Page 184 of Demon’s Snack

The district no longer looks at him like a lord.

It looks at him like a liability.

Isolde’s fingers remain threaded through mine, warm despite the rain and the infernal heat still simmering beneath my skin. The bond between us hums with deep, steady pressure, altered by everything we survived tonight. I feel her exhaustion through it, the ache in her wrists from old ward bindings, the mental strain of dragging generations of hidden truth into public light. Under all of that lives a fierce, grounding certainty that keeps my hunger settled into quiet focus instead of restless instinct.

Sable stands near the trade hall steps with soot streaked across her jaw and murder in her posture. Rhazek watches the courtyard with infernal script still glowing faintly along his forearms. Syrenya lingers beside Lady Othrel and Kairven’s nephew, her attention moving through the crowd like a knife testing weak seams.

Vaerith sees every shift happening around him.

Then he smiles.

The expression is controlled enough that most people would miss the danger in it. I do not.

The hunger inside me lifts its attention toward him, calm and deliberate. The devourer’s destruction changed something fundamental beneath my ribs. My power no longer claws against invisible restraints searching for somewhere to spill. It waits. It listens. It obeys.

“Lord Vaerith Sylmorne,” Lady Othrel says, her cane planted firmly against cracked stone, “you will surrender your ward seals and submit to temporary restriction pending inquiry into illegal siphoning, forbidden summoning, and contract corruption.”

Vaerith’s pale gaze shifts toward her slowly. “No.”

The word lands with quiet arrogance, but the force behind it has thinned. He sounds like a man speaking from memory rather than certainty.

Othrel’s mouth hardens. “This district is no longer yours to command.”

“You are all making decisions while standing inside a failed infernal breach,” Vaerith replies. Rain slicks his silver-white hair against his temples while ash darkens the edges of his sleeves. “That hybrid absorbed a devourer-class entity in front of witnesses. You watched its structure evolve in real time.”

His eyes lock onto me.

“You still think this ends with legal proceedings?”

The crowd stirs uneasily.

Fear still lives here. The devourer nearly hollowed the district out from the inside, and I am standing in the middle of its ashes glowing like the aftermath of a bad prophecy. Vaerith knows exactly where fear survives longest inside people. He keeps pressing there, trying to drag the narrative back under his control.

Sable folds her arms. “You know, for a man who just lost a demon and a district in the same hour, you remain unbelievably talkative.”

A few strained laughs ripple through the witnesses.

Vaerith ignores her completely.

“You feel it, don’t you?” he asks me. “The rewrite continuing inside your blood.”

I do feel it.

The channels beneath my ribs are wider now, reshaped by the devourer’s force and the containment spell that followed it. Infernal current moves through me with frightening ease, but the movement no longer feels like something foreign trying to coexist with the rest of my body. The structure has settled into itself. Every breath carries power without strain.

I meet his stare. “I mostly feel annoyed.”

“Still hiding behind humor.” Vaerith’s mouth curves faintly. “Interesting survival mechanism.”

“Better than hiding behind summoning circles.”

Syrenya lets out a delighted hum. “Oh, keep going. I haven’t enjoyed a public collapse this much in years.”

Vaerith’s expression tightens.

His right hand moves.

Rhazek’s voice cuts sharply across the courtyard. “Corin.”