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"Move or we both die here." Julian's hand locked around my wrist and dragged me deeper into the tunnel.
The ceiling came down behind us. Concrete slammed into the entrance, throwing dust through the passage and cutting off our escape.
I yanked against him. "Your heartbeat's burning you alive. The lock's eating your time."
"I know." He didn't slow. Blood soaked his right shoulder, turning his shirt black. "We reach the altar, or we both flatline. Pick up your feet."
Another impact shook the tunnel. Dust poured from the ceiling.
Julian shoved me against the wall and covered me with his body as a slab of concrete crashed down where we'd been standing. His back took the worst of it. The hit drove a harsh grunt out of him.
Warm blood dripped onto the back of my neck.
"Julian."
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding on me."
"Then keep moving before I bleed on the floor."
He pushed away from the wall. His hand trembled when he grabbed mine again.
I caught his arm. "How bad?"
"Bad enough that you shouldn't waste time asking."
The heartbeat lock burned beneath the skin of his neck. The Vale guardian sigil glowed around it, smoke curling from the edges. Each pulse sent a sharp heat through the tunnel and into my bones.
I knew what that meant. The lock wasn't waiting for us to reach the altar. It was killing him on the way there.
"You can't make seventeen kilometers like this," I said.
"I don't need to feel good. I need to stay alive."
"That wasn't the question."
"It was the answer."
He pulled me around a bend. The tunnel widened, and old carvings appeared in the stone walls. Blue-white light leaked through the darkness ahead.
The Vale mainline sanctum.
Julian stopped beneath a carved archway. Blood ran from his shoulder to his fingertips, then dropped onto the stone one bead at a time.
His breathing had gone shallow.
"The blood array," he said. "It needs mainline blood and guardian blood. Together."
"You're in no shape to activate anything."
"I'm in exactly the shape we have."
He pulled a folding knife from his belt and opened it.
I stepped back. "Don't."
"Give me your hand."
"You can barely stand."
"And you can still argue. Good. Give me your hand."
The knife point touched my palm. His fingers closed around my wrist, hot and unsteady.
"Julian—"
"You want to live? Bleed."
His eyes held mine. The space between us vanished. I felt his breath against my cheek, rough with pain, while the blade pressed harder.
A bright bead of blood rose beneath the point.
"Do it," he said. "Now."
I snatched the knife from him and dragged it across my palm.
Pain flashed white. Blood spilled over my fingers.
Julian took the knife back, cut his forearm, and dropped his blood onto the array. He didn't even flinch.
Our blood struck the stone together.
The archway erupted in blue and gold light. Lines raced through the carvings. The floor hummed beneath my boots, and something massive shifted deep inside the sanctum.
A sealed door opened.
Then a hologram appeared in the center of the light.
A woman stood inside it, perhaps in her early fifties. Her face was composed, but grief pulled tight around her mouth. Behind her waited a vault marked with the Vale family seal.
My lungs stopped working.
I knew that face.
I knew that voice.
"If you're seeing this," the woman said, "the mainline guardian contract has been triggered. The person watching may be my daughter—or the guardian bound to her."
"Mom," I whispered.
Julian looked at me. "You know her?"
"Keep quiet."
The hologram continued. "The guardians protect one thing: the truth about the night the mainline fell."
Her gaze shifted toward us, almost too precise to be a recording.
"Celeste Rook killed the mainline. She's not a saint, and she never wore the crown by right. She's a thief and a murderer. The heartbeat lock binding the mainline and her guardian is the only thing keeping her contained."
Julian's jaw tightened. "Contained where?"
"The lock is a cage," my mother said. "It burns the guardian from the inside because guardians were never meant to survive the truth's return."
The hologram turned fully toward me.
"If you're my daughter, listen carefully. The Vale altar lies seventeen kilometers east. The lock will count down as it carries the guardian toward the sanctuary. When his heart stops, the mainline blood burns to ash, and you're trapped in the Vale vault forever."
My fingers curled around the knife.
"But if he reaches the altar alive, and his heartbeat reaches zero while he stands on consecrated ground, the contract breaks. The guardian rises. The truth comes out. The crown returns to the mainline."
The image flickered.
Julian moved closer. "What happens if the lock reaches zero before we get there?"
My mother answered before I could.
"Then the lock won't kill Julian. It will choose a new guardian from the nearest living blood relative."
The hologram shattered into pixels.
Silence lasted half a breath.
Julian stared at me. "You heard her."
"I heard enough."
"No. You heard that if I die here, the lock finds someone else. Who?"
The lock on his neck screamed. Numbers burned across its surface.
53:40:22.
53:40:08.
53:39:54.
His hand went to the glowing sigil. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
"Fifty-three hours," he said. "That's what I've got."
"Then we run."
The tunnel behind us groaned.
Julian grabbed my bleeding hand and pulled me toward the sanctum's core. "You can go east and drag me to the altar, or you can stay here and search the vault for whatever your mother hid."
"You said the altar was east."
"It is. The vault is west."
"And you expect me to leave you alone in a collapsing tunnel?"
"I expect you to choose before the tunnel chooses for us."
The wall behind us split with a crack like a gunshot. Dust rolled through the passage.
His grip weakened.
I looked at his blood-slick hand, then at the blue light ahead.
"You don't get to die just because your plan's terrible," I said.
His mouth twitched, but the expression didn't reach his eyes. "That concern I hear?"
"Don't flatter yourself."
"Wasn't planning to."
I pulled him forward.
The tunnel opened into the sanctum core. Blue sigils burned across the walls, bright enough to hurt my eyes. An altar stood in the center of the chamber.
Celeste waited beside it.
She turned as we emerged. Her smile belonged on a campaign poster, not in a blood-lit vault.
"Well," she said. "The dead come home."
Behind her, a gun clicked as someone racked the slide.
Julian stepped in front of me, but his knees buckled. I caught his shoulder before he hit the floor.
Celeste lifted one hand.
"Put Julian on the altar," she said, "or I'll shoot the girl before she learns why her mother—"
Her finger settled against the trigger.