Chapter 38 · The Inquisitor's Gambit

"Hold her still." Augustus pressed two fingers beneath my jaw and forced my head back. "If the seam tears, the King comes out first. Her soul follows."

"Touch me again and lose the hand," I said.

The inquisitor smiled like I had told him a joke. His gloves were white. They should not have been. Nothing in this room was clean enough for white gloves.

Two soldiers pinned my shoulders to the iron chair. A third locked a band around my wrist. The metal bit through my sleeve, cold enough to make my fingers shake.

Across the chamber, a glass case held the pieces of Cassian.

Not his body. Not even enough of one to call him whole.

Black shards floated in thick amber fluid, each one no bigger than a knife blade. Dark lines pulsed through them. Every time one moved, the second heartbeat inside my chest kicked hard against my ribs.

Cassian felt it too.

"Sylvia," he said inside my skull. His voice came rough and close, like his mouth was against my ear. "Break the man's nose."

"Working on it."

"You have been saying that for six minutes."

"You try fighting with three soldiers sitting on you."