The veins spread.
Fin watched Lucian watch Tristan deteriorate with the focused, helpless attention of a man monitoring a collapse he could see and could not stop.
The dark lines climbed from Tristan's neck to his jaw. From his jaw toward his cheekbone. The spread was progressive, systematic, following the vascular architecture of his body with the patient, methodical certainty of a poison that understood it had time and intended to use all of it.
Tristan wore high collars. The collars got higher every hour. The progression was its own timeline, a sartorial countdown that tracked the corruption's advance more accurately than any healer's chart: when the collar reached his jaw, the corruption had reached his face. When the corruption reached his face, the collar couldn't help anymore.
