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The thing came through the wall.
I didn't get a good look at first because I was too busy scrambling backward across Kane's bedroom floor, my wedding dress tangling around my legs. The shadows had followed us from the balcony. They'd crawled up the stairs behind us like smoke, and now they were pooling in the corners of the room, and something was moving inside them.
"Stay behind me." Kane's voice was different. Colder. He stood between me and the wall, and I could see the curse marks on his neck glowing faint red through his collar.
The shadow peeled itself off the wall and took shape. Four legs. Too many teeth. Eyes that didn't reflect light, just swallowed it.
"What the hell is that?" My back hit the edge of the bed.
"One of mine."
I stared at him. "One of your what?"
The beast growled. Low and wet, like it was speaking through a mouthful of blood. Kane said something back in a language I didn't recognize, and the thing's head swung toward me.
"Kane."
"It's confused." He took a step closer to the beast, hands out. "It knows you're marked, but it doesn't know why."
Marked. The name on my wrist burned.
"You said the council wanted you dead," I said. "You didn't say you were the thing they were hunting."
"I was going to tell you."
"When? After this thing ate me?"
The beast lunged.
I threw myself sideways and hit the floor hard. My palms skidded on the rug. The beast's claws tore through the mattress where I'd been sitting, and stuffing exploded into the air.
Kane moved faster than I'd ever seen him move. He caught the beast mid-leap and slammed it into the floor. The impact shook the room. The creature twisted under him, snapping at his arm, and he shoved his forearm into its mouth.
Blood sprayed across the carpet.
"Kane!"
He didn't flinch. He leaned in close, whispering that same wrong-sounding language, and the beast went still. Its jaw unlocked. It dropped to the floor like a puppet with cut strings and dissolved back into smoke.
Kane stood there breathing hard, blood dripping from his arm onto his torn shirt.
I couldn't move. My brain was trying to catch up with what I'd just seen, and it wasn't working.
"You're bleeding," I said stupidly.
"It'll heal."
"That's not—" I stopped. Started over. "What are you?"
He looked at me, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked tired. "The council calls them shadow beasts. Vesper City's been infested with them for three years. They kill indiscriminately. No pattern, no warning. The council's been hunting the source."
"And the source is you."
"Yes."
I should have run. I should have grabbed my coat and my brother's medical file and gotten the hell out of that house. Instead, I heard myself say, "Why?"
Kane sat down on the edge of the ruined bed. He didn't look at me. "The curse isn't just in my blood. It's feeding on me. Every time I lose control, more of them crawl out. I've been trying to contain it for three years, but it's getting worse."
"So you married me."
"I married you because you're the first person I've met who could see the marks." He finally looked up. "And because the curse reacted to you. At the crash site. You touched my hand, and for ten seconds, it went quiet."
I remembered. The pull under his skin. The way the marks had flickered when I'd tried to stop the bleeding.
"You think I can fix it," I said slowly.
"I think you're connected to it. I don't know how yet."
My mother's voice whispered in my head. The half-burned journal pages I'd found in her desk after she died. The diagrams I'd never understood.
"Show me," I said.
Kane froze. "What?"
"The curse. Show me where it starts."
He stared at me like I'd just offered to cut my own throat. "Evelyn, if you touch it directly—"
"You dragged me into this. You put your name on my wrist and told the council I was yours. The least you can do is let me see what I'm dealing with."
For a long moment, he didn't move. Then he unbuttoned his shirt.
The marks covered his chest. They weren't just lines anymore. They were words, symbols, something that looked almost like a map. And in the center, right over his heart, there was a knot of scar tissue that pulsed faintly with red light.
I'd seen this before. In my mother's journal. In the nightmare I'd had the night she died.
"Who did this to you?" I whispered.
Kane's jaw tightened. "I don't know. I was twelve. Someone broke into the estate, killed my parents, and carved this into me while I was unconscious. I woke up three days later in a hospital with no memory of the attack and shadows crawling under my skin."
Twelve. He'd been twelve.
I moved closer. My hand hovered over the scar. "If I touch it—"
"It might kill you. Or it might wake up something worse."
"Good thing I'm a paramedic."
I pressed my palm flat against his chest.
The world inverted.
I was standing in a memory that wasn't mine. A child's bedroom. Kane, smaller and terrified, pinned to the bed by something I couldn't see. A woman leaning over him with a knife that dripped black ink.
Her face swam into focus.
I knew that face.
I'd seen it every day for sixteen years before she died.
My mother carved the curse into Kane's chest, whispering words I couldn't hear, and then she looked up. Straight at me. Like she knew I'd be here someday, watching.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But he has to carry it. If he doesn't, the city burns."
I yanked my hand back.
Kane caught me before I hit the floor. "Evelyn. Evelyn, look at me."
I couldn't breathe. My mother. My mother did this.
"What did you see?" Kane's hands were on my face, forcing me to focus.
I looked up at him. At the man my mother had tortured. The monster she'd created.
"I saw who cursed you," I whispered.
His eyes went sharp. "Who?"
I couldn't say it. If I said it out loud, it would be real.
Kane's grip tightened. "Evelyn. Who cursed me?"
The name on my wrist flared hot enough to burn.
"My mother," I said. "It was my mother."