Chapter 35 · The Order to Burn

The ballroom floor tilted beneath them.

Lio’s knees struck marble. Pain flashed up her injured palm, but she barely felt it over the deeper pressure crushing through her skull. The world had split open when she pulled the command mark from Cael’s core, and now the fracture was swallowing everything—music without musicians, fire hanging motionless in the air, guests frozen with their mouths open around silent screams.

Cael’s hand was still locked around hers.

His fingers were cold. Too cold.

“Cael.” Lio tightened her grip. “Look at me.”

His head jerked toward her.

For one heartbeat, his eyes were his own: gray, sharp, terrified.

Then black lines crawled up his throat.

The remains of the command mark pulsed beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. It had been torn from his core, but not destroyed. A splinter of it clung to the fracture between their minds, dragging him backward through the memories they had shared.

“No,” Cael rasped.

The ballroom vanished.

Lio stood in Tower Nine.

Smoke rolled along the ceiling. Burning paper spiraled through the air like dead moths. Somewhere above them, a child was crying.