Chapter 4

"You're done when I say you're done." His fingers dug in. Nails biting. "You cut any deeper and you kill me. That clear enough for you, doctor?"

We were chest to chest over his own open leg. Yeah. His leg. Split open from knee to shin, skin peeled back, and the bone underneath not bone anymore. Ivory. Smooth. And humming. Like a struck tuning fork.

And carved into it — letters.

Not random. Not plague texture. Letters.

"Look," I said, twisting against his grip. "You wanted me to fix this. This is fixing it."

"Fixing it doesn't mean carving love letters into my tibia," he hissed. His breath hit my face. Mint and blood and that weird sweet rot the plague gives off. "Close it. Now."

"It's a case number," I said. "You think that's normal? Someone carved a fucking case number into your bone, Julian."

His eyes flicked down. Just for a second. That ivory was still vibrating under the surgical light. You could feel it through the table.

"E-07," I said. "You know what that is?"

"I don't care what it is."

"It's my sister's file. E-07. Elara. She died three years ago in the quarantine ward. That was her number." My voice cracked and I hated it. "So tell me again how you don't care."

Julian didn't let go. If anything his grip got tighter. His other hand came up and shoved my shoulder, pinning me half against the instrument tray. Clatter. Scalpels jumped.

"Listen to me," he said, low and flat. "You dig deeper and everyone who knows about this is going to want you dead. Me included."

"You already want me dead," I shot back. "You had me dragged out of my clinic at gunpoint. Remember? Legal stranglehold? I treat you or I hang? So don't act like you're protecting me now."

"I'm protecting my house," he said. "You think you're the first doctor they've brought in here? You're the seventh. The other six are in the canal with their throats cut because they saw too much."

That shut me up for half a second.

The door was locked. Two guards outside. The whole estate was a tomb. And Julian — heir to the whole sunken city, pale, beautiful, rotting from the inside — was the only thing between me and those guards.

"So what," I said. "You want me to pretend I didn't see it? Sew you up and smile?"

"I want you to be smart," he said. His thumb pressed hard into the pulse in my wrist. My hand was shaking. His wasn't. "You want to save your sister? You want to save me? They're the same thing now. You get that? We're tied by bone. You don't get to play hero and cut me open like a pig."

"I'm not playing hero," I said. "I'm trying to keep you from turning into a statue."

He stared at me. Really stared. For the first time since he kidnapped me, he wasn't smirking. His eyes were grey and blown wide and scared.

"Then close it," he whispered. "Please."

Please. From him? That was new.

I swallowed. The saw was still buzzing in my hand. The bone was still humming. E-07 glinted under the blood.

"One more scrape," I said. "Just to see how deep the carving goes. Ten seconds. If you flatline I close. Deal?"

"No deal."

"Julian."

"No." He leaned in. His forehead almost touched mine. Sweat on his skin, cold again. His lips were way too close. "You touch that again and I will have you chained to this table. Don't test me, Kael."

His name in my mouth felt weird. Intimate. Dangerous.

I dropped the saw. Just a little. Let it clank onto the tray.

"Fine," I said. "But we're not done."

He let go of my wrist. Slow. Like he didn't want to. Red marks stayed on my skin where his fingers were.

I grabbed gauze with my good hand and pressed it to the incision. Blood soaked through fast. Too fast. The plague didn't like being exposed to air.

"Hold this," I ordered.

"You ordering me now?" he said, but he put his hand over mine. His palm was huge and cold and it covered my knuckles completely. Heat shot up my arm anyway. Stupid.

"Press harder," I said.

"I'm pressing."

"Harder. You want to bleed out on your fancy sheets?"

He pressed harder. Our hands tangled. His knee was right there, open, and I could see the ivory pulsing faintly under the blood. Like it was breathing.

"You feel that?" I asked.

"I feel everything," he muttered. "That's the problem. I hear them. All night. The dead. Screaming through my bones."

"And now my sister's in there too?"

He didn't answer. His jaw clenched.

I reached with my free hand for the file they'd left on the side table. Not his medical chart. The other one. The one the housekeeper slipped me when Julian was under. Black cover. No name. Just a wax seal — the Church's seal. Silas's seal.

"What's this?" I asked, flipping it open one-handed.

Julian's whole body went rigid. "Where did you get that?"

"Doesn't matter. You seen it before?"

"Give it to me."

"No." I held it away, blood on my gloves smearing the pages. "Holy shit. This is all bone-plague trials. Look — subject E-07. That's her. That's Elara. They were experimenting on her."

"Kael, give me the file."

"They list donors. Recipients. Transfers." I flipped faster. My heart was hammering so loud I could hear it over the bone hum. "Julian, this says the plague isn't a plague. It's a graft. They're putting something in people. Carving it in."

His hand shot out and grabbed the file. But I held tight. We were wrestling over it, over his open leg, blood getting everywhere.

"Let go!" I said.

"You don't know what you're reading!" he snarled. His face was inches from mine. "Silas will kill you if he knows you saw that. He will take you apart piece by piece and label you. Just like her."

"Silas? The Inquisitor? He's behind this?"

"Who do you think pays for this house? Who do you think keeps me alive?" He yanked hard and the file tore. Pages scattered. One landed right on his bleeding shin.

We both froze.

The page was stuck to the ivory. And the last line on it — handwritten, red ink — was staring up at us.

I read it out loud before I could stop myself.

"'Cure requires total marrow replacement. Donor must be consanguineous. Blood sacrifice—'"

Julian's hand slammed down on the page. Hard. Blood squelched.

"Don't," he said. His voice was shaking now. Really shaking. "Don't say it."

"Family blood," I whispered. "It needs family blood. Julian, whose family? Yours or—"

He grabbed my throat. Not hard enough to choke. Just enough to stop the words. His thumb pressed against my pulse. His eyes were wild.

"You want to save her?" he said, so quiet I felt it more than heard it. "You want to save me? Then tell me right now, doctor — whose blood do you think they're going to make us spill, mine or yours, and what happens when—"