Chapter 10 · The Day-Twenty-Nine Order

"Put the signal down, Kael."

His hand didn't budge. He kept it clamped over the black relay stone.

The stone pulsed. A red line crawled across the surface, stopping exactly at the mark burned into his palm—the council’s execution seal.

"Say that again," he said.

"Put. It. Down." I shoved myself between him and the rift mouth. "You trigger that beacon, the council squad drops in. They won’t ask if I’m guilty. They’ll just cut my head off and call it cleanup."

Kael’s eyes dropped to my face. He was close. Too close. The front of his coat brushed my knee, and the smell of ozone and old blood clung to him. I could see the soak-through on the bandage under his ribs.

My own ribs flared in pain with every breath. The Black Ledger didn’t care whose body took the hit; his wound was mine now.

"The order says I activate the signal when the rift reaches critical spread," he said.

"The order says a lot of things. It also says you execute me on day thirty."

"Tomorrow."

"Thanks for the reminder."

His jaw tightened.

Behind us, the rift cracked another foot.