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Tomorrow, Vaerith will build a circle and expect everyone inside it to become what his records say they are.
I intend to stand there as myself.
11
CORIN
By the time Sable and I reach the edge of the estate district, the whole city seems to be leaning toward Vaerith’s spectacle.
The streets grow cleaner as we climb out of the lower lanes, but they do not grow quieter. Carriage wheels hiss over wet stone. Noble retainers stride in pairs with polished weapons and arrogant shoulders, clearing paths with the lazy confidence of people accustomed to being obeyed before they speak. Human laborers move along the edges of the road with crates, stools, folded awnings, ceremonial lamps, and enough fear on them to make my hunger lift its head before I shove it back down. The air tastes of rain fading into cold stone, expensive perfume, horse sweat, ward smoke, and the metallic tang of public cruelty getting dressed up as civic order.
Sable walks beside me with her hood drawn low and her hand tucked through my arm as if we are siblings out for an unpleasant errand instead of two contract-warped disasters approaching a trap with polished shoes. Her fingers dig into my sleeve once when my glamour shivers.
“Again,” she says.
“I have it.”
“You do not have it. Your left horn just flirted with daylight.”
“It is a friendly horn.”
“Corin.”
“I’m tightening it.”
“Do better than tightening it. Make it boring.”
I exhale through my nose and force my focus upward, layering the glamour more carefully over the curve of bone beneath my skin. It does not like being hidden today. The closer we get to the estate, the hotter the bond burns under my ribs, and the glamour keeps reacting to the pull as if Isolde’s presence is a summons my body cannot ignore. I press the illusion down until the air above my temples smooths and the faint ache behind my eyes deepens.
Sable watches me with the kind of concern she tries to disguise as irritation. “Your eyes.”
“I know.”
“They’re gold.”
“They do that now.”
“They are too gold.”
“I’ll ask them to be tastefully gold.”
She stops walking so abruptly that a merchant behind us nearly bumps into her. He starts to complain, sees the look on her face, and decides the opposite side of the road has always been his true destination.
Sable turns toward me, both hands gripping my coat now. Her gray eyes have that infernal glow beneath them, faint but unmistakable if someone knows what to look for, and her voice drops low enough that only I can hear it.
“You listen to me. Vaerith wants a public slip. He wants one broken glamour, one flare, one frightened witness seeing horns where a human man should be, because then he gets to tell everyone the story he already wrote.”
“I know.”
“No, you know it in the part of your head that makes jokes when scared. I need you to know it in your spine.” Her fingers tighten, and the fear under her anger finally shows. “If he puts her in danger, you cannot become the thing he needs you to be.”
The bond pulses hard at the mention of Isolde, though Sable does not say her name.
I look toward the estate gates at the end of the avenue. The crowd beyond them shifts in color and motion, jeweled robes moving among darker uniforms, human servants threading through bodies that would not step aside for them if the courtyard caught fire. Somewhere inside that crowd, Isolde is standing near a ritual circle because she chose the most dangerous position available and called it strategy.
“I can keep control,” I say.
Sable studies my face, and for once she does not mock the certainty. “Then keep it before you need it. Do not wait until he cuts you open in public and hope discipline spills out.”
