Page 77

“Yes.”

The word tastes bitter.

I turn to the next page.

A diagram fills the center, drawn in red-brown ink that may once have been brighter. Two circles intersect across a contract lattice: one labeled adaptive infernal vessel, the other lineage-compatible anchor. At the center, where they overlap, someone has written a phrase in old infernal legal script.

Mate-bond convergence probable under mutual recognition stress.

The room seems to narrow around the table.

Mira reads it twice. “Mate bond?”

I do not answer at once.

The bond hums as if summoned by the phrase, warm and steady and entirely unhelpful to my composure. I think of Corin at the window, gold-eyed and stricken. I think of my own body answering before my mind had room to object. I think of the kiss in the archive chamber and the way his hunger did not drain me, the way it met something in me that knew how to receive without being consumed.

Designed.

The word rises coldly inside me.

Mira touches my sleeve. “Iso, breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“You are doing the kind where your lungs work and the rest of you looks like it’s leaving the room.”

I draw a slower breath. The air scratches with dust.

“This does not negate choice,” I say, mostly to myself.

Mira’s expression softens. “No one said it did.”

“If there were clauses, bloodline exposures, compatibility theories, and old contracts shaping probabilities, that still does not make him inevitable.”

“No.”

“And it does not make me a tool.”

“No, love.”

The tenderness in her voice nearly breaks through something I cannot afford to let break.

I grip the edge of the table and look back at the page. “It means Vaerith has enough old theory to suspect the bond is more than attraction. If he confirms it publicly, he can claim both Corin and me as unstable contract assets.”

“Claim you how?”

“As evidence. As property under estate research authority. As contamination risk. As anything his lawyers can make sound lawful.”

Mira’s eyes sharpen. “Then we bury the records.”

“No.”

“I was hoping you’d say yes for once.”

“We copy them.”

“That is somehow worse.”