Page 130 of Demon’s Snack

“For you?” I glance down at her with a crooked grin that feels dangerously close to genuine despite the chaos around us. “Catastrophic.”

A softer expression crosses her face then, brief but real. “Then I suppose I should make this worth your trouble.”

The hunger settles quietly beneath my skin, focused entirely around the feeling of her hand in mine.

“It already is,” I tell her.

Then we keep moving into the dark.

18

ISOLDE

The safe house has the smell of cedar smoke, damp wool, medicinal herbs, and old iron heated too many times over too many winters.

It is the opposite of Vaerith’s estate in every conceivable way.

Nothing here is ornamental. The walls are rough timber reinforced with practical ward nails hammered visibly into the beams instead of hidden beneath polished stone. The windows are narrow and covered with thick canvas shutters. The lamps burn low amber instead of elegant blue-white. Even the silence feels different. The estate silence always carried listening inside it, the sense that every corridor wanted to report you to someone wealthier. This place breathes like a shelter built by people who understood survival mattered more than appearances.

Corin guides me through the doorway with one hand at the small of my back.

The touch is careful enough to irritate me.

Sable notices immediately.

“Oh, good,” she says dryly from the table where she is grinding something green and sharp-smelling into a ceramic bowl. “You’ve started handling her like a sacred relic instead of a person. That’s healthy.”

Corin removes his hand from my back so quickly it almost makes me laugh. “I was being cautious.”

“You were hovering,” Sable replies without looking up.

“I was not.”

“You absolutely were.”

Rhazek stands near the threshold, silent and impossible to ignore despite somehow blending into the room’s shadows. One hand rests against the inner frame while infernal script glows faintly beneath his fingers, reinforcing the ward line with slow pulses of gold-red light. The magic hums through the floorboards beneath my boots, deep and steady like a hidden heartbeat.

His eyes lift toward me briefly.

“Any pursuit?” he asks.

“Not immediate,” I answer, shrugging out of the damp cloak Corin found somewhere during our escape. “Vaerith expected Corin to lose control publicly. He did not expect a clean extraction.”

“Good,” Rhazek says simply.

Corin blinks at him. “That’s all? Good?”

Rhazek’s expression remains unreadable. “Would you prefer a parade?”

“I feel like I survived enough magical nonsense tonight to earn one.”

“You survived because you finally listened to instructions.”

Sable snorts into the herbal paste.

Corin points toward Rhazek with visible offense. “You’re both insufferable.”

“We’re alive,” Sable says. “Dramatic men often confuse those things.”