Chapter 37 · After the Eighteenth Bell

"Let go of me, Kael." His fingers locked around my wrist before I could pull away. "Not until you tell me what I'm holding back."

His blood ran warm over my skin. Mine answered it with a sharp golden pulse that climbed from my palm to my throat.

I bared my teeth. "You're holding back the fortress. The loop. Maybe the whole damn sky. Pick one."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one you can afford."

Kael shoved me against the stone pillar behind us. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to make the point. His chest nearly touched mine, his breath brushing my cheek while the red-gold marks from our rewritten vow burned between our wrists.

Behind him, the chamber shook.

The broken eighteenth bell was still trembling somewhere above the fortress. Every metal chain hanging from the ceiling pulled toward the same dark circle carved into the floor. The anchor. The thing that had dragged me through seventeen deaths and shoved me back into the same three months each time.

This time, it had stopped.

That should have been good news.

The black stone under my boots cracked anyway.

Kael glanced down, then back at me.