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The tunnel was still burning behind them when Mira grabbed his collar and shoved him against the outer wall.
Noah's ribs screamed. The hound bite from thirty seconds ago was still leaking through his shirt, hot and sticky, and she didn't care.
"You're coming with me," she said. "Now."
He tried to breathe. Couldn't. The smoke was in his lungs and her knuckles were digging into his collarbone and somewhere back in that hall Orin was probably still smiling.
"I don't—" He coughed. Tasted copper. "I don't even know you."
"You know enough." Her voice was low, clipped. She wasn't asking. "You shattered a sanctioned soul lamp in front of a council witness. That's exile or worse. But I can keep you breathing if you do exactly what I say."
Noah looked past her shoulder. The tunnel exit was a ragged mouth of firelight and cracked stone. People were stumbling out, singed and shouting. Nobody was looking at them yet.
He didn't have a lot of options.
"What do you want?"
Mira's eyes narrowed. They were pale gray, sharp as glass, and they didn't blink.
"My father was killed investigating a rift gate project six months ago. The case got buried. You're the first person in half a year to crack a seal signature that matches the residue we pulled from his body."
Noah went still.
"I didn't kill anyone."
"I know." She let go of his collar but didn't step back. "You're not good enough. But whoever broke you is."
His pulse hammered in his ears. The tablet was a cold weight against his spine, tucked under his shirt. It had eaten the pain from the hound bite, turned it into something else, something that hummed under his skin like a second heartbeat.
He didn't know what Lucan had been before Noah landed in his body. But Mira thought he was the key.
And Noah needed her.
"So what," he said slowly, "you want me to play bait?"
"I want you to tell me everything." She tilted her head. "Who taught you to break a lamp. Who gave you the blade. Why Orin Valehart wants you dead but won't do it himself."
Noah almost laughed. It came out as a cough instead.
"I don't remember."
"Liar."
"I'm serious." He straightened up, ignoring the way his ribs pulled. "I woke up three days ago and everything before that is gone. I don't know who I pissed off. I don't know what I did. I'm just trying not to die."
Mira stared at him.
The fire popped behind them. Someone shouted for a medic.
"You're telling me," she said, voice flat, "that you have no memory."
"None."
"But you knew how to use a crux blade. You fed a pain anchor. You read a seal signature in under five seconds."
Noah's mouth went dry.
She stepped closer. He could feel the heat coming off her, or maybe that was just the fire. Her hand came up, palm flat, and pressed against his chest. Not a shove this time. A test.
His heart kicked under her fingers.
"You're scared," she said quietly. "But not confused. You know exactly what you're doing. You just don't want to say it."
He didn't move. Couldn't. Her hand was warm through the blood-soaked shirt and her eyes were too close and she smelled like smoke and something sharper, medicinal, like the disinfectant they used in the ER.
Noah was used to people dying in his hands. He wasn't used to this.
"I need protection," he said. His voice came out rough. "Orin's got the council. I've got nothing. If you can keep him off me for a week, I'll help you. But I can't do it if I'm dead."
Mira's jaw tightened. Her hand didn't move.
"One week," she said. "You stay in my sight. You answer every question. You don't run, you don't lie, and you don't pull any more stunts like the one you just did in there."
"And you keep Orin away."
"I keep him from killing you. I don't keep him from asking questions."
Noah exhaled through his teeth. It wasn't a good deal. It wasn't even a fair one.
But it was the only one on the table.
"Fine," he said. "What do I have to do?"
Mira pulled something from her belt. A thin black cord, braided tight, with a silver clasp on one end. It looked like a bracelet. It didn't feel like one.
"Pact cord," she said. "You wear it, I hold the anchor. You break the terms, it burns through to bone. You try to run, I know where you are. You die, I know who did it."
Noah looked at the cord. Then at her.
"You do this a lot?"
"Only when I don't trust someone." She held it out. "Left wrist."
He didn't take it.
"What happens when the week's up?"
"Depends on what you give me." Her voice was calm, clinical. "If you're useful, we renegotiate. If you're not, I turn you over to the council and let them decide what to do with a blood heir who can't remember his own crimes."
Noah's throat tightened.
He thought about his sister. About the hospital bills piling up on his kitchen counter, the shifts he'd never work again, the apartment he'd never see. He thought about the subway ceiling coming down and the woman with the silver blade in her ribs and the way the air had ripped open and swallowed him whole.
He thought about Lucan Vey, the body he was wearing, and the enemies lining up to put him back in the ground.
He didn't have a choice.
"Okay," he said.
Mira stepped closer. She was tall, maybe an inch shorter than him, and when she reached for his wrist her fingers were steady.
The cord went on cold. It tightened on its own, snug enough to feel but not enough to cut. The clasp clicked shut and something hummed under his skin, low and resonant, like a tuning fork pressed to bone.
Mira's hand stayed on his wrist.
"Say it," she said. "Full name. No shortcuts."
Noah looked at her. Her face was unreadable, all hard lines and pale eyes and firelight.
He didn't know Lucan's full name. He didn't know what the cord would do if he said the wrong one.
But the tablet under his shirt was warm now, warmer than it had been, and the hum in his veins felt like an answer.
"Lucan Ashford Vey," he said.
The cord flared silver. Mira's fingers tightened, just for a second, and then the light died.
She let go.
"Done," she said. "One week. Don't make me regret it."
Noah rubbed his wrist. The cord sat there like a scar.
Mira turned and started walking toward the tunnel mouth, where the firelight was starting to fade and the medics were hauling people onto stretchers.
Noah followed.
He made it three steps before the tablet moved.
It didn't burn this time. It didn't pull. It just opened, a feeling like a book cracking its spine after years on a shelf, and the words wrote themselves across the inside of his skull in clean white ink.
YOUR SISTER IS STILL ALIVE.
Noah stopped walking.
His chest went tight. His hands started shaking.
Mira glanced back.
"What?"
He couldn't answer. Couldn't breathe. The words were still there, burning behind his eyes, and he didn't know if they were real or if the tablet was lying or if this whole nightmare was going to kill him before he ever figured out how to wake up.
But his sister was alive.
And that meant he had to be too.
"Nothing," he said. His voice sounded far away. "Let's go."