerald eyes fixed on Vaerith with lazy exactness. She looks amused, which would be more convincing if I had not heard the warning she gave me before the ritual. Her amusement is a blade held sideways, pretty until she decides which edge to show.