Chapter 24 · The Price of Going Home

The vault door doesn't look like a door. It's a slab of black stone with seven silver lines carved across it, each one humming with a different pitch. Mark presses his palm against the third line from the top. His name is somewhere in that access list, buried three weeks deep.

"How long until they notice we're here?" he asks.

Toria crouches beside him, one hand on the stone. "They already noticed. Question is how long until they send someone who can actually stop us."

Great.

The line under his palm flares white. The stone slab splits down the middle and slides open, no creak, no grind, just a whisper of displaced air. Beyond it, stairs spiral down into blue light.

"Stay close," Veran says. He's got his sword out, the one without the church seal on the pommel. The man burned his badge six hours ago and he still moves like a temple guard.

They go down.

The air gets colder with each step. Mark's knee starts complaining around the thirtieth stair. Forty-one and summoned wrong, and now he's limping into a forbidden imperial vault because the people who brought him here want him dead.