Chapter 5

He's got twelve men behind him. Full tactical gear. The kind of private army you buy when you've got more money than sense and a personality disorder. They fan out across the hall, rifles up, red laser dots painting every guard in the room.

"Ivy." Grayson's voice cuts through the chaos. Same smooth tone he used when he proposed. When he lied about the clinical trial. When he told me my family's deaths were just unfortunate timing. "Let's go home."

I'm still pressed against Silas. His heartbeat hammers against my spine. The bond between us is screaming. Not words. Just raw panic and rage mixing together until I can't tell whose emotions are whose.

"She's not going anywhere." Silas steps in front of me. His hand moves to his side but there's no weapon there. Lady Casta confiscated everything before the ceremony.

Grayson smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "You must be the dead man she's been keeping alive. Appreciate you taking care of her for me. We'll take it from here."

"Take it from here?" I shove past Silas. My hands are shaking but I don't hide them. "You blew up a subway station, Grayson. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" He takes three steps closer. His men move with him, a synchronized threat. "You disappeared for four days. Four days, Ivy. No calls. No texts. I had to track your phone to a condemned station and dig through city records to find this place. And I find you here—" He gestures at the Court, at Silas, at the guards still frozen with laser sights on their chests. "Playing house with the people who killed your family."

The words hit like a slap.

"He didn't kill them." I don't know why I say it. Maybe because the bond is feeding me Silas's fury and underneath it there's something that feels like truth. Or maybe I'm just an idiot. "The Night Court didn't—"

"The Night Court's been hunting bloodline carriers for two hundred years." Grayson cuts me off. He's using his board meeting voice now. Calm. Factual. Terrifying. "Your grandmother was a carrier. Your mother. You. They slaughtered everyone in your house looking for you, Ivy. And you're defending him?"

Silas moves. Not toward Grayson. Toward Lady Casta. "Call the guard. Now."

Lady Casta hasn't moved since the explosion. She's standing beside the altar, one hand on the obsidian blade. Her face is blank but her eyes are calculating. Watching Grayson's men. Counting exits.

"The guard won't reach us in time," she says. "And if they fire, the bond will kill her when you die."

Grayson's smile widens. "Then I guess he better not die."

He pulls a sidearm. Aims it at Silas's knee.

I move without thinking. Step between them. The gun's barrel is three feet from my chest and Grayson's face goes white.

"Ivy. Move."

"No." My voice doesn't shake. The rest of me does but my voice is steady. "You're not shooting anyone."

"He's using you." Grayson lowers the gun an inch. Just an inch. "Whatever he told you, whatever this bond is, it's a lie. They want your blood, Ivy. That's all you are to them."

"And what am I to you?" The question comes out before I can stop it. "A project? A bloodline to study? You were running trials on carriers, Gray. Don't pretend this is about me."

Something flickers across his face. Anger. Guilt. It's gone before I can name it.

"I was trying to save you," he says quietly. "The trials were supposed to suppress the bloodline markers. Make you invisible to them. I was going to cure you before we got married."

The room goes silent.

Cure me.

Like I'm sick. Like the only thing left of my family is a disease that needs fixing.

"Get out." My hands curl into fists. The bond surges. I feel Silas behind me, a wall of barely controlled violence. "Get out or I swear to god I'll—"

Grayson's radio crackles. A voice bursts through. "Sir, we've got movement in the lower tunnels. Multiple hostiles. They're coming up fast."

Lady Casta smiles. It's the worst thing I've seen all night.

"The other Courts," she says. "They heard the explosion. They're coming for her."

Grayson's jaw tightens. He looks at his men, then at me. The calculation is naked on his face. He can't fight the Night Court and three other Courts at the same time. Not down here. Not in their territory.

"This isn't over," he says. He backs toward the entrance, gun still raised. His men cover the retreat. "I'm not leaving you here, Ivy. I'll be back."

Then they're gone. Running up the stairs toward street level. The smoke starts to clear.

I turn to Silas. His face is gray. There's blood seeping through his shirt, spreading across his ribs. The wound from earlier—the one that nearly killed him—it's opened again. The explosion must have torn the stitches.

"You're bleeding."

"I'm fine." He's not fine. He's swaying on his feet. The bond is screaming again but this time it's just pain. His pain. Pouring into me like water through a broken dam.

Lady Casta steps forward. "The other Courts will be here in minutes. We need to move. Now."

"Move where?" I grab Silas's arm to steady him. His skin is cold. Too cold. "He needs a hospital."

"He needs you." Lady Casta's staring at me. Not at Silas. At me. "The bond can heal him. But you have to choose it. Fully. No half measures."

"I don't know how."

"Your blood." She points at the altar. At the obsidian blade still lying there. "A bond sealed in blood can channel power both ways. He kept you alive for three days. Now you return it."

Silas tries to shake his head. "Don't. Ivy, don't listen to her. If you use bloodline power here they'll know. They'll all know what you are."

"They already know." My voice sounds far away. "Grayson told them. The other Courts. That's why they're coming."

Footsteps echo from below. Dozens of them. Getting closer.

I pick up the blade.

It's heavier than it looks. The obsidian is black but when I tilt it the edge catches the light and flashes red. Old blood, maybe. Or just the way the stone formed. I don't let myself think about it.

I cut my palm.

The pain is sharp and clean. Blood wells up, drips onto the stone floor. For a second nothing happens.

Then the floor starts to glow.

Not the floor. The blood. My blood. It hits the stone and spreads out in lines I can't see until they're burning. Symbols. A circle. They race outward from where I'm standing, drawing themselves in light that's too bright to look at directly.

Silas grabs my wrist. "Ivy, stop. You don't know what you're—"

The light explodes.

It pours into him through our joined hands. I feel it leave me. A rush of heat and power that isn't mine but is, something sleeping in my veins that wakes up screaming. Silas gasps. The wound in his side closes. Not slowly. All at once. Skin knitting together like it was never torn.

The bond snaps tight between us.

I fall. He catches me. We both go down to our knees on the glowing floor.

"What did you do?" His voice is rough. Awed. Terrified. "Ivy, what the hell did you do?"

I don't have an answer.

Because under us, under the blood and the glowing symbols, something moves.

The floor cracks.

Not breaks. Cracks. Like it was always meant to open. A line splits the stone from the altar to the far wall. Then another. They spread out in a pattern that matches the symbols, and where they meet there's a sound like a lock turning.

A door rises from the floor.

Black iron. Older than the Court. Older than the station. It's covered in the same symbols that are burning in my blood, but these aren't glowing. They're dark. Hungry.

Lady Casta steps back. For the first time since I met her, she looks afraid.

"The Undercroft," she whispers. "It hasn't opened in seventy years."

The door swings wide.

Cold air rushes out. It smells like stone and iron and something else. Something that makes my hindbrain scream run. But I can't run. I'm on my knees, blood still dripping from my palm, and the doorway is full of dark.

Footsteps on the stairs. The other Courts. Close now. Too close.

Silas hauls me to my feet. "We have to go."

"Go where?" I stare at the black doorway. At the nothing waiting inside. "We don't even know what's down there."

"It's the old bloodline vault." Lady Casta's voice is flat. Shaken. "Where the first Courts locked away everything too dangerous to destroy. If that door opened for you—"

She doesn't finish.

She doesn't have to.

Behind us, the Court's main doors burst open. Guards pour in. Not Night Court guards. These ones wear silver and white. Another Court. They see us. See the blood. See the open door.

One of them shouts. They raise weapons.

Silas pulls me toward the doorway. "Trust me."

"I don't." But I'm already moving. My feet hit the threshold and the cold wraps around me like a living thing. "I really, really don't."

We step through.

The door slams shut behind us.

And we fall into the dark.