Chapter 17
SABLE
Iwake to the sound of Rhazek breathing downstairs.
That is impossible for several reasons, the first being that he does not need to breathe and the second being that a closed door, a floor, and half a house should stand between my ears and whatever habit he has adopted in the kitchen.
Yet I hear him with brutal clarity. His breath moves in controlled intervals, slower than human lungs would choose, each inhale edged with faint strain and each exhale carrying heat through the bond like banked coals beneath my sternum.
The room is dim, washed in the bruised blue of early morning or late evening; I cannot tell which at first. The air smells of linen, iron, smoke, salt, and the bitter residue of healing tinctures someone has spilled near the bedside.
Beneath all of it is Rhazek, not as scent alone but as presence, as pressure, as a dark-gold warmth threaded through the center of my chest. His emotions are not thoughts.
They strike me as physical sensations: anger like iron bands around my ribs, exhaustion like ash settling behind my eyes, and fear so tightly controlled that it feels colder than Maltherion’s fingers ever did.
I open my eyes.
Corin is sitting beside the bed with his elbows on his knees and a cup forgotten between his hands. He looks like hell warmed over and then left outside in the rain. There is soot in his hair, a cut along his temple, and dried blood around one cuff, but his eyes sharpen the instant mine open.
“Don’t move too fast,” he says.
I blink at him. “You look terrible.”
His face crumples for half a second before he covers it with a laugh that sounds like it hurts. “That is the first thing you say to me?”
“You do.”
“You were dead.”
The words land softly, which somehow makes them worse.
I stare at him.
Corin sets the cup down with exaggerated care, as if he needs both hands free to keep himself from falling apart. “Clinically dead, if we’re being fussy about terminology. No pulse. No breath. Several seconds that I would very much like to remove from my memory with a chisel.”
My hand moves to my chest.
My heart beats under my palm.
Strong.
Too strong.
Not fast, not weak, not uncertain. Each pulse rolls through me with a depth that feels too large for one body, and beneath it is another rhythm, darker and older, moving in answer.
“Rhazek,” I whisper.
“Downstairs,” Corin says. “Pacing in a way he would absolutely deny is pacing.”
“I can hear him.”
Corin’s mouth tightens. “Of course you can.”
I push the blanket back.
He reaches for my shoulder. “I said don’t move too fast.”
“I heard you.”
“Then obey one instruction in your life.”
“I died. I feel like I have earned a little disobedience.”
“That is exactly the sort of thing you would say after dying.”
I stand.
I do not wobble.
My feet hit the floor, and strength rises through me as though the boards, the walls, the ward sigils, and the very air are passing information into my bones.
The room sharpens into layers: Corin’s heartbeat, Rhazek’s breathing below, the faint buzz of ward-light in the corners, dust shifting near the window, my own pulse answering something that is not mine and is mine all the same.
Corin slowly rises too. “That is new.”
I look down at my hands. “Yes.”
“You’re glowing a little.”
“I am not.”
“You are. Very faintly. It’s tasteful, if that helps.”
“It does not.”
Downstairs, Rhazek stops moving.
I feel the stop in my chest.
His attention turns upward, and the weight of it nearly steals my breath. Not because it hurts. Because it recognizes me too completely. The bond is no longer a thread stretched between us. It is a river moving through both banks at once.
I walk to the door.
Corin follows me into the hall. “Sable.”
“I need to see him.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to try to stop me.”
“No,” he says, and his voice roughens. “I’m going to ask you not to break anything load-bearing.”
I glance at him, and he tries for a smile that barely survives the attempt.
“I heard what happened,” I say.
“You heard what?”
“You dragged us out.”
He shrugs with forced casualness. “I had an excellent morning.”
“Corin.”
His face tightens. “Go yell at your demon. I’ll accept gratitude later, preferably with bread.”
I squeeze his hand before I descend. His fingers close around mine hard, and for a second neither of us says anything because words cannot be trusted with what sits between us.
Then I go downstairs.
Rhazek stands in the kitchen with one hand braced against the table and the other curled at his side.
The room is scarred from the last day’s war: chalk lines half-smeared on the floor, resin stains on the table, iron filings glittering near the hearth, and three burned rings where ward charges must have been prepared in haste.
He looks more solid than I have ever seen him, and less untouchable.
His aura is clearer, yes, but it is also threaded with gold now, the same gold I feel pulsing beneath my skin.
He turns.
The moment our eyes meet, the bond flares.
Not violently. Not like a trap. Like a door thrown open.
“You tied your immortality to my survival,” I say.
Rhazek’s face does not change enough for anyone else to read it, but I feel the impact of my words strike him from the inside. “Yes.”
“You made that decision while I was unconscious.”
“You were dead.”
“That is not a loophole.”
“It was the only available correction.”
“Do not make it sound like arithmetic.”
His jaw tightens. “Your heart had stopped.”
“So you put yourself in it?”
“Yes.”
“Without asking me?”
His eyes burn darker. “You were not available for consultation.”
“That is not funny.”
“I did not intend humor.”
“No, you intended control,” I say, stepping closer as heat rises through my chest. “You intended to decide that because you could not bear losing me, you were allowed to make me into something else.”
His voice lowers. “I intended you to live.”
The bond flares harder.
The room brightens around us, ward sigils answering the surge in steady gold-red light. My anger rushes into him, and his fear rushes into me, not as confession but as force. It is immense. It is ruthless. It is the kind of fear that would tear down a realm rather than speak its own name.
I stop two steps from him. “You cannot keep doing this.”
“Saving you?”
“Choosing for me.”
His control cracks just enough to let the truth show through. “I watched your pulse vanish.”
I feel the memory in him as he says it: the slab, the black veins, my body limp in his arms, silence where the bond should have been. His pain hits me so hard my eyes sting.
I grab his collar.
He goes still.
“You should have asked,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
The admission breaks something in me far more effectively than argument would have.
I pull him down and kiss him.
There is nothing gentle in the first contact.
It is fierce, furious, possessive, and deliberate, a collision of anger and relief that neither of us bothers disguising as restraint.
His hands close around my waist, not careful now in the distant way he used to be, but certain.
He holds me as if the world has already tried to take me once and he has decided the world can bleed for trying again.
I kiss him harder because I understand that feeling too well.
The bond surges between us, pulse answering pulse until my heartbeat and his immortal rhythm fall into alignment.
Heat rolls through my veins, gold and red, not consuming me but expanding the space inside my own skin.
His fear steadies when I touch him. My anger steadies when he holds me.
Every synchronized pulse makes him more solid and me more awake.
Corin clears his throat from the stairs.
I break the kiss just enough to glare. “Do not.”
He lifts both hands, already backing away. “I am stepping outside with dignity and a profound commitment to denial.”
“Good.”
“Also, the wards just changed color, so whatever you are doing is probably working.”
Rhazek does not look away from me. “Leave.”
“Gladly,” Corin says. “Nobody die while I’m in the yard.”
The door opens and shuts.
Silence folds around us, but it is not empty. It is full of breath, heat, wardlight, and the pounding truth that I am alive because Rhazek put part of forever into my heart. I slide my hands from his collar to his chest, feeling the markings stir beneath his clothing, brighter beneath my touch.
“You don’t own me,” I say.
“No.”
“You don’t get to make me your saved thing.”
“No.”
“If this is going to exist, it goes both ways.”
His hands flex at my waist. “It already does.”
I feel it then, fully.
Power does not flow from me to him alone anymore, and it does not flow from him to me as rescue. It moves in both directions, equal and terrifying, a shared current that neither of us commands alone. The realization should frighten me. And it does.
I kiss him again anyway, slower this time, letting the fury melt into something deeper and no less dangerous. His hand rises to the back of my neck, and I lean into him.
When we finally separate, my pulse is steady.
So is his.
Rhazek rests his forehead against mine. “You are altered.”
“So are you.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” I whisper. “Then we both have something to be angry about.”
His mouth almost curves. “You are impossible.”
“I was dead this morning. Impossible is an improvement.”
Outside, Corin shouts through the door, “Still denying everything out here.”
I close my eyes and laugh, shaky and alive, while the bond settles around my heart like a crown I never asked for and may yet learn to wield.
Corin’s footsteps retreat, and I hear the main door slam. Rhazek seems to take that as a cue, ripping the blankets away and exposing me to his gaze.
“Sable,” he rumbles my name like a revelation. A gasp escapes my wide open mouth as he climbs onto the bed, moving on all fours like a horned beast. His hands grip my ankles, and then he throws them apart.
I cry out, squirming with my need already. Rhazek caresses my leg, trailing kisses up my calf to my inner thigh. I squeeze my eyes shut as he lights little fires in my skin. Rhazek’s hot mouth is mere inches from my wide open pussy.
“Mmm,” he mutters like a gourmet contemplating a feast. His fingers dip into the valley between my swollen labia and come away wet. He suckles the wetness, eyes locked onto mine.
The his horned head dives down, face burying itself in my soft folds. A deep groan erupts from my lips as his tongue tastes me. My hands fly to his horns, and the juxtaposition of his hard bone and slippery soft tongue drives me wilder.
His mouth envelops my pussy lips, one at a time, suckling my juices clean while filling the air with lusty grunts and growls. Rhazek draws his horned head backward, still latched onto my labia, stretching my flesh out like taffy.
Rhazek uses his thick, wide tongue to lap at my clitoris, mound and all. I suck in a ragged gasp of air and let it out as a piercing wail.
Then he latches onto the clit itself, and sucks like there’s no tomorrow.
I clutch at his horn, incoherent groans and cries tumbling from my throat.
My eyes squeeze shut as I moan and thrash about under his attentions.
Rhazev drinks the deluge of my juices like he’s never been so thirsty in his entire infernal life.
He lifts his face, dripping wet, from between my thighs and watches with amusement as I shake and twist from the aftershocks of his ministrations.
Then he crawls fully into bed and spoons me, pulling me close to his body. I nestle up close, sighing in contentment. Maybe tomorrow will bring more tragedy my way, but for now, this is paradise.