Elias sat stiffly under the blanket, his jaw tight, the taste of bitterness still burning on his tongue. The room pressed too close, Connor's grin was too sharp, and Samael's gaze was too steady, but it was Victor's voice that cut through all of it.
"Jonathan Clarke is a fool," Victor said, flat, velvet-dark. Crimson eyes narrowed, gleaming with a fire that made Connor's smirk falter. "If Adler ascends, he'll burn through the sky before he ever bends to their leash. Gods don't tolerate masters. If anything, he would tear the Clarks apart just to prove he could."
Samael's frown deepened. "Unless they think the stabilizer changes that equation."
Elias frowned, his gaze fixed on the rim of his coffee as though the answer might settle there if he stared long enough. The word on the page had been neutral, clinical: stabilizer. Nothing rare nor extraordinary, just a function.
