Chapter 10 · Don't Take His Hand

Mira had her blade out before the rift ash finished settling.

Lucan stood three feet away, still breathing hard, one hand pressed against the stone wall like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Blood from the duel earlier had dried brown along his collar. He looked at her blade, then at her face.

"You saw him," he said.

She did. Orin Valehart, smiling in a hospital room half a world away, holding a plastic wristband between two fingers like it was a leash. The rift had snapped shut, but the image stuck. The man in the black coat. The beeping monitor. The sister.

"I saw a door you shouldn't be able to open," Mira said. Her voice came out flat. Professional. The voice she used when she wrote incident reports and didn't want anyone asking why her hand shook. "I saw you crack a gate inside Raventhorn Hall without a seal or a blood circle."

"He's got my sister."

"I don't care."

Lucan's jaw tightened. He pushed off the wall, and she angled the blade half an inch to the right. Not a threat. A reminder.

"The protocol's simple," she said.