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Sable gets there first.
She plants herself in front of it with both hands braced against the frame, copper hair framing her face, eyes bright and terrible. She looks smaller than me, human enough to fool a stranger, and entirely capable of making me regret trying to move her.
“No,” she says.
“Sable.”
“No.”
“Move.”
“Absolutely not.”
“If he touches her again, he’s ash.”
My voice comes out low enough that the stove flame gutters. I do not shout. I do not need to. Every syllable carries heat, and the old house answers with a creak through the beams.
Sable does not flinch.
“There he is,” she says, voice sharp with fear dressed as contempt. “That is exactly the voice Vaerith wants witnesses to hear.”
“I am out of witnesses.”
“You are never out of witnesses when a nobleman owns mirrors.”
My hands curl at my sides, and she glances down at them.
“Open,” she snaps.
“I am not a child.”
“Then stop clenching your fists like one having a tantrum with infernal consequences.”
The insult lands because it is almost funny, and that tiny break in the heat saves something in the room from catching fire. I force my fingers open. Steam still rises from my palms.
Sable steps closer but keeps herself between me and the door. “You need proof, Corin. Not blood. Blood is what he wants from you. Blood gives him purge petitions, guards, legal authority, and every frightened idiot in the district nodding along while he calls Isolde contaminated property.”
“He threatened to bind her body and labor to that estate.”
“I know.”
“No, Sable, you do not get to say that calmly.”
“I am saying it calmly because one of us has to keep words intact.” Her voice breaks slightly on the last word, and she swallows it down like poison. “I know what contracts do. I know what powerful men call protection when they mean ownership. I know what it costs to fight them badly. If you run in there now, you make her escape harder.”
The bond burns under my ribs, pulling, pulling, pulling.
“She told me not to storm the estate,” I say.
“She knows you.”
“That is starting to feel inconvenient.”
“It usually is.”
The corner of the kitchen darkens.
No door opens. No lamp gutters dramatically. No floor cracks to announce him. Rhazek is simply there, standing where no one stood a breath before, tall and silent in the corner near the pantry shelves. The shadows cling to the edges of his coat, and the infernal script beneath his collar glows faintly as if amused by the argument it has joined.
