Page 11 of Demon’s Snack

“You are working the west accounts.”

“Excellent. Then it is hardly a lie.”

Her eyes soften despite the worry tightening her mouth. “Be careful, Iso.”

The shortened name should not affect me. It does anyway.

“I will be precise,” I say.

After she leaves, I sit back down at the ledger and stare at the figures Lord Vaerith wants softened. The columns blur, not because my eyes fail, but because every part of me is still oriented toward the path where the hybrid disappeared. The bond remains, stretched thin but unbroken, humming beneath my ribs like a string plucked in another room.

I press my ink-stained thumb against my sternum, right where the pull entered me.

Curiosity should not feel like heat.

Fear should not feel like invitation.

Yet as the wards settle and the estate resumes its polished, predatory calm, I find myself less interested in whether the stranger is dangerous than in who taught him to fear that danger more than anyone else does. Somewhere beyond these walls, he is carrying whatever he is with his head lowered and his power leashed tight enough to wound him.

I know better than to chase a mystery through a dark elf estate.

I know better than to mistake recognition for safety.

I know better in at least twelve documented, professionally defensible ways, and still I reach for the next clean page in my private ledger, the one Lord Vaerith does not know exists. I write the word hybrid at the top, underline it once, and leave enough space beneath it for a name I intend to learn.

3

CORIN

Imake it three streets before the panic gets ugly.

At first, I tell myself I am leaving in a controlled fashion, which is a lovely phrase for fleeing like a man who has just looked through a noble’s window and discovered his own damnation sitting at a ledger desk. My boots strike the cobbles too hard, my shoulders stay hunched beneath my coat, and the parcel in my hand has been crushed so thoroughly that the bread inside is probably more philosophical concept than food by now. I keep my head down as I move through the richer avenues, past polished walls and warded gates and dark elf guards who would gut me on principle if they knew what flickers under my skin.

The farther I get from the estate, the worse the pull becomes.

That should not be possible. Distance should soften it. Distance should turn the ache into memory, let my senses reset, let the heat in my blood sink back into its usual resentful simmer. Instead, every step away from her drags something raw through my chest, as if an invisible hook has lodged behind my ribs and the line attached to it has gone taut. By the time I reach the edge of the market district, sweat has dampened the back of my shirt despite the cool air, and my glamour keeps sputtering at the edges of my vision.

“Easy,” I mutter, ducking into the shadow of an alley between a shuttered dye shop and a cooper’s yard. “Come on. Easy. Nobody is dying because you saw a pretty woman with a pen.”

The word pretty is an insult to what happened, and my body knows it.

Heat surges so violently that my knees nearly buckle. My hand slams against the brick wall, fingers scraping over damp mortar as the hunger opens inside me with a force that steals my breath. The alley narrows around me, all sour rainwater, rotting straw, and old smoke, but underneath those ordinary smells lingers the remembered trace of her through glass: clean ink, warmed skin, linen, and something bright beneath it that my senses should not know but crave anyway.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Bad idea.

The darkness gives her back to me too clearly.

I see the slant of morning light over her hair, the careful stillness of her shoulders, the precise way her fingers held that quill before the wards dragged her attention toward me. I imagine crossing the courtyard. I imagine opening the window. I imagine touching the inside of her wrist where her pulse would beat against my fingertips.

The hunger spikes.

It does not spread outward blindly. That is the part that terrifies me most. It focuses, narrowing to a sharp and singular ache that wants contact with a desperation bordering on violence. Not a corpse. Not prey. Her. My teeth ache with the restraint of not moving toward her, and the infernal current under my skin climbs through my arms until ember-red lines glow beneath the backs of my hands.

“No,” I say, dragging the word through clenched teeth. “Absolutely not. We are not doing this.”

A man passes the alley mouth with a basket over one arm. His steps slow when he sees me bent against the wall, and I turn my face away before the gold in my eyes gives him something to remember.