Page 171 of Demon’s Snack

“You usually do.”

“Not currently.”

The devourer’s chest opens wider.

Rhazek shouts from the broken ward post. “It is trying to root through him. If it anchors in his structure, severance becomes impossible.”

Corin lifts one hand, flame writhing around his fingers. “Love how everyone keeps making this sound worse.”

Sable yells from behind the shield, “Then stop letting giant soul monsters put things in your structure!”

A bark of laughter tears out of him, rough and bright in the middle of the storm. The bond steadies for half a breath.

I use that half breath.

I step in front of him and place both hands flat against his chest.

The heat is brutal. It drives through my palms into my wrists, up my arms, and straight into the bloodline response Vaerith’s records described with such clinical obscenity. My body answers before my mind can dress the reaction in theory. Something old and carefully preserved inside my blood wakes beneath the devourer’s pressure, not as obedience, not as compliance, but as resonance. The warmth under my skin rises to meet Corin’s infernal fire, spreading through the bond in a bright, structured current.

Corin inhales sharply.

“Isolde.”

“I am here.”

“You’re too close to the transfer.”

“I am exactly where I need to be.”

“You always say terrifying things calmly.”

“I find shrieking inefficient.”

His hands hover near my arms, restraint battling instinct so visibly that my chest aches. He wants to pull me away from the heat. He wants to hold me against it. He wants to stop the devourer and protect me and obey the terms we set all at once, which is unreasonable and very like him.

I slide my palms higher, over the place where that second heartbeat pounds beneath his sternum.

The devourer strikes through the bond.

Pain flashes white behind my eyes.

For one terrifying instant, the creature’s presence blooms inside my senses: a hollow cathedral of hunger, ribbed with shadow, full of swallowed cries and ancient law. It has eaten memory, territory, devotion, fear. It understands bonds only as chains, anchors only as feeding points, power only as something taken until nothing remains to resist.

It tries to recognize me as a conduit.

I refuse the definition.

My fingers dig into Corin’s chest, and I set my breathing deliberately. Slow enough to count. Steady enough to command my own blood before it can answer Vaerith’s old design instead of my will.

Corin’s breath catches, then matches mine.

The bond intensifies so sharply the courtyard blurs at its edges. Rain, fire, screaming stone, and the crowd all fade beneath the sensation of our pulses finding a shared rhythm. His heart hammers under my hands, fast and heavy. Mine follows, then leads, then settles into a cadence that pulls his heat into shape. The devourer’s second heartbeat thrashes between us, trying to disrupt the pattern, but every matched breath tightens the channel around it.

“Do not fight the whole thing at once,” I say.

Corin’s voice scrapes through clenched teeth. “It’s inside my chest, sweetheart. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Let it push.”