Chapter 8 · Bound to the Executioner: Leveling Up With My Enemy - Chapter 8: Twenty-Four Hours to Bleed

"Get your hands off me, you little plague-rat," Soren spat, though the threat lacked its usual bite. He was pinned against the damp stone wall of the lower archives, his breath coming in ragged, wet rattles.

I didn't flinch. I shoved my palm harder against his chest, feeling the unnatural heat radiating through his tunic. "Shut up and hold still, or you're going to bleed out on my boots. I'm the only one in this godforsaken city who knows how to stop that timer on your neck."

He glared at me, eyes bloodshot and swimming with a fever that looked more like madness than illness. The blood-curse timer embedded in his collarbone was pulsing a violent, sickly crimson. Twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes.

"I don't need a medic," he rasped, his hand twitching toward the hilt of his blade. "I need the stabilizer. Now."

"Yeah, and I need a vacation in a place where people don't try to execute me every Tuesday," I snapped back. I stepped closer, my boots crunching on broken glass. The air in the vault smelled like old parchment and ozone. "The stabilizer is behind that door. You can't even stand straight.