Chapter 13 · Blood Eats Back

"Show me your arm."

Carson's hand locked around my wrist before I could pull back. We were still in the corridor outside the vault, dust settling, my pulse hammering from the tide crown's first burn.

"Let go."

"Not until you show me what that thing did to you." His thumb pressed against the inside of my wrist, right over the control ring's edge. "You pushed back a dozen armed mercs and didn't break a sweat. That's not normal."

I twisted, but he didn't budge. "You wanted me to use it. I used it."

"I wanted you to prove you could control it." He shoved my sleeve up past the elbow. "Not become it."

Black lines crawled under my skin. Thin as spider silk, branching from the control ring toward my shoulder. They pulsed faint and slow, like something alive was mapping my veins.

I stopped breathing.

"What is that?" Mira's voice came from behind us, sharp and too close.

Carson didn't let go. "Tide mark. I've seen it on corpses in the old palace."

"I'm not a corpse."

"Not yet." He turned my arm under the dim light. The lines spread a little farther as we watched.