Page 190 of Demon’s Snack

His voice carries because everyone wants to hear what ruin says when cornered.

I step forward, bringing Corin with me because our hands remain joined and because I want the entire courtyard to see that I choose the movement.

“No,” I say.

Vaerith’s mouth tightens. “Be cautious.”

“I have been cautious for years. It was exhausting.” I lift my voice and turn enough to include the council members, clerks, and witnesses. “Before these witnesses, under emergency audit challenge and documented illegal coercion, I renounce wardship under House Sylmorne.”

The words strike through me like a bell.

My body knows them as law before the crowd does.

The old wardship mark hidden deep in my contract history responds inside my blood with a cold tug, searching for the estate authority that once held it. It finds broken wards, exposed fraud, violated witness protocol, and the bond between Corin and me burning steady where command used to reach.

I continue, louder now. “Lord Vaerith violated neutral witness procedure. He attempted permanent binding without lawful review. He used my bloodline classification as leverage in forbidden infernal research. He confined me under false emergency authority. His claim is void.”

A guild clerk near the front looks down at a wet page, then up at me. Her face is pale but determined. “Recorded.”

“Witnessed,” Lady Othrel says.

“Witnessed,” Kairven’s nephew echoes.

Syrenya’s smile glints like a drawn blade. “Enthusiastically witnessed.”

Vaerith moves.

The magic comes fast, born from desperation and whatever private reserves he still has hidden under his skin. His hand slashes through the rain, fingers curving into a binding shape I recognize from wardship records and nightmares. Red-white force snaps toward me in a braided cord of command, carrying my name, my bloodline, and the legal skeleton of every old claim his house ever held over mine.

Corin reacts instantly.

His body shifts toward me, but I tighten my hand around his before he can step in front.

“Beside,” I say.

The word leaves my mouth low enough that only he hears.

He stops at my shoulder.

The binding cord reaches us.

The bond answers.

Heat flares from our joined hands, not wild and not violent, but so focused it turns the rain between us into a glittering veil of steam. The cord strikes the space around my chest where the wardship claim once hooked into contract law. Instead of sinking into me, it hits the bond and spreads across a lattice neither Vaerith nor his ancestors ever understood. Corin’s power surges through it, gold and black and utterly controlled, while my bloodline resonance shapes the force into a shield that belongs to both of us.

The binding spell splinters.

Red-white fragments scatter across the stones and fade before reaching the crowd.

Corin exhales slowly beside me. His hand remains warm around mine, steady as a vow.

Someone gasps.

A nobleman near Othrel whispers, “The bond deflected it.”

“No,” Syrenya says, voice carrying with exquisite precision. “The bond answered lawful coercion with superior stabilizing force.”

“Put that in the record,” Othrel snaps.