Page 172 of Demon’s Snack

His eyes snap down to mine, molten and furious. “Absolutely not.”

“Let it push into the channel, not into you.”

“That distinction is doing a lot of work.”

“So am I.”

His laugh sounds pained and half-mad. “Fair.”

I press harder, forcing my stabilizing current through the bond with every breath. My bloodline does what Vaerith’s records said it could do, but it does it under my command. It does not leash Corin. It does not soften him into compliance. It gives his power walls, rhythm, and direction. The devourer’s invading force slams against that structure, and Corin catches it before it can spread.

His whole body shakes.

Gold flame bursts from his shoulders and coils up around his horns. The stones beneath his feet crack farther, but the energy no longer sprays toward the crowd. It pulls inward around the channel we build between my hands and his core, spinning tighter with every breath.

“Good. Compress it.”

Corin bares his teeth. “Working on it.”

“Do not consume the root.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“You frequently hear and then improvise.”

“He does,” Sable calls.

“Unhelpful,” Corin snaps.

“Alive and unhelpful!”

I almost laugh, and somehow that nearly breaks me. The absurdity of it, the terror, the heat, Corin glowing beneath my hands while Sable shouts family criticism over an infernal storm, all of it presses against my composure until my throat tightens.

Corin feels the shift.

His hand closes gently around my wrist.

“Still with me?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Good. Because I’m about to do something stupid in a controlled way.”

“That sentence contains too many concerns.”

“You like concerns. They give you structure.”

“You are impossible.”

“Frequently.”

The devourer roars, and the sound slams against the courtyard with enough force to knock several people flat. Its half-formed body begins fragmenting where Corin’s redirected power reaches back through the attack. Cracks of gold appear along its hollow chest, spreading across ash-gray bone and shadow-sinew. It tries to withdraw the root it sank into Corin’s structure, but he closes around it with terrifying accuracy.

I feel the choice he makes.

He does not chase the devourer’s entire essence. He catches the invading thread, the part that dared enter him, and clamps down around that single line with all the focus his hunger has learned. The creature’s body convulses above the summoning circle as its own attack becomes a tether.

“There,” I whisper. “That strand.”