Chapter 22 · Hollowborn - Chapter 22: The Blade Ten Years Ago

Cole's face went white. Not pale. White.

I mean the kind of white you see on corpses in the morgue, the ones that have been drained dry by soultakers. His eyes locked onto the floor where my mother's voice had just come from, and for a second I thought he was going to drop right there.

"That's not possible," he said. His voice came out flat. Dead.

My palm was still burning where the contract mark had seared into my skin, black lines spreading from the center like cracks in ice. The pain was sharp enough to make my vision blur at the edges, but I couldn't look away from Cole. From the way his whole body had gone rigid, like someone had shoved a knife between his ribs and told him not to move.

"Cole." I took a step toward him. "What the hell is going on?"

He didn't answer. Just stood there staring at the ground like he could see through the concrete, through the earth, all the way down to wherever my mother's voice had come from.

Then footsteps. Fast ones.

Marcus came around the corner with three hunters behind him, all of them armed.