Page 99

The first cracks in his narrative are already moving through the district on wet shoes and frightened tongues.

Isolde hears them too.

Her eyes close briefly, and when she opens them, they are bright with exhausted satisfaction. “The witnesses are talking.”

“Good,” I say.

Sable looks between us. “That buys time, not safety.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” she asks, voice sharpening. “Because he will come harder now. Men like Vaerith do not forgive public embarrassment. They refine it into punishment.”

Isolde nods. “She is right.”

“Of course she is. It’s one of her worst habits.”

Sable points at me. “Breathe.”

“I am calm.”

“You are glowing.”

I glance down.

Ember lines pulse faintly beneath my left hand.

“Damn.”

Isolde steps closer and taps two fingers lightly against my wrist. The bond steadies at once, not dramatic now, not overwhelming, just a quiet correction that settles the heat back into place. Sable watches the small contact with an unreadable expression.

“She really is an anchor,” she says.

Isolde’s gaze lifts sharply. “I am a person.”

Sable’s expression changes.

For a second, I see my sister all the way through the fear: the woman who once signed herself into hell to save me, the woman who knows too well what it means to be turned into a function by a contract. Her voice softens when she answers.

“Yes,” Sable says. “You are.”

The lane grows quiet around us except for the drip of water from the ivy overhead.

I look back toward the estate district, where blue-white lamps glow above roofs and the sound of Vaerith’s unraveling spectacle still drifts in pieces through the evening. He wanted a monster in public. He wanted teeth, blood, panic, and permission.

He got horns, flame, witnesses, and a cracked pedestal full of his own lies.

It will not be enough to beat him.

Not yet.

But it is enough to wound the story.

I flex my hand once, feeling the last of the demon essence coil into stillness beneath my skin. When I speak, my voice is low, and for once, I do not feel the need to soften it with a joke.

“He’ll try again.”

Isolde’s fingers remain at my wrist. “Yes.”