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"You're going to keep me alive."
Kael's voice cut through the elevator hum before I could catch my breath. He was standing now, one hand pressed against the steel wall, the other holding his side where blood had already soaked through his shirt. The mark on my wrist pulsed once, hard, like something inside it was testing the fit.
"I'm going to what?"
"Seven nights." He pushed off the wall and stepped closer. "You broke the binding. Now it's on you. That means you carry the debt until the succession trial closes, or until I'm dead."
"Back up." I raised my good hand between us. "I didn't sign up for any of this. I broke your creepy neck tattoo because you were dying in a service elevator. You're welcome, by the way."
"You're welcome." His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "You just made yourself the primary target for every hunter guild in the city. They can't touch me while the mark's active. But you?" He glanced at my wrist. "You're new. Soft. They'll gut you in an alley and drag the binding back to me in a bag."
I felt the burn crawl up my forearm. "Then take it back."
"Can't."
"Try harder."
"Doesn't work like that." He moved past me and hit the emergency stop. The elevator lurched. "The mark bonds to intent. You chose to break it. It chose you back."
"I didn't choose anything. I just—"
"Saved my life. Yes. Congratulations. Now you get to keep doing it."
I wanted to punch him. My knuckles were still raw from the lighter, and my wrist felt like someone had shoved a hot wire under the skin, but I wanted to punch him anyway. "I have a life. A job. A brother who—"
"Milo Vale."
I went still.
Kael tilted his head, watching me. "Nineteen. Dropout. Builds phishing kits for low-end hustlers and thinks he's covering his tracks. He's not. He's three months behind on a loan to a man who breaks thumbs for late fees."
My throat closed. "How do you know that?"
"Because I own the building his lender works out of." Kael's voice didn't change. "And because the people hunting me already know your name, your address, and exactly how much pressure it takes to make you cooperate."
The mark pulsed again. I looked down and saw the edges starting to branch, fine black lines spreading toward my palm like roots.
"What do you want?"
"I told you. Seven nights. You stay close, you do what I say, and when the trial closes, the debt burns off. You walk. Your brother walks. Clean slate."
"And if I say no?"
Kael leaned in. Close enough that I could smell blood and expensive cologne and something sharper underneath, something wrong. "Then I let the hunters know where Milo likes to work. They'll use him to bait you out, and when you come running, they'll kill you both and carve the mark off your corpse. Selene Crowe's good at that. She'll make it last."
I couldn't breathe right. The elevator walls felt too close, the air too thin. "You're threatening my brother."
"I'm offering you a deal." He straightened. "Keep me alive. I keep him safe. Simple."
"There's nothing simple about this."
"No." His eyes were too sharp, too steady. "But it's the only option you've got."
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I wanted to grab my brother and disappear into some nowhere town where guys like Kael Mercer didn't bleed curses onto bartenders in service elevators. But the mark on my wrist was already pulling, a low ache that sank into bone, and I knew he wasn't lying. I could feel it. This thing wasn't going to let me go.
"What happens in seven nights?"
"The succession trial closes. The mark releases. You're free."
"And you?"
"I win, or I'm dead. Either way, you're out."
I laughed, sharp and bitter. "That's not exactly a safety guarantee."
"You want a guarantee?" Kael's voice dropped. "Here's one. Every hunter in the city wants my blood. They'll come through walls, through windows, through anyone standing between me and a clean kill. You stay close, you follow my rules, and maybe you live long enough to get that clean slate. You run, and Milo's the first person they visit."
My hands were shaking. I shoved them into my pockets. "You're a real piece of work."
"I'm alive. That's what matters."
"To who?"
He didn't answer. Just pulled a phone from his jacket, tapped something, and held it out. "This is your brother's current location. Updated every thirty seconds. If you try to warn him, if you run, if you do anything that puts this deal at risk, I pull security and let nature take its course."
I looked at the screen. Milo's apartment. The coffee shop two blocks down where he codes on stolen Wi-Fi. The pawn shop where he sold Mom's watch last year. All of it tracked, all of it mapped. I felt sick.
"Why me?"
"Wrong place, wrong time." Kael pocketed the phone. "And you had an obsidian lighter. That's not luck. That's bloodline."
I went cold. "What?"
"Your mother carried one too. Black stone, silver inlay, old guild mark on the base. You didn't just pick that up at a gas station." He watched me. "Who was she?"
"None of your business."
"It is now." He hit the elevator button. The car lurched back into motion. "Because whoever trained her is the same person who'll come looking for you once word gets out that you're carrying a Mercer binding."
My pulse hammered. "My mom's gone."
"Gone where?"
"I don't know. She left when I was sixteen. No note. No call. Just gone."
Kael was quiet for a beat. "And you never looked."
"I looked." My voice came out harder than I meant. "I looked everywhere. Police didn't care. Private investigators didn't find anything. She just vanished."
The elevator dinged. The doors slid open onto a hall I didn't recognize. White marble, low lights, the kind of place where the air smells like money and the security cameras cost more than my rent.
Kael stepped out. "Then maybe she didn't want to be found."
I followed because I didn't have a choice. The mark pulled, a slow drag under my skin that made it hard to think straight. "Where are we?"
"Safehouse. Penthouse level. No one gets in without clearance, and no one gets out without me knowing." He glanced back. "Welcome to the next seven nights."
The hall opened into a massive living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows, city lights stretching out like scattered glass. Leather furniture, steel fixtures, a bar in the corner that probably cost more than my car. It looked like a magazine spread. It looked like a trap.
Kael walked to a desk by the windows and pulled up a screen. Files scrolled past, faces I didn't know, names I'd never heard. Then one I had.
Selene Crowe.
My stomach dropped.
"She's the one running the hunt," Kael said. "Former guild tracker. Went private five years ago. She's the best in the business, and she knows every dirty secret the old families tried to bury."
I stared at the screen. Selene's face was sharp, cold, beautiful in a way that made you want to look twice and then run. But it wasn't her face that made my hands go numb.
It was the second photo.
A street corner. Three days ago, according to the timestamp. Two women standing under a broken streetlight, close enough to be talking. One of them was Selene.
The other was my mother.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. The mark on my wrist burned, hot and vicious, but I barely felt it.
"That's not possible," I whispered.
Kael looked at me. "You said she vanished."
"She did. She—" My voice cracked. "That's her. That's my mom."
"Three days ago," Kael said quietly. "Which means she's not gone. She's working."
"Working for who?"
He didn't answer. Just pulled up another file. Another photo. Same street corner, wider angle. Selene handing my mother something small, dark, wrapped in cloth.
The same size as the lighter in my pocket.
I took a step back. The room tilted. "No. No, she wouldn't—"
"She wouldn't what?" Kael's voice was too calm. "Train you to carry guild tools and then disappear the year you turned sixteen? Walk away without a word and let you think she was dead?" He closed the file. "Or work with the woman hunting me and show up three days before you crash an auction with her lighter in your pocket?"
I couldn't answer. Couldn't think. My mother's face stared out from the screen, older but the same, alive but gone, and I didn't know whether to scream or cry or put my fist through the glass.
"She set you up," Kael said.
I shook my head. "You don't know that."
"I know Selene doesn't do anything without a reason. I know your mother handed you a weapon and walked away. And I know you ended up in that elevator at exactly the right time to break a binding that should've killed me." He turned. "So either it's the coincidence of the century, or someone's playing a long game."
My wrist throbbed. The mark pulsed, sharp and hungry. I looked down and saw the lines spreading further, black veins crawling toward my fingers.
"What do you want me to say?"
"Nothing." Kael's voice was quiet. "I want you to keep me alive. And when this is over, I'll help you find her."
I looked up. "Why would you do that?"
"Because if your mother's working with Selene, then she knows who put the mark on me in the first place." His eyes didn't leave mine. "And I want that name."
The screen flickered. Another file opened, this one tagged with today's date. A location pin dropped onto a map, east side, warehouse district. A note underneath, two words.
Tonight. Midnight.
I felt the floor drop out. "What is that?"
Kael's jaw tightened. "Selene's opening move."