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The voice came from inside the wall.
Drake's hand went to his hip—empty holster, no blade, nothing but the burn crawling through his veins again. Six hours. That was all he got before the silver started eating him from the inside out. He looked at Ella. She stood in front of the hidden door like she'd been expecting it to open her whole life.
"Your mother's voice," he said.
Ella didn't turn around. "Recording. Probably. She was good at traps."
The door was stone, same as the wall, but the seam glowed red now. The symbols running down both sides pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Or maybe that was just the poison doing its thing. Hard to tell anymore.
"You coming?" Ella stepped through.
Drake followed because what else was he going to do? Sit in the crypt and wait for his organs to fail? He ducked through the doorway and the temperature dropped twenty degrees. His breath fogged. The room on the other side was small, maybe ten feet across, carved out of raw stone. No windows. One torch on the far wall, already lit. In the center of the floor, a circle of dried blood.
Ella crouched next to it, ran her fingers along the edge. "She bled here. A lot."
"Ritual?"
"Yeah." Ella stood, wiped her hand on her jeans. "The kind that doesn't let you walk away after."
Drake scanned the walls. More symbols, older than the ones in the crypt. These looked burned into the stone, not carved. And in the corner, a wooden chest about the size of a footlocker. Iron bands across the lid. No lock he could see.
"What was she trying to seal?" he asked.
Ella walked to the chest, knelt in front of it. She didn't touch it. "Not seal. Bind. There's a difference."
"Which is?"
"Sealing keeps something in one place. Binding ties it to a person." She looked up at him. "Or a bloodline."
The burn in his chest spiked. Drake gritted his teeth, leaned against the wall. His legs felt like water. "I need—"
"I know." Ella pulled her sleeve back, already reaching for the knife at her belt.
Drake caught her wrist. "No."
She went still. "You're about to pass out."
"I said no." He let go, pushed off the wall. Took two steps toward the center of the room before his knee buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the blood circle, palm flat against the stone. The cold bit into his skin.
Ella was beside him in half a second. "You're going to die if you keep being stupid about this."
"I'm a hunter." He forced himself upright. "I don't drink from Darkborn. I kill them."
"You already drank." Her voice was flat. "Three times now. You're past the line, Drake."
He wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her it was different, that he'd find another way, that the Guild had protocols for this kind of contamination. Except the Guild's protocol was a bullet, and Lucas wasn't here to pull the trigger.
The room tilted.
Ella grabbed his arm, steadied him. "Sit down before you crack your head open."
He sat. His back hit the wall and he slid down until he was on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him. The burn was in his stomach now, twisting. He could feel his pulse in his teeth.
Ella knelt next to him, knife already out. She didn't ask this time. Just pressed the blade to her wrist and let the blood well up, dark and slow.
"Open your mouth," she said.
Drake turned his head away. "I can't keep doing this."
"You don't have a choice."
"There's always a choice."
Ella grabbed his jaw, forced him to look at her. Her grip was strong enough to crack bone if she wanted. "Yeah? What's yours? You want to die in this room? Because that's what happens if you don't drink. The silver will cook you from the inside and you'll be dead in an hour. Maybe less."
"I've been dead since the moment I walked into that crypt." His voice came out hoarse. "You know it. I know it. This bond or pact or whatever you want to call it—it's not something I walk away from. The Guild doesn't take back hunters who've been turned."
"You're not turned. You're bound."
"Same thing to them."
Ella let go of his jaw. She sat back on her heels, knife still in one hand, blood dripping onto the stone. "So what, you'd rather just die? That's your plan?"
Drake closed his eyes. The burn was in his throat now. He could taste copper. "I don't know."
"Well figure it out fast, because I'm not watching you choke on your own blood just so you can keep pretending you're still some kind of saint."
He opened his eyes. Looked at her. She was furious, he realized. Not the cold, controlled kind of angry he'd seen in the crypt. This was raw. Her hand was shaking.
"Why do you care?" he asked.
She didn't answer right away. Just stared at him like she was trying to decide whether to hit him or walk out. Finally she said, "Because I'm the reason you're dying. Because my mother set this trap and you walked into it and now you're stuck with me. And I don't—" She stopped. Looked away. "I don't want another person dead because of me."
Drake watched her. The knife was still in her hand. The blood on her wrist had started to dry.
"How many?" he asked.
She looked back at him. "What?"
"How many people have died because of you?"
Her jaw tightened. "Enough."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting." She lifted her wrist, held it in front of his face. "Now drink, or I'll make you."
Drake looked at the blood. At her. The burn was in his lungs now, squeezing. He could feel his heartbeat slowing down, each thump taking longer than the last.
He took her wrist.
This time it didn't taste like metal. It tasted warm. Almost sweet. He drank until the burn started to fade, until he could breathe again without feeling like his ribs were cracking. When he let go, Ella pulled her arm back and wiped the blood off with her sleeve.
"Better?" she asked.
He nodded. Didn't trust himself to speak yet.
Ella stood, walked back to the chest. She crouched in front of it again, this time reaching for the lid. "This is what she wanted me to find."
"How do you know?"
"Because she wouldn't have led me here otherwise." Ella lifted the lid. It opened without a sound. Inside, a rolled piece of parchment, yellowed and brittle. And underneath it, a single silver dagger, the blade etched with the same symbols as the walls.
Ella pulled out the parchment first, unrolled it carefully. Her face went pale.
"What is it?" Drake pushed himself to his feet, crossed the room. He looked over her shoulder.
The parchment was a map. Old, hand-drawn, ink faded but still legible. It showed the monastery, the crypt, the forest beyond. And in the corner, a list of names. Written in red.
Drake's stomach dropped.
The first name on the list was Hallow.
Not just Hallow. Drake Cyrus Hallow. His full name. The name his mother had given him, the one only the Guild registry had on file.
"What the hell is this?" His voice came out too loud in the small room.
Ella didn't look at him. She was staring at the date written at the top of the map. "This was made four hundred years ago."
Drake grabbed the parchment from her hands, held it up to the torchlight. The ink was old, no question. The paper cracked under his fingers. And there, right below his name, another line of text in a language he didn't recognize. But the symbol next to it—he knew that one. Every hunter did.
Bloodline mark.
The kind used to track family lines. To identify descendants. To bind generational curses.
"She knew," Ella said quietly. "My mother knew your bloodline. She wrote your name four centuries before you were born."
Drake's hands were shaking. He looked at the other names on the list. Twelve in total. Some he didn't recognize. But three of them—three of them were Guild names. Families he'd trained with. Hunters who'd been declared KIA in the past decade.
"This is a hit list," he said.
Ella took the parchment back, rolled it up carefully. "No. It's a binding list. These are the people my mother tied to this place. To whatever she locked in here." She looked at the dagger still in the chest. "And you're the last one."
Drake felt the room tilt again. Not from the poison this time. From the realization sinking in.
He wasn't random. The trap in the crypt hadn't been meant for just any hunter. It had been waiting for him. For his bloodline. For four hundred years.
"Why?" The word came out raw.
Ella met his eyes. "I don't know yet. But we're going to find out."
She reached into the chest and pulled out the dagger.