Chapter 9 · Wanted: The Dead Woman

The city announced Lio Wren’s death before she had finished bleeding.

The voice came through the engine room’s brass speaking horns, smooth and warm enough to belong in a nursery. It drifted over the groan of the stabilizers and the ticking of cooling metal.

“By order of the Veyran Council, all citizens are instructed to report the sighting of an illegal reanimated subject. The subject is identified as Lio Wren, formerly an investigator of the Civic Disaster Bureau. Wren is wanted for the Galloglass catastrophe, the murder of one hundred and twelve civilians, theft of a Class-One relic, and treason against the Crowned City of Veyra.”

Lio sat on the engine-room floor with her back against a copper support pillar. Smoke curled from the burned skin along her forearms. Every heartbeat dragged a line of fire through her ribs, where the second seal rested beneath her skin like a coin pressed into fresh wax.

Beside her, Cael Rook tried to stand.

He made it halfway up before his injured leg buckled. His hand caught the pillar.