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"Don't move." The gun found her temple before she even got both feet under her.
Julian Knox had her boxed against the vault wall, forearm locked under her jaw, muzzle drilling a cold circle into her skin. Mara's fist stayed closed around the shard she'd just pried loose, stone dust grinding into her palm. Don't drop it. Don't drop it.
"What does Vale blood unlock?" His voice was flat. Not scared. Not curious. Just a man doing a job with his finger already on the trigger.
"Guess." She smiled with her teeth.
He pressed harder. The sight dug a groove above her ear.
"Wrong answer's a bullet," he said.
"Wrong answer's you standing here forever." She twisted her wrist so the shard caught the emergency light, let him see the lines cut into it like veins. "Mainline sanctum coordinates. Whole set, carved into rock. Pull that trigger, my hand opens, this hits the floor and shatters, and every Vale who ever died hunting that vault gets one more idiot to keep it company. That's you. Congratulations."
His gun didn't move. His eyes did — shard, her face, back to the shard, doing math he didn't like the answer to.
Then his free hand came off his hip and closed around her throat, and he slammed her into the stone hard enough to rattle her teeth.
"Wrong," she choked, and drove the folding knife up out of her belt into his ribs, just enough to bite steel.
They both went still. Her airway crushed under his palm. His side leaking heat around three inches of blade. Nobody breathing. She could feel his pulse hammering against her own fingers where she gripped the handle, feel the heat coming off him in the two inches of nothing between them.
"Let go," she rasped, "or I stab first."
He stared at her. Three full seconds. No give in his jaw. No give in his hand.
She switched tracks, because dying slow wasn't the plan. "Key shard for intel. Right now. What's a Vale guardian. How much do you actually know. What does Celeste want with the mainline."
Something moved behind his eyes at Celeste's name. His grip loosened, half an inch — not surrender, recalculation.
He shoved his sleeve up with his free hand and showed her his inner wrist.
A sigil, burned into the skin, old enough to have scarred silver-white at the edges — except the center. The center was charred black, like something had died there and never healed right.
"My mother was a Vale guardian." His voice had gone rough, like the words cost him to say out loud. "Seven years ago. Night the mainline got wiped, she got me out alive and nothing else. I stay breathing, I protect the Vale heir, I open the sanctum when the right blood shows up to do it. Whole job, right there."
"Touching." Mara didn't move the knife. "Not seeing how that's my problem."
"You're holding the key shard." He said it like she was slow. "You're Vale blood. That makes you the heir. Which means the second I saw that shard in your hand, the guardian contract locked onto both of us, whether either of us wanted it or not. Seventy-two hours. Either of us lets go of this—" two fingers tapped her collarbone, right over her heartbeat, close enough she felt the callus on his fingertip through her shirt, "—we both die."
Her knife hand didn't move. His gun didn't either. But something in his focus shifted, dropped to her throat, her pulse, the blade still parked in his side, like he was pricing her out all over again.
She didn't get to ask what came next.
The first blast hit somewhere above them and the whole tunnel shuddered, dust sifting down between the stones.
"They found the door," Julian said.
"No kidding."
He staggered off her, off the knife, blood soaking dark through his shirt where the blade had been. Mara's stomach dropped watching a thin black line crawl up the inside of his wrist from the burned sigil, like the contract had just clocked in and started a clock.
53:40:22.
The numbers burned red-gold against his skin, ticking down.
"That's not—" Mara started.
"Vale heartbeat lock." He was breathing hard, one hand pressed to his ribs, blood between his fingers. "Guardian dies, mainline blood burns to ash. That clock hits zero before I do, or I die before it does — either way, you're locked out forever. Vale altar's three levels down, east cemetery side. You want it, you're taking me with you."
Another blast, closer, rock dust raining thick enough to taste.
"Or leave me right here." His voice dropped, gone rougher, almost gentle in a way that made her want to hit him for it. "Run for the sanctum. Grab whatever's down there on the blood contract before they blow this tunnel shut behind you. I'm dead in fifty-three hours regardless. Might as well be useful before that."
"Shut up." She grabbed his arm, the burned one, felt the heat of the numbers against her palm. 53:39:41. "You don't get to make that call."
"Somebody has to." His knees buckled and he went down hard against the wall by the doorway, blood spreading fast now, dark and wet under him on the stone. "Choose, Mara."
53:39:28.
She stared at his neck, at the pulse still jumping there, at the shard still burning hot in her own fist, and for one second neither of them said anything at all.
Then the ceiling cracked open on the second blast, and white light tore through the tunnel mouth, and through the smoke a shape was already stepping into the doorway — gun up, arm steady, finger sliding onto the trigger, aimed dead center at both of them.
Mara didn't choose. She grabbed a fistful of Julian's collar and hauled, dragging two hundred pounds of dead weight deeper into the dark, his blood slicking her hands, his head lolling against her shoulder, his mouth still moving, still trying to get one more word out—
Behind her, close enough to feel it in her teeth, a slide racked.