Page 19 of Demon’s Snack

Instead, I step back from the window, keeping my movements slow. “I’m Corin.”

She watches me as if storing the name somewhere guarded. “Isolde.”

My body reacts to the name with humiliating intensity, heat rolling under my skin and tightening around my ribs. I hold myself still until it passes into something bearable.

“Isolde,” I repeat, because apparently I am determined to make my own life harder.

Her fingers rest on the latch. “Tomorrow, Corin. And if you bring trouble to my door, I will deny knowing you with tremendous conviction.”

“Fair.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

She closes the window.

I stand in the wet grass beneath the estate wall, staring at my reflection in the dark glass while the bond hums between us with a steadier rhythm than before. My hunger remains, but now I understand its shape better. It does not make me safe. It does not absolve me of what I could become.

It gives me one narrow, dangerous place to begin.

Tomorrow, I will speak to her properly.

4

ISOLDE

Getting out of Lord Vaerith’s estate requires paperwork, timing, and the sort of harmless expression that convinces arrogant people they have not made a mistake by underestimating you.

By midmorning, I have all three.

The eastern study is cool and dim around me, the curtains drawn halfway against the pale daylight spilling over the courtyard stones. Dust motes drift through the slanted light in elegant, useless little dances, while the shelves behind my desk sag beneath the weight of bound ledgers and sealed contract rolls. The room smells of vellum, old wax, ink, and the faint bitter trace of ward-resin baked into the walls. I have spent years learning every scent in this estate well enough to know when something changes. Today, nothing has changed, except me, which is inconvenient because I am much harder to catalog.

I keep my hands steady as I sort three account packets into the order Lord Vaerith prefers. The west holdings first, because he likes to pretend the leakage there is merely accounting irregularity rather than evidence of illegal soul-energy siphoning. The dock contracts second, because anything involving port labor gives him that lovely expression of noble disgust he believes passes for discernment. The third packet contains a repair authorization for a public registry office near the lower market, and that is the one I intend to use.

Mira stands by the door with a laundry basket balanced on one hip, pretending not to watch me forge a minor logistical approval with Lord Vaerith’s secondary seal.

“You know,” she says softly, “when I said you were going to get us both buried in shallow ground, I meant that as criticism.”

“I understood the spirit of the remark.”

“You appear to be ignoring it.”

“I am incorporating it into my risk assessment.”

“That is a fancy way of saying you heard me and did whatever you wanted.”

I press the seal into warm wax and lift it cleanly. The mark settles perfectly, all elegant angles and predatory little flourishes. “Not whatever I wanted. Something precise and useful.”

“That distinction will comfort me tremendously if they hang us by our ankles over the punishment pit.”

“There is no punishment pit.”

“There’s a cellar with hooks, so don’t get artistic about the name.”

I glance up at her. “Your optimism sustains me.”

“My optimism ran off with a stable boy three years ago and had the sense not to write.”