Page 12 of Demon’s Snack

“You sick, friend?” he calls.

“Just regretting breakfast,” I answer, voice rough enough to make the lie convincing.

He snorts. “Try the east stall next time. West stall meat pies’ll murder a goat.”

“Appreciated.”

His footsteps move on, and I stay where I am until the sound blends into the market clamor. My breath scrapes in and out too fast, each inhale pulling more scent, more memory, more need into my chest. I can feel the old terror moving under the panic, the fear that has lived with me since the contract rewrote my blood and left hunger where mortality used to be.

Soul absorption is not a metaphor. I have felt hostile essence tear apart inside me. I have felt power rush through my body so hot and bright that for a few seconds afterward, everything living nearby felt fragile enough to drink. Rhazek called it adaptive predation the first time he saw it happen, which was a very Rhazek way of saying, Congratulations, Corin, you are now a walking disaster with educational value.

I press both palms flat to the wall and force myself to breathe the way he taught me.

“In through the nose,” I whisper, hating the tremor in my voice. “Hold through the count. Name the body. Name the room. Name the hunger without obeying it.”

My lungs resist at first. They want to pant, to pull in air as if I have been running for miles, but I make them slow down. The brick under my hands is wet and cold. My left boot is planted in something I refuse to identify. My right shoulder aches from the way I slammed into the wall. The hunger is beneath my sternum, not in my hands. The bond pulls toward the estate, not toward the people in the street. The danger is not immediate unless I make it immediate.

I breathe again.

The ember lines under my skin dim by degrees.

“That’s it,” I whisper. “Good. See? We can be civilized. We can be very boring if properly motivated.”

My laugh sounds wrong when it leaves me, thin and humorless, but it breaks enough tension that I can straighten. I flex my fingers until the last faint glow fades beneath my skin, then tug my sleeves down like fabric can cover what I am from myself.

By the time I get home, the bread is ruined, the meat is warm from being clenched in my fist too long, and I have rehearsed twelve versions of what not to tell Sable.

She is waiting in the kitchen.

Of course she is.

She stands at the counter with a knife in one hand and a bundle of greens beneath the other, chopping with such steady precision that I know I am in trouble before. Afternoon light cuts across the room in pale strips, catching copper in her hair and the faint infernal glow beneath her skin when she lifts her eyes. The kitchen smells of onion, crushed herbs, and simmering broth, ordinary enough to hurt.

“You’re late,” she says.

“I took the scenic route.”

“You hate scenery.”

“I’m broadening my interests.”

Her gaze drops to the destroyed parcel in my hand. “Did the bread offend you?”

“We had a disagreement.”

“Looks like you won.”

“I wouldn’t call this winning.”

She sets the knife down carefully. That is never a good sign. Sable with a knife is manageable. Sable choosing not to hold a knife means she wants both hands free for whatever verbal beating is coming.

“Corin.”

I put the parcel on the table and start unwrapping it with great attention, as though the bread’s tragic condition requires scholarly review. “Before you say whatever you’re about to say, I’d like to point out that I returned with most of the supplies and no visible stab wounds.”

“Your eyes are gold.”

I still.