Chapter 15 · The Vault Beneath Frostfall

"You have three minutes to tell me why this door knows my blood." I kept my palm against the black stone and stared at Calian. "After that, I break it open without you."

Calian caught my wrist before I could pull the knife from my belt. His fingers locked around me, hot against the cold metal ring biting my skin.

"You won't break it," he said. "You'll wake everything behind it."

"Then stop treating me like a hostage and start talking."

His thumb pressed over my pulse. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to remind me that he could.

The sealed door stood beneath Frostfall Citadel, buried past the old armory and three collapsed stairwells. Seven thin cuts ran across its surface, each one filled with dark red wax. My blood had lit the first cut the moment I touched it. Six remained dead.

Calian had brought me here in chains.

He had removed them ten minutes ago.

That didn't make me free.

"You wanted the vault," he said. "Now you're standing in front of it."

"I wanted answers."

"You wanted your mother's records."

My jaw tightened. "Don't say her name like you own it.