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Drake's hand is still on his comm when the static clears. Lucas's voice comes through, tight and low. "You hear me?"
"Yeah." Drake keeps his eyes on Ella. She's standing by the far wall, arms crossed, watching him like she's waiting for something. "I'm here."
"Good. Listen—Vera's inbound. ETA forty minutes, maybe less. She's bringing a purge team."
Drake's jaw locks. "How many?"
"Six. Full blessed silver loadout." Lucas pauses. "Drake, she knows."
"Knows what?"
"That you made contact with the target. She's calling it contamination. Orders are to extract you and terminate on sight."
Ella doesn't move, but her mouth twitches. She heard every word.
Drake kills the comm. He looks at her, really looks at her. Dark hair still tangled from the crypt, dried blood on her wrist where she cut herself to save him. She doesn't look six hundred years old. She looks tired.
"So," she says. "Your people are coming to kill me."
"They're not my people."
"You wore their coat. You carried their weapons. You walked into my mother's grave to put a blade in something like me." She tilts her head. "What changed?"
"You saved my life."
"I told you. I'm tired of watching people die down there." She pushes off the wall, takes two steps toward him. "You think that makes us allies? It doesn't. The second you figure out how to break this blood pact, you'll go back to them. And I'll be alone again."
Drake stands. His ribs still ache where the trap damn near caved them in, but the pain's distant now. Muffled. He can feel her blood working through him, cold and steady, keeping the silver quiet.
"I don't know how to break it," he says. "Do you?"
Ella's mouth twists. "My mother spent two hundred years designing it. You think she left an off switch?"
"Then we're stuck."
"You're stuck. I've been stuck for six centuries. This is just one more chain."
She turns away, moving toward the narrow window. Moonlight slants across the stone floor. Outside, the forest is black and silent. Drake watches the line of her shoulders, the way her hands curl into fists and then release.
"Forty minutes," he says.
She doesn't look back. "I heard."
"You planning to run?"
"I don't run anymore."
"Then what?"
She's quiet for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is flat. "I'll walk out the front gate. They'll see me. They'll shoot. You'll feel it—every round that hits me, you'll feel it. But you'll live. The pact doesn't care if I'm dead, just that I bled for you once. The silver will stay quiet as long as my blood's still in your system. Three, maybe four days. Enough time for you to get back to New York and figure out what story you're going to tell them."
Drake's chest goes tight. Not from the ribs. From something else.
"That's your plan? Walk into a firing line?"
"You have a better one?"
"Yeah. Don't get shot."
Ella turns. Her eyes catch the moonlight, and for a second they almost look gold. "You don't get it. I'm the mission. I'm the thing your Guild's been hunting for decades. You brought them here. You don't get to feel bad about it now."
"I'm not—"
"You are." She takes another step toward him. "I can smell it on you. Guilt. Shame. Whatever you want to call it. You're a hunter, Drake. You kill things. That's the job. So let me make it easy for you."
She moves fast—faster than he can track. One second she's by the window, the next she's at the door, hand on the iron latch.
Drake doesn't think. He just moves.
He grabs her arm, yanks her back. She spins, slams him into the wall, forearm across his throat. Her face is an inch from his, and her eyes aren't hazel anymore. They're black. Fully black.
"Don't touch me," she says. Her voice is low and cold and nothing like it was a second ago.
"Don't walk out that door."
"Why not?"
"Because I'll feel it."
Her expression doesn't change, but something flickers behind her eyes. "That's the point."
"No. The point is we figure this out together. You want to die, fine. But not for me. Not because you think it's easier."
She holds him there, pinned against the stone. He can feel her pulse through her wrist where it's pressed against his collarbone. Fast. Too fast.
"I don't want to die," she says finally. "I just don't want to be the reason someone else does."
"Then stop trying to be."
She lets him go. Steps back. Her eyes fade to hazel again, and she looks away, jaw tight.
Drake straightens. His comm crackles. He ignores it.
"Thirty minutes," Ella says quietly.
"Then we move. There's a service tunnel under the east wing. Leads out to the ridge."
"You scouted it?"
"Last night. Before I went into the crypt."
She almost smiles. "Always have an exit."
"Always."
"And when they track us? When they find us again? What then?"
Drake picks up his coat from the floor, shakes the dust off. The blessed silver lining glints in the dim light. He looks at it for a second, then drops it.
"Then we don't let them find us."
Ella watches him leave the coat. Her expression shifts—something between surprise and suspicion. "You're serious."
"You saved my life. I'm not letting your people execute you for it."
"They're your people, Drake. Not mine."
"Not anymore."
The words sit between them, heavy and sharp. Ella's mouth opens, closes. She shakes her head.
"You don't know what you're saying. You'll regret it. Tomorrow, next week—whenever the guilt wears off, you'll regret it."
"Maybe. But I'm not regretting it now."
His comm crackles again. This time he hears it—Vera's voice, cold and clipped, cutting through the static.
"Drake Hallow. If you can hear this, respond. We are three klicks out. You have fifteen minutes to secure the target and mark your position. If you are compromised, stay down. We will extract you and neutralize the threat. Confirm."
Drake pulls the comm off his vest. He looks at it, then at Ella.
"Confirm, Hunter Hallow."
Ella's eyes are locked on the comm in his hand. "She sounds like she cares about you."
"She doesn't."
"She does. I've lived long enough to know what that sounds like." Ella steps closer. "You had something with her."
Drake doesn't answer.
"And now you're choosing me."
"I'm not choosing you. I'm choosing not to be the kind of hunter who kills someone for saving his life."
"That's the same thing."
Vera's voice crackles through again. "Drake. Respond. That's an order."
Ella reaches out, slow, and takes the comm from his hand. Her fingers brush his palm, and he feels it—a jolt, sharp and cold, like touching a live wire.
She lifts the comm to her mouth. "He can't come to the phone right now."
Silence.
Then Vera's voice, low and deadly. "Who is this?"
"The target."
Drake grabs for the comm, but Ella steps back, eyes locked on his.
"Put Drake on. Now."
"He's right here. He's fine. A little conflicted, maybe. But fine."
"If you've harmed him—"
"I saved him. Your blessed silver trap nearly killed him. I gave him my blood. Now he's bound to me. You want him back, you'll have to go through me first."
Vera's breathing changes. Sharp and fast. "You contaminated him."
"I kept him alive."
"That's contamination. That's grounds for purge protocol." A pause. "You just signed his death warrant."
Ella's face goes still. She looks at Drake, and for the first time since he met her, he sees fear.
"New orders," Vera says. Her voice is calm now. Too calm. "Take Drake Hallow alive. Execute Ella Nowak on sight."