Chapter 15
SABLE
Iwake on stone.
Cold comes first, not as a simple chill against my skin but as a deep, invasive cruelty that presses through my back, my shoulders, my wrists, and the base of my skull.
The slab beneath me is not smooth. It is carved with channels that bite shallowly into my skin wherever I shift, thin grooves arranged in spirals and branching lines that slope toward the center of my chest. The air tastes of extinguished candles, old blood, and flowers left to rot in a sealed room, sweet enough to turn my stomach and bitter enough to cling to my tongue.
I do not move at once.
That is the first victory.
My wrists are bound above my head with bands of shadow that feel like soaked silk over iron.
My ankles are fixed the same way, drawn apart just far enough to make leverage difficult.
The ceiling overhead is not really a ceiling but a black vault of layered stone and darkness, threaded with violet sigils that pulse slowly, each flash sinking into the grooves beneath me like a second heartbeat.
I inhale before panic can seize the breath from me.
One, two, three, four.
I hold.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
I exhale until my ribs ache.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
The tether is still there.
Frayed.
Burning.
Alive.
“Sensible,” a voice says from the darkness. “Disappointingly sensible, but sensible.”
Maltherion steps into view.
He is worse in flesh than projection. The elegance remains, but now it is stretched over ruin, beauty thinned until it becomes starvation wearing manners.
His limbs are too long beneath his dark robes, his fingers skeletal and jointed like carved ivory, and the hollow at the center of his chest is visible through the parted fabric.
It is not a wound. It is an emptiness with edges, a cavity full of dim violet light and whispering shadows that coil inward as if everything near him is being slowly invited to vanish.
I turn my head enough to look at him properly. “You look terrible in person.”
His mouth curves. “And you look remarkably composed for a woman tied to a table.”
“I’ve had a difficult week. Standards have shifted.”
He laughs, soft and dry. “Rhazek’s anchor has a tongue.”
“Most women do. Men simply confuse silence with absence.”
His eyes brighten with interest. “There it is again. That ridiculous mortal insistence on personality in the face of disassembly.”
“I’m not being disassembled.”
“No,” he says, moving closer. “You are being separated from usefulness.”
The carved grooves beneath me ignite.
Pain lances up through the slab, not from heat but from suction.
The sigils pull at me through my skin, through my breath, through the bruised place above my sternum where his mark touched me earlier.
It feels as if invisible hooks sink into the rhythm of my heart and tug each beat toward the hollow in his chest.
I refuse to gasp.
My jaw locks so hard my teeth ache, but I keep the breath count. Inhale for four. Hold for six. Exhale for eight. The siphon catches the rhythm and tries to ride it, matching the pull to the predictable shape of my pulse.
So I alter it.
I shorten the next inhale by half a count, hold too long, then exhale in three uneven streams instead of one smooth line. The siphon stutters beneath me. One of the violet sigils above my shoulder flickers and fades before flaring back.
Maltherion stops smiling.
I bare my teeth. “Was that supposed to happen?”
He places one skeletal hand on the edge of the slab. “Clever girls are often tiresome before they become quiet.”
“I have been called worse by people I liked better.”
“Rhazek’s phrasing has infected you.”
“Gods spare me, that might be the cruelest thing you’ve said.”
His fingers trace a line through the air, and the pressure doubles.
The siphon slams into my chest.
Black veins spread across my collarbone, branching beneath the skin in jagged threads.
They burn cold, each line carving a path toward my heart.
The first skipped beat hits like a missing stair in the dark.
My body jerks against the bindings before I can stop it, and the shadow bands tighten around my wrists until my fingers go numb.
Maltherion leans close, his hollow chest glowing brighter. “There. That is the rhythm I need.”
My heart skips again.
Then again.
Terror rises, huge and animal, demanding air, demanding movement, demanding that I scream until something answers. I taste copper at the back of my throat. My vision swims at the edges, shadows pulsing in time with the broken beat inside me.
No.
I make the word silent and absolute.
I breathe slowly, because slow is a knife I still own.
Inhale.
Not four this time. Five.
Hold.
Not six. Three.
Exhale.
Too long for comfort, long enough that my lungs burn and the siphon loses its clean purchase.
The ritual shudders.
The channels beneath me spit a thin spray of black light toward Maltherion’s hand, and he withdraws with a hiss. His eyes narrow, all amusement gone now.
“You are disrupting the sympathetic sequence.”
“Good.”
“You cannot sustain it.”
“Watch me.”
He strikes me.
The blow snaps my face to the side and floods my mouth with blood. Pain explodes across my cheekbone, bright and stunning. My body wants to inhale sharply, wants to take the bait and let adrenaline kick my heart into the pattern he is waiting to seize.
I do not gasp.
I press my tongue to the cut inside my mouth and breathe through my nose instead.
Ragged, yes.
Controlled, still.
Maltherion’s expression goes empty. “You think stubbornness is strength.”
I swallow blood. “I think you hit like a courtier.”
His hand closes around my throat.
Not enough to choke.
Enough to feel my pulse under his fingers.
The hollow in his chest opens wider, shadows stirring inside it like eels in black water.
“I have consumed warlocks who bargained with plague gods. I have stripped bloodline magic from dynasties while their heirs screamed prayers into their own hands. I have eaten curse-cores older than your city. Do you truly believe breath counting will save you?”
“No,” I whisper.
His fingers tighten.
I meet his eyes. “I believe it will slow you down.”
Something impacts far away.
The whole pocket realm trembles.
Maltherion looks toward the darkness beyond the slab, irritation cutting across his gaunt features.
Through the tether, I feel it then: heat, rage, and the unmistakable violent pressure of Rhazek getting closer.
He is not distant anymore. He is not safely controlled.
He is coming through whatever stands between us like the world has offended him personally.
The tether vibrates.
Not gently.
Violently.
It thrums through my ribs, my wrists, my bound ankles, and the carved stone beneath me. The siphon channels flare as they try to use the resonance, but Rhazek’s presence hits the bond with such force that the ritual cannot decide whether to drink from it or recoil.
Maltherion bares his teeth. “No.”
I smile, though blood slicks my lip and my vision darkens at the edges. “He found me.”
“He found the path,” Maltherion says, his voice sharpening. “That is not the same as reaching you.”
Another impact shakes the realm.
This time, something screams.
The sound is not human, and it does not last long.
Maltherion releases my throat and slams both hands against the slab. The siphon channels blaze violet-black, and the pressure drives down into me so hard my back arches against the bindings. My heart stutters, skips, catches, then falters again.
The darkness at the edges of my vision thickens.
My fingers are numb. My lips are cold. The black veins across my collarbone creep higher, brushing the base of my throat. I can feel the ritual trying to turn my body into a door it can close.
I think of Corin on the kitchen floor, blood on his mouth and a joke dying between his teeth.
I think of Rhazek freezing beneath my hand when the bond steadied instead of broke.
I think of the house, the wardlight, the chalk circle, the ugly little marks on the wall where Corin made terror into data because it was better than helplessness.
Maltherion bends over me, his hollow chest yawning like a starving altar. “Give me the rhythm.”
I close my eyes.
I take one final steady breath.
Inhale for four.
Hold for six.
Exhale for eight.
I send that rhythm down the tether with everything I have left, not as surrender, not as plea, but as an anchor thrown into a storm.
Find me, I think.
Then I hold the line.