Sable's body went cold and hot at once.
The figure in the tunnel stepped into the lantern light.
It was Jory Quill.
Same lean build. Same travel leathers. Same sharp eyes. His hair was damp at the edges as if he had been running through wet air. His chest rose and fell too fast for calm.
On his right hand was an iron ring.
Oren's ring.
Jory lifted the lantern slightly, as if offering Sable a clearer look. His mouth curved into a smile that did not belong on him.
"You chose combine," Jory said.
The voice was not Jory's.
The words came out in Oren Vale's calm cadence, each syllable placed like a record stamp.
Sable pushed herself backward on the slick stone, boots scraping. Her palm burned where the seal loop had opened again. Her throat tightened as if her true name wanted to react to the ring.
"Jory," she said, voice rough. "Take it off."
Jory blinked once, slow. For a moment his eyes looked like his again.
Then his face smoothed.
"I cannot," he said. The voice was still Oren's.
Sable got to her feet, unsteady. Pain throbbed in her ribs from the fall. She forced her breathing down.
"What did you do to him," she demanded, looking past Jory into the bend of the tunnel as if Oren might appear from behind him.
Jory's smile deepened. "I did not do anything to him. You did."
Sable's stomach turned. "I did nothing."
"You formed a panel," Jory said. "You gave the court a shifter witness. You gave me a lane into the hearing. Now I am using it."
Sable's fingers curled. She fought the urge to spit flame. Fire would be easy. Fire would be loud. Fire would also burn Jory, and Sable did not trust herself to aim carefully on wet stone in a narrow corridor.
She swallowed hard. "Where is the Seed."
Jory lifted his ring hand slightly. The iron flashed.
Sable felt it at once. A pull behind her teeth. A tug under her tongue. The ring was not only metal. It held a vow.
"You ask the wrong question," Jory said. "The Seed is not where. The Seed is who."
Sable's palm burned. She held it up and saw the opened loop mark faintly glowing, as if the court had left the decision unfinished on purpose.
Jory stepped closer, lantern held high.
Sable stepped back. Her heel hit a shallow groove in the stone. The tunnel floor was not plain. Thin lines ran along it, half erased by time. They formed patterns that looked like old route markings.
Shifter work.
Anchor paths.
Sable forced herself to focus on that detail. It mattered.
"Jory," she said again, slower, aiming for the part of him that had blinked through. "If you can hear me, move your left hand."
Jory's left hand twitched.
Sable's pulse jumped.
Then his left hand went still again and his face hardened.
"You are clever," Jory said. "But you are late. This corridor was built for shifters. It listens to shifters. It will listen to him better than it will listen to you."
Sable understood with a jolt.
The ring was piggybacking on shifter anchors. Oren was using the Skinroads system the way he used records. He did not need to control every stone. He needed one path that did what he wanted.
Sable kept her voice steady. "You are using his body."
"I am using a bond," Jory said. "Bodies are temporary. Bonds persist."
Sable's throat tightened. "You are hurting him."
Jory's eyes flicked, quick and angry. For half a heartbeat, Jory's voice pushed through.
"Sable," he rasped, real and panicked. "Run."
Then Oren's voice returned.
"Do not encourage her," it said.
Jory's jaw clenched as if someone else had tightened it from inside.
Sable's stomach dropped. The ring could clamp down on Jory's mouth and make him speak a different voice. It could also suppress him when he tried to warn her.
Sable took one slow step sideways toward a narrow crack in the wall where water dripped. The drip was steady. The sound grounded her.
"Why are you here," she asked, letting the question do double work. If Oren answered, she learned. If Jory answered, she confirmed he still existed under the bond.
Jory's smile returned. "To finish your remedy."
Sable's palm burned again. "The remedy was combine."
"The court started it," Jory said. "Then you separated. Your seal reopened. The record is incomplete. An incomplete remedy creates instability."
Sable's voice went tight. "You forced the separation."
Jory lifted the lantern higher. The white flame brightened, and the tunnel markings along the floor glowed faintly in answer.
"You keep blaming me," Oren's voice said. "I am only correcting the risk. The Seed prefers wholeness. I will provide it."
Sable's mouth went dry. "You cannot combine me and the duplicate without consent."
Jory's eyes glittered. "Consent is a rule for stable union. Not for correction."
Sable felt a chill under her skin. "You are planning forced union."
"I am planning custody," Oren's voice replied. "Once you are whole, the Seed will obey. Once the Seed obeys, the realm stabilizes. Once the realm stabilizes, no one will question the cost."
Sable's breath came shallow. "And what happens to me in your custody."
Jory's shoulders relaxed slightly, like a man settling into certainty. "You become an instrument. That is what you were made to be."
Sable's rage surged. Heat pressed behind her teeth.
She clenched her jaw hard enough to ache. "I am not made. I am alive."
The ring flashed again. The pull behind her tongue intensified. The next sound of her true name tried to rise.
Sable slammed her mouth shut and bit down. Pain snapped through her jaw. Blood filled her mouth.
The sound stalled.
Jory took another step. The lantern light showed the iron ring more clearly. There was a faint black hairline crack across it, but it held. The crack did not free Jory. It only proved the ring could be damaged.
Vessa had done that much. Not enough.
Sable's eyes flicked to Jory's belt.
He carried a seal case. Leather. Small. Hard.
If she could get it, maybe it held a clan mark strip like the one he used before. Something that could anchor him against Oren.
She could not reach it without getting within arm's length.
She needed a distraction.
Sable forced her breathing down and spoke softly, choosing her words like tools.
"You lied in court," she said to Oren through Jory. "You paid truth in blood, then you removed Rook. You proved coercion. The court saw it."
Jory's smile faded. "The court noted it. Notes do not stop Houses."
Sable held her gaze on Jory's eyes. "But you are not in court now. You are in a tunnel. And tunnels have different rules."
Jory's eyes narrowed. "Do not pretend you understand shifter craft."
Sable nodded once. "I do not. But Jory does."
For a moment, Jory's left hand twitched again. His shoulder jerked.
Sable pressed the advantage. "Jory. If you can hear me, blink twice."
Jory's eyelids fluttered once.
Then again.
Sable's pulse jumped hard.
Oren's voice sharpened. "Stop that."
Jory's face tightened with strain. His lips parted as if he wanted to speak.
Sable moved.
She lunged forward, fast, low, aiming for the seal case at his belt.
Jory's ring hand snapped out.
The iron ring flashed.
A pressure hit Sable's chest like a shove. She stumbled back, boots sliding on wet stone. Her shoulder hit the wall hard enough to jolt pain down her arm.
Jory did not chase immediately. He took one calm step instead, lantern steady, as if he had all the time in the realm.
"You are injured," Oren's voice said. "Do not make this worse. Give yourself to custody. I will keep you alive."
Sable forced herself upright. Her shoulder throbbed. Her mouth tasted of blood. The heat behind her teeth stirred again, hungry.
She spat blood onto the floor and spoke with a steady voice.
"You do not keep people alive. You keep them useful."
Jory's eyes narrowed. "Useful keeps the realm whole."
Sable laughed once, sharp. "No. Useful keeps House Vale whole."
Jory raised his ring hand again.
Sable expected pressure. She braced for it.
Instead, the lantern flame wavered.
The white flame bent sideways.
Jory's head turned sharply toward the tunnel behind Sable, not in front of him.
He was listening to something.
Sable listened too. She heard it then, faint but real.
Footsteps.
Not one pair. Several.
Fast.
Coming from deeper in the tunnels behind her.
Sable's stomach tightened. "Who is there."
Jory's mouth curved. "Your other half."
Sable's blood ran cold.
Before she could turn, the tunnel ahead filled with a pale glow.
A figure stepped out of the light.
Gray robes. Calm posture. Sable's face.
The duplicate.
Her palm was raised, thorn crown visible, and her eyes were fixed on Sable with a look that was not triumph.
It was fear.
She looked past Sable at Jory's ring hand.
Then she spoke, voice tight.
"He has the Seed."
Sable's throat tightened. "Where were you."
The duplicate did not answer. Her gaze stayed locked on the ring as if it were a knife at her throat.
Jory smiled, Oren's smile, using Jory's mouth.
"Welcome," the voice said. "Now we can finish correction properly."
The footsteps behind Sable grew louder.
Sable turned her head just enough to see shapes running toward them through the dim.
Not Registry officers.
Shifters.
Two in human form, one already shifting into something larger, shoulders broadening, hands becoming claws. Their eyes were bright and wild with alarm.
They skidded to a stop when they saw Jory.
One of them shouted, "Jory."
Jory's own voice broke through for an instant, strained and desperate.
"Do not come close," he said.
Then Oren's voice returned, calm and cruel.
"Come closer," it said. "Witness how easily a road can be owned."
The lead shifter hesitated.
Sable felt the corridor markings glow brighter under her boots, as if the tunnel itself had decided to listen to the ring.
The duplicate stepped toward Sable, eyes hard now.
"We do it now," she whispered. "We combine. We take his lane away."
Sable's palm burned with the unfinished loop.
Her throat tightened as if her true name wanted to rise again, whether she chose it or not.
Jory lifted the lantern high.
The white flame flared.
And the tunnel walls began to change shape, as if the road itself was being rewritten around them.