Chapter 9 · The Memory Ward

"Don't touch that rune, Vera."

Rafe caught my wrist before my blade finished the cut.

His fingers burned against my skin. The silver poison had turned the veins in his hand gray, but he still had enough strength to stop me cold.

I looked at his grip, then at his blood-smeared face.

"Then stop bleeding on the door."

"That's not a solution."

"It's the only one we've got."

Water thundered through the lower tunnels behind us. The flood had already swallowed our way out. Above the stone, Lucian's hunters shouted and hammered at the passage.

The crypt shook beneath our boots.

Rafe tightened his hold. "The ward needs royal blood in pairs. Mine opened the first rune. Yours has to wake the second."

"You knew that before you dragged me down here."

"I knew the door needed two bloodlines. I didn't know the second mark would take memories."

My knife stopped a breath from my palm.

"How do you know?"

His jaw locked.

That was answer enough.

I yanked against him. "You knew."

"I suspected."

"You dragged me into a death crypt on a suspicion?"

"I dragged you away from Lucian's firing line."

"You chained me to your blood contract.