Chapter 28 · The Eighteenth Bell

"Get up." Kael's hand closed around her wrist and hauled her off the floor before the memory even let go of her throat.

Seraph's knees buckled anyway. Her body still thought it belonged to someone standing at an execution stand, waiting. "You were there," she said. "In it. Waiting for me to swing the blade at your neck."

"I know what I saw." His jaw was iron. "I don't know when it happens."

"It felt real," Seraph said. "Not like remembering. Like it was happening somewhere else right now."

"Maybe it is." Kael's eyes cut to the crack in the floor. "Time doesn't listen to us in here."

Behind them, the core lock groaned, a deep metal sound like a throat clearing before it screamed. The chamber's stone floor had gone hairline with cracks, threading out from the anchor stone like a spider had died mid-web.

Then the first bell rang.

One long, low note that came from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating up through the soles of Seraph's boots.

"That's the tower counting," Kael said. He didn't let go of her wrist. "It's counted before. Every time I dreamed one of your deaths, there was a bell."

"How many deaths."