Chapter 28 · Ash Ledger - Chapter 28: When the Stone Heart Wakes

"Touch him and I burn the ledger."

Voss didn't even look up from Finn's wrist. Blood dripped slow onto the stone plate, and the runes along the floor pulsed brighter with each drop. My brother's head lolled to one side, eyes half-shut, breath coming in shallow gasps.

"You won't." Voss pressed the blade deeper. Fresh red welled up. "That book is the only thing keeping you alive, Vale. Without it, you're just another clerk who should have died in the first wave."

I had the ledger open in my left hand, flint in my right. The pages were already starting to curl from the heat of the torches behind me. One strike and the whole thing would go up.

Mara moved beside me, silent, her knife out. She was watching the three guards flanked behind Voss, calculating angles. We'd fought our way down through two collapsed passages and a locked iron gate just to get here, and we were both bleeding from a dozen cuts.

"Let the kid go," Mara said. Her voice was flat, no bargaining in it. "You've got maybe thirty seconds before Holt brings the whole garrison down here."

"Holt's dead." Voss finally looked up.