Page 31 of Demon’s Snack

Then the scrying mirror goes dark.

I remain in the side passage with rainwater dripping beside me and the dropped club still lying near my boot. The city noise returns slowly, like sound coming back after being held underwater. My hand aches from the ward-shock. My stomach twists from the hunger I refused to feed.

I press both hands against the cold stone wall and breathe.

“In through the nose,” I force out. “Hold through the count. Name the body. Name the place. Name the hunger without obeying it.”

The body is mine, though the claim feels negotiable today. The place is a filthy passage behind the registry, watched by a noble who thinks I am a knife he can make cut on command. The hunger wants Vaerith now. It wants the source of the threat. It wants to climb through polished glass and wrap itself around the soul on the other side.

I drag in another breath.

The air tastes like rain, brass, and my own restraint.

“Not his toy,” I whisper. “Not his proof. Not his damn monster.”

The words help because they give the fury somewhere to stand without becoming action. Rhazek would call that primitive but serviceable, then probably criticize my posture. Sable would hit me in the shoulder for confronting Talen alone, then make tea too bitter for human consumption while pretending not to hover.

Isolde would ask what changed first, my pulse or my aura.

That thought steadies me more than it should.

I push away from the wall and look toward the passage mouth, where afternoon light lies pale across the wet stones. I need to go home. I need to warn Sable. I need to find out how many mirrors Vaerith controls in this district and whether any of them can look through wards meant to protect our house.

I make it one step before the bond warms.

Not sharply enough to warn. Gently enough to announce.

I turn.

Isolde stands at the far end of the passage, gray cloak drawn around her shoulders, folio clutched against her side. She should not be here. She should be at the registry, or back behind estate walls, or anywhere that does not put her within sight of a man still shaking with the desire to rip through her master’s scrying apparatus.

Her composure is intact, but not untouched. A loose strand of hair clings to her cheek from the damp, and her eyes move over me quickly, checking my face, hands, glamour, shoulders, the dropped club, and the dark window above with a methodical concern she cannot entirely disguise.

“You confronted him,” she says.

Her voice is quiet, clipped at the edges.

I swallow. “He needed confronting.”

“Privately?”

“It seemed rude to ruin the courtyard for everyone.”

Her brows lower slightly, not in anger, but in that severe little way she has when she is deciding whether a statement deserves correction or burial. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the one I have.”

She steps farther into the passage, and the bond responds with a low, steady heat that settles against the violence still moving through me. The hunger does not vanish. It shifts around her presence, forced to acknowledge something it refuses to cross.

I lift one hand, palm open. “Don’t come closer.”

She stops immediately, though her eyes remain on mine.

Good. Smart. Infuriatingly disappointing.

Her gaze drops to my hand, where the ember glow still pulses faintly beneath the skin. “You are elevated.”

“I’m a lot of things right now.”