The corridor outside the music room felt narrower than it had any right to.
Not because the stone had moved.
Because the air had changed.
Jina walked with her hands tucked into her sleeves and her posture set to calm, and she could still feel Sivaris's presence clinging to her skin like smoke. The bond-thread under her sternum pulsed in slow aftershocks—heat that didn't belong to her choices, wanting to become appetite, wanting to become obedience.
Wanting to become leverage.
Behind her, the double doors remained open—her decision, her boundary—so the Diaconal scribe could record from the threshold and pretend that made it "lawful."
The memory-slate had shimmered the entire time.
Her boundaries were now an artifact.
Good.
Also dangerous.
Jina's steps stayed even as she left the painted dragons behind. Curtains muffled the last harp note Sivaris had plucked, and the quiet that followed felt like the palace holding its breath.
In the hallway, two Diaconal attendants stood at either end, black-and-gold trim bright in lamplight. They didn't block her path.
They didn't need to.
Oversight could be a posture.
Lysander waited on the other side of the invisible line, three paces away, body angled like a shield he wasn't allowed to use. His gaze met hers once—sharp, questioning.
Jina didn't answer the question with words.
Not here.
Not with the slate's eye still hungry.
She kept walking.
Heat stirred again under her ribs—bond-thread flaring as she passed a doorway where another consort's aura brushed the corridor. A cold thread twitched in response. Another, sharp and distant, like a blade being unsheathed somewhere far away.
The bonds were not polite.
They were not quiet.
They were a nervous system built out of old crimes.
Jina's jaw tightened behind her teeth.
She had drawn boundaries with Sivaris.
Now she needed a boundary with the bonds themselves.
Because if she didn't—
Someone else would use them as handles.
Aurelia had used them as handles.
Diadem was already trying.
Jina stopped at a window recess where the corridor widened just enough to feel like you could breathe. The glass was barred. The view was a sliver of inner courtyard and pale sky. Safe-looking, in the way cages were safe-looking.
She rested her shoulder lightly against stone.
Not because she was dramatic.
Because the dizziness still lived in her bones.
Heal debt hadn't forgiven her.
The poison hooks scraped faintly at her ribs as if laughing.
Lysander took one step closer—still not crossing the line, still obeying the distance imposed on him.
"Aurelia," he said softly.
The name was a key he used to reach her without breaking her rules.
Jina's throat tightened.
She kept her voice low. "Sivaris will report."
Lysander's eyes narrowed. "He's being watched."
"Yes," Jina said. "So am I."
She tipped her head slightly toward the open doors behind them. The Diaconal scribe was still there, slate held like scripture.
Lysander's jaw flexed once, anger controlled into stillness.
"Then we should assume everything is weaponized," he murmured.
Jina exhaled slowly. "Yes."
A silence stretched—thin, tense.
Under Jina's sternum, the fire-thread pulsed again, remembering Sivaris's smile and the way her body had reacted against her will.
Jina's hands tightened inside her sleeves.
No.
She wasn't going to live like this—tugged and triggered by someone else's proximity like a trained animal.
If bonds were channels—
Then she would treat them like channels.
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat.
Not prayer.
Focus.
Heal lived in her ribs. Understand lived just behind it, like a hand hovering near a wound. Command sat deeper—dark, heavy, the part of her that could end arguments by ending agency.
She didn't reach for Command.
She reached for structure.
She pictured the bonds the way her vet brain pictured anatomy: vessels. Valves. Flow.
Threads leaving her sternum—four of them—each with its own temperature, its own taste.
Fire.
Cold.
Sharpness.
Heat-with-weight.
Each one connected to a living person.
Each one capable of carrying more than sensation.
They carried influence.
They carried the palace's favorite lie: ownership.
Jina opened her eyes.
Lysander was watching her carefully, as if he sensed the internal shift even without a Gift.
"What are you doing," he asked quietly.
Jina kept her gaze on the barred window.
"I'm closing the channels," she said.
One of the Diaconal attendants down the corridor turned his head slightly, attention catching on the phrase.
Jina didn't look at him.
Let him listen.
Let him try to interpret it.
She raised her voice just enough to be heard by the slate at the threshold without sounding like she was announcing a revolution.
"The bonds," Jina said evenly, "are not an open door anymore."
A faint ripple moved through the air—subtle, like a ward settling.
Not external magic.
Internal decision.
Under her sternum, the fire-thread jerked as if it hated the idea.
Jina breathed through it.
"In," she told herself.
"Out."
She imagined a gate—simple, mechanical—between her and each thread.
A valve she could close.
Not to sever.
To regulate.
To refuse involuntary surge.
Her Gift answered.
Not with light.
With pressure.
A sense of click inside her ribs, like something aligning.
The fire-thread dimmed.
Not gone.
Muted.
The cold thread steadied.
The sharp thread stopped twitching like a live wire.
Jina's shoulders loosened by a fraction, as if her nervous system had finally stopped being pulled by strings she didn't consent to.
She opened her eyes fully.
Lysander's gaze was locked on her face, alert.
"What did you do," he asked again, lower.
Jina swallowed once, throat dry.
"I made gates," she said.
His brow furrowed. "Explain."
Jina didn't turn toward him. She kept her eyes forward so the slate wouldn't catch too much emotion.
"Before," she said, "the bond channels were always open. That's why flares hit like storms. That's why proximity—" her jaw tightened briefly, "—can push reactions I didn't choose."
Lysander's eyes darkened with understanding. He'd seen it. He'd felt it from the outside.
Jina continued, voice calm and clinical. "Now, the channel stays closed unless I permit it."
A pause.
Then, quieter, "And unless they do."
Lysander went still. "They can… permit it too."
"They should have been able to all along," Jina said, and the bitterness in the truth surprised her.
Aurelia had never built gates.
Aurelia had built pipes and forced flow.
Jina's chest tightened.
Then she steadied herself.
"This isn't severing," she said clearly, because the word mattered. "It's consent."
One of the Diaconal attendants shifted his weight, as if trying to decide whether this sounded like instability or like threat.
Good luck.
Jina looked down at her own hands.
They were no longer shaking.
Not because she was safe.
Because she had reduced one avenue of invasion.
Lysander's voice came rougher. "Can you do that with Command too."
Jina's mouth tightened.
She thought of the word rising in her throat on the riot street. The taste of it. The ease.
"I can gate the impulse," she said. "I can build the pause."
Lysander held her gaze now, no longer looking at the slate.
"That's new," he said.
"Yes," Jina replied.
A beat.
Then Lysander asked the question he'd been holding since the street.
"Will they feel it," he murmured. "The consorts."
Jina looked past him, down the corridor that led deeper into the wing.
"They'll feel the absence first," she said. "Like a silence where there used to be pressure."
And then, more softly—because this part was for herself, not the slate—
"Then they'll get to choose whether they want the door opened."
Lysander's jaw tightened. "That will scare them."
"It will scare everyone," Jina said.
Because the palace relied on predictable chains.
Because Diadem relied on leverage.
Because Severin wanted her to become tyranny on command.
Jina pushed off the stone and straightened, ignoring the faint wave of dizziness that returned with motion.
The gates held.
Her sternum stayed quiet.
The fire-thread tried once—just a twitch—and met a closed channel.
No surge.
No involuntary heat licking up her throat.
Relief hit so sharp it almost hurt.
She looked toward the Diaconal scribe at the threshold.
He was watching her now with a faint, puzzled tightness around his eyes, as if he couldn't decide whether to write unstable or innovative.
Let him write.
Let the court see a new problem.
Jina spoke one last sentence, voice calm enough to sound like policy.
"From now on," she said, "my bonds are gated. No one draws on them without permission."
The Diaconal attendant at the far end took a half step, then stopped—uncertain, as if he'd felt a shift but didn't know how to name it.
Lysander's eyes stayed on her, something like relief cutting through the usual vow-hardness.
"Are you sure you can hold that," he asked quietly.
Jina breathed in.
Out.
And felt the gates stay shut.
"Yes," she said.
Then she started walking again—down the corridor, toward whatever test came next—with less heat in her veins and more choice in her body.
[Power]