Chapter 15 · Power With a Price

"Get away from him, Mara. Now."

Kael's hand clamped around my wrist before I could drive the stolen blade into his chest.

Three council hunters stood at the archive entrance, black armor gleaming, rifles raised. Behind them, Noah was hunched over the dead console, pressing a hand to a jagged gash on his forehead.

Kael twisted my arm. Hard. My fingers flew open and the blade clattered across the stone.

"Let go," I snapped.

"You're shaking."

"I'm angry. There's a difference."

"Not with you."

He yanked me back against his chest just as the first bolt scorched the air where my head had been. His breath brushed my ear—hot, steady, dangerous. His arm locked around my ribs like a vice.

"Stay down," he commanded.

"You don't get to order me around."

"Then consider it a survival suggestion."

Another bolt slammed into the wall. Stone shrapnel sliced my cheek.

Under my coat, the Black Ledger wasn't just warm. It was burning. The ink had shifted, crawling across the page in thin, hungry lines. One word kept appearing beneath Cyrus Grant's broken command:

COMPROMISED.

It sat right under Kael's name.

"Mara Voss!" the lead hunter barked through a metal filter.