I DIED IN A DEMON'S ARMS, NOW SHE CALLS ME MASTER

Chapter 2: The Bond That Should Not Exist

NOLAN POV

The bond cinched around my wrist like a fist, and Veyra's blade came up before I could draw a full breath.

"Wait," I said. "Don't."

She swung anyway. The moment the steel moved toward my throat, a shock tore through both of us, as though lightning had been poured straight into my veins. My knees hit the stone a heartbeat before hers did. Her pain flooded my ribs, my arm, and my teeth as if it had always been mine, and the horror on her face told me she was feeling mine too.

She dragged herself upright with her jaw locked and her blade trembling in her grip.

"If this is some kind of control spell," she said, "I will find a way to cut it out of both of us."

I believed her completely, which was exactly why I needed to understand the thing before she found a way to destroy it.

"Then give me a minute," I said from my knees. "If you cut the wrong thing, we could both bleed out on this floor."

"You have until I stop shaking."

The pane of pale light still hovered at the edge of my vision. I focused on it, and the text sharpened into lines. *Compatibility: unconfirmed. Soul stability: fluctuating. Connection: unaccepted by either party.* It looked nothing like a game menu. It read like a diagnostic report from a machine that had been left running for a thousand years.

"Can you hear my thoughts?" I asked.

"Do not be disgusting."

"Humor me. Think something at me as loudly as you can."

She glared. A wave of hot irritation rolled through my chest that had no source in my own head, and I winced. "You think I'm an idiot."

"I thought nothing of the kind."

"You felt it, though. That's the point." I rubbed my wrist. "It carries pain and mood, but not words. It doesn't let me steer you either, because I would already have tried."

Her mouth twisted. "Of course you would have."

"I'm not proud of it. I'm just practical."

She backed away one deliberate step at a time until the script on our wrists began to burn. At about eight paces she hissed and stopped. Then she closed her eyes and pulled her demonic energy inward like a held breath. The markings flared again, but this time the burn settled deep behind my sternum instead of stinging my skin.

"That's different," I said through my teeth. "Distance hurts on the surface. When you suppress your power, it hurts somewhere deeper."

"I noticed." She let the energy go with a shudder. "So it is not merely a leash."

"I don't think it's a leash at all." I stood slowly and kept my hands where she could see them. "I think it's a broken mechanism trying to run on two souls it was never built for. You didn't choose this, and neither did I."

"A convenient theory for the man who profits from it."

"Do I look like I'm profiting?" I held up my bloody forearm. "I feel everything you feel, and I can barely stay on my feet."

She studied me with narrowed eyes, plainly unwilling to like what she had heard. But she did not raise the blade again, and I counted that as a win.

The floor shuddered before she could answer.

Behind her, the shattered circle split wider, and something clicked and scraped in the dark beneath it. A long, low body hauled itself over the edge, plated in yellowed bone and lined with curved teeth. Its head swung toward the glowing script on our wrists, and it screamed.

"It's drawn to the resonance," I said.

"I can see that!"

It lunged. Veyra threw herself aside and raked her blade along its flank, but the steel skated off the plating with a shriek and a spray of sparks. The creature wheeled and drove her toward the wall. The impact hit me through the bond as a hard punch to my shoulder, and I staggered right along with her.

"Watch its joints," I shouted. "It drops its weight before every lunge."

"I am busy!"

"Then listen. That pillar behind it is cracked at the base." I pointed at the leaning column above the circle. "Lead it under there and hit the fracture. Don't hit the creature."

"You are asking me to trust you."

"I'm asking you to trust that I can read stone."

She snarled something I did not catch, but she moved. She slid beneath the next strike, ran two steps along the wall, and hurled a broken sword across the room. The scavenger spun toward the clatter and charged after her, and she kept retreating until it stood directly beneath the pillar.

"Now!"

Veyra drove her blade into the crack with both hands. The stone gave a long, grinding groan, and then the column came down in a roar of dust and rubble. The scavenger shrieked once before it was crushed flat, and a wall of fallen rock sealed the passage behind it.

A chunk of masonry clipped Veyra across the back of her leg. The pain reached me a half second later, hot and bright, and I was across the room before I realized I had moved.

"Do not touch me," she said from her knees.

"You're bleeding."

"It is nothing."

"Your leg disagrees." I crouched an arm's length away. "If you collapse, I won't make it out of here alone. I'm not offering for your sake. I'm offering for mine."

She gave me a look that could have cut glass. Then she exhaled slowly and jerked her chin toward the wound. "Quickly."

I tore a strip from the hem of my coat and wrapped her calf as gently as I could, tight enough to hold but loose enough to let her walk. She watched my hands the entire time without a word. When I tied the knot, she flexed her ankle and gave the smallest of nods.

"Adequate," she said.

"High praise."

She rose and tested her weight, and her eyes turned sharp again. "You knew how it would turn. You knew which pillar would fail. Those are not the instincts of a man who hauled guild crates for a living."

I had expected the question, yet it still felt like a hand closing around my throat. "I have memories that don't belong to this life," I said. "I'm trying to understand them as much as you are."

"That is not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have."

She searched my face while her suspicion pulsed through the bond like a second heartbeat. Beneath it lay something tired and reluctant that she clearly did not want me to feel. "I do not believe you," she said at last. "But interrogating you in a collapsing shrine would be foolish. Walk."

She took the lead toward a gap in the far wall, limping only a little, and I followed with my eyes on the markings glowing on both our wrists. A second pane of light unfolded across my vision as we moved.

UNKNOWN INTERFERENCE PATTERN DETECTED.

SOURCE IDENTITY: ..LAN ..YSE (CORRUPTED).

ORIGINAL SOUL RECORD: DAMAGED.

EXTERNAL TRANSFERENCE: CONFIRMED.

I stopped walking.

"What is it?" Veyra asked without turning.

"The system says someone else is involved in how I got here." My throat felt dry. "It says my soul didn't land in this body by accident."

She glanced back with an expression I could not read. "Then somebody wanted you here."

"Or somebody wanted something else, and I got in the way."

"Both are worse than what I came in expecting." She jerked her head toward the passage. "Move."

We squeezed through a narrow tunnel that slanted steadily upward, with dust sifting onto our shoulders and the walls trembling every few steps. Behind us, something enormous gave way with a thunderous crack. Veyra seized my sleeve and hauled me forward, and we burst into cold air just as the final support collapsed and swallowed the tunnel.

We lay on a rocky slope, gasping, and looked down at the ruins we had barely escaped. Below us, a company of armed men waited beside several covered wagons. Their uniforms bore a silver emblem I recognized instantly from the markings in the shrine.

One of them glanced up and pointed.

"There! The demoness and the vessel!"

Veyra went rigid beside me. "They were not supposed to know you survived."

The mercenaries drew their weapons in a single rasping sweep of steel. At the front, their leader raised a crossbow loaded with a bolt as black as spilled ink.

"By order of the Quiet Meridian," he called, "kill the vessel. Bring the demoness back alive."

The crossbow snapped, and the first bolt came screaming straight for my chest.