Page 89 of Demon’s Snack

Corin hears it too. His head lifts slightly, eyes bright. The bond snaps hot beneath my ribs, full of pain, rage, and the demon’s stolen essence trying to braid itself through his hunger. His hands curl in stages, fingers flexing like claws as the surge searches for direction. The crowd sees the movement and recoils.

Vaerith steps down from the dais with careful theatrical restraint. “The attack was unfortunate, yes, but necessary in its revelation. The creature has consumed infernal essence by instinct after the threat has passed. This is precisely the contamination risk I warned you of. Hybrids do not merely defend. They devour. They destabilize every warded civic space they enter, and once fed, they seek more.”

“No,” I say.

My voice is low, swallowed by the crowd.

The guards do not hear me.

Corin does.

His burning gaze cuts toward me, and through the bond I feel his desperate attempt to stay with my face instead of turning toward Vaerith’s voice. The demon’s essence thrashes under his skin like a hooked thing, clawing for release through hunger, fury, and the dozens of frightened heartbeats pressing around the circle. The heat rolling off him is brutal even from several paces away, dry and infernal, strong enough to lift the damp from my sleeves.

Someone near the rail shouts, “Put it down before it feeds!”

Another voice answers, “Spears forward!”

Steel rises in a glittering line.

The nobles’ guards move with trained rigor, enchanted spearheads leveling toward Corin’s chest. Retainers draw curved blades etched with ward-light. A dark elf woman in jeweled blue retreats behind two armed men, though her eyes remain fixed on Corin with avid fascination. The human witnesses at the back try to press away from the rails, but the crowd behind them traps them in place. Panic has weight, and I feel it gathering, pushing toward violence.

Corin is seconds from becoming Vaerith’s public execution.

Vaerith knows it.

He stands with one hand lifted, letting the guards advance far enough to terrify the crowd but not yet far enough to end the scene before it finishes serving him. His pale eyes flick once toward me, and there is satisfaction there, cold and private. He has placed me exactly where he wants me: inside the circle, near enough to observe, far enough to appear separate from the hybrid he means to condemn.

So I ruin the picture.

I step across the inner boundary.

The circle bites at my ankles with a hot sting as I break formation, and several ward lines spit red sparks across the stones. Someone gasps my name. Vaerith’s attention snaps toward me, sharpened by a flicker of annoyance he cannot hide quickly enough.

“Isolde,” he says, amplified voice still pitched for the crowd. “Remain inside the designated witness position.”

I keep walking.

A guard moves to block me, spear angled across his body. I slap the shaft aside with the back of my hand before he decides whether a human woman in a house dress is allowed to do that.

“Move,” I tell him.

His eyes widen, and the delay is enough.

I push between him and the next guard, stepping directly into Corin’s space. The heat off him rolls over me in a dense wave, carrying the scents of ash, blood, rain, and scorched ward-metal. My skin prickles beneath my collar. The bond flares so intensely that the courtyard around us thins at the edges, leaving only his molten eyes, his harsh breathing, and the terrible pressure of the essence fighting inside him.

His gaze locks on me.

“Isolde,” he rasps.

“Yes. Hello. Public disaster, terrible timing, dreadful guest list.” I lift my hand before he can move back from me. “Breathe with me, not at me.”

A sound that might have been a laugh breaks low in his chest and twists into a groan. “Now?”

“Unless you have a more convenient opening between spears.”

His eyes flash toward the weapons behind me.

I snap my fingers once in front of his face. “No. Me.”