Chapter 28 · Don't Let Him Hear Her Heart

The bone puppet's ribcage split down the middle. Dust poured out where a heart should've been. Lucan caught the fragment before it hit the ground—carved runes, still warm. The message was clear enough.

Orin already had Ivy.

Mira's blade was still drawn. Blood ran down the groove in the steel, dripping onto the cracked floor. She didn't lower it. Her eyes tracked from the runes in his hand to his face.

"How long?"

Lucan's pulse hammered in his ears. The tablet under his ribs flared, hungry for the spike of fear, ready to turn it into something he could use. He shoved it down. Not yet.

"Two hours. Maybe three." He turned the bone fragment. The runes were Vey script, old standard. The kind his body knew even if his brain didn't. "He's got her heartbeat tethered. If we don't move now, she's gone."

"That's bait."

"Yeah."

Mira stepped closer. The blade stayed up. "He wants you to walk in."

"I know."

"So we don't go."

Lucan met her eyes. Gold flecks in the brown, sharp as the edge she held. "Cassian's sister. Your case. My neck. You said pick two."

Her jaw tightened.