Page 154 of Demon’s Snack

That is the one that matters.

I break the wax and lift the lid.

The first letter bears Vaerith’s hand.

His writing is beautiful, which feels unfair. Men who do monstrous things should have ugly handwriting, if only to give the universe a shred of thematic discipline. His script curls across the page in black ink with silver binding marks at each paragraph break, formal and calm and devastating.

I read the opening line.

Regarding the preservation of compatible mortal lines for hybrid stabilization breeding⁠—

The archive tilts around me.

My hand grips the edge of the table, and the paper crinkles softly beneath my fingers. The words remain where they are, neat and patient and obscene. Hybrid stabilization breeding. Not partnership. Not bond compatibility. Not survival. A program. A plan. A polite little phrase wrapped around generations of bodies, marriages, children, wardships, employments, and disappearances.

I keep reading.

The letter is addressed to an infernal broker identified only as Harrow-of-the-Seventh-Measure. Vaerith discusses the Dareth line as if my family were an ingredient in a formula, valuable because low-grade infernal exposure over several generations produced “harmonic tolerance” and “anchor responsiveness.” He refers to Ardyn collateral blood with equal coldness, noting a “probable adaptive vessel outcome under mortality crisis and infernal rewrite pressure.”

Corin.

My stomach turns so violently I have to press one hand over my mouth.

The next page is worse.

It lists marriages encouraged through debt relief. Children retained through wardship claims. Branch families permitted to survive plague zones because their exposure profile made them useful. My great-grandmother’s name appears beside a notation about “successful resonance retention.” My grandfather is listed under “nonviable for direct extraction, valuable for line continuation.” My mother’s name has a mark beside it I do not recognize at first because my brain refuses to translate the symbol.

Then I do.

Preserve.

I sink into the chair before my legs can do anything dramatic.

My family survived because someone found us useful.

Every mercy I ever inherited from this house curdles in retrospect. The scholarship offered to my mother. The wardship paperwork after her death. The special archive access Vaerith framed as recognition of my mind. The tolerance he showed for my questions, my insolence, my ugly little ink ring, all of it sits suddenly beneath the same shadow. He did not preserve me out of generosity. He kept a bloodline asset close to the ledgers until the correct hybrid appeared.

For several breaths, the room narrows to ink and heartbeat.

The bond warms beneath my ribs.

Corin is distant but present, moving somewhere in the district with hunger held tight and alert. I can feel his focus like a hand braced against a door, waiting for the exact moment force becomes necessary. The sensation steadies me before fury can scatter my thoughts.

“All right,” I whisper, lifting my head. “Grief later. Evidence now.”

My voice sounds calm enough to insult me.

I copy the first letter in abbreviated hand, then the second, then the third. I do not waste time duplicating every decorative cruelty. I take dates, names, broker seals, payment references, bloodline classifications, and every phrase that can survive hostile review. Hybrid stabilization breeding. Dareth harmonic tolerance. Ardyn adaptive vessel. Wardship preservation. Anchor responsiveness under mate-bond convergence.

The words grow uglier each time I write them.

The archive shudders.

A chain snaps from the top shelf and strikes the floor with a metallic crack that makes me flinch. Red light pulses through the preservation runes. One of the far cabinets groans as the ritual beneath the estate pulls power out of anything old enough to remember obedience. Vaerith’s summoning is drinking through the bones of the house now, yanking strength from records, wards, reservoirs, and probably every poor soul-energy reserve he stole through his shell contracts.

I grab a second stack of correspondence and find broker replies written in infernal legal script, their phrases sharp enough to make my eyes ache.

The brokers were concerned about Corin’s line.