Chapter 6 · The Blood Price

"Don't turn around. They're on the ceiling."

Cane trusted Lyra enough to keep moving.

That was the first mistake. The second was breathing.

His lungs burned as he kicked through the ruined archway, one hand clamped around Lyra's wrist. The passage ahead narrowed between broken pillars. Behind them, the shadow-hunters poured through the water like torn pieces of night, their long limbs bending the wrong way as they crawled across stone and steel.

Lyra jerked against his grip. "You're pulling me into a dead end."

"Then find us a live one."

"I can't see through your stupid shoulder."

"You have eyes. Use them."

"Mine aren't glowing purple."

Cane glanced at the reflection in a cracked bronze plate. His eyes burned violet beneath his diving mask. Thin lines of the same light crawled from his neck toward his jaw, pulsing every time the blood pact tugged between them.

He looked away before Lyra could see his face.

Too late.

"You absorbed the abyss," she said.

"I noticed."

"That isn't a normal side effect."

"You want normal? Stop talking and swim."

She slapped his hand away.

The movement cost them three seconds.