Chapter 13 · The Door Under Her Skin

The crack's widening. I can hear it—stone grinding against stone, something wet scraping up from below. The pale heads keep coming, fingers digging into the monastery floor like they're climbing out of their own grave.

Drake's still holding my hand. His grip's weak. The silver's spread to his eyelids now, thin black veins crawling across his skin like roots looking for water.

"Ella." His voice comes out rough. "Whatever you're thinking—don't."

I'm thinking a lot of things. Most of them involve my mother being a manipulative dead bitch who planned this six hundred years ago. She didn't just bind Drake to me. She bound him to the lock. He dies, the door opens. He lives, whatever's down there stays down there.

Simple math. Horrible math.

Vera's screaming orders at the tunnel entrance. Her hunters are already halfway up the ladder, trampling each other to get out. Can't blame them. The things coming through the crack don't look like anything that should be alive. Their skin's too pale, like something that's been underwater for centuries. Their eyes glow, but it's not light—