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Elias cut Micah loose.
Not all the way. Just the chain around his waist.
The iron link hit the platform with a sharp clang, and for one stupid second, hope punched straight through me.
Then Elias shoved my brother toward Vera.
"No." My voice came out thin. Wrong. I grabbed for Micah, but the blood pact lit up under my skin before I got two steps.
Pain ripped across my ribs.
Elias folded over like somebody had driven a blade into his side. His hand slapped against the tiled wall. Blood ran between his fingers.
Vera smiled.
"There he is," she said. "I was wondering how long you could keep pretending this was difficult."
Micah stumbled into her waiting grip.
He was too weak to fight. His knees buckled. Vera caught him by the back of his jacket like he weighed nothing, then dragged him against her chest. One of her silver chains snapped around his wrists before I could blink.
"Nora," Micah gasped.
I moved again.
Elias caught my arm.
I spun on him so fast my shoulder popped. "Get your hand off me."
His fingers tightened.
"Don’t," he said.
"You just gave him to her."
"I know what I did."
That answer hit worse than the pact pain.
I yanked free. "Then I hope it was worth it."
Vera gave a little laugh, like we were making her evening entertaining.
The abandoned station smelled like wet concrete, old rust, and something sweet underneath. Rotting flowers, maybe. Or meat. The emergency lamps along the platform were dead, but blue light leaked through the cracks in the sealed gate behind Vera.
The gate was built into the old tunnel wall.
Black iron. Thick chains. Symbols cut into the stone around it.
Every few seconds, something knocked from the other side.
Not hard.
Patient.
Micah kept looking at it.
I hated that more than Vera’s hand on him.
"Let him go," I said.
Vera’s eyes came to me. Pale gray. Calm. Mean in that careful way rich people got when they’d never had to clean up their own mess.
"You’re in no position to make demands, Nora."
"Funny. I’ve got a gun in my coat pocket. That usually helps."
"No, you don’t."
She nodded toward my right side.
My hand went there anyway.
The pocket was empty.
Of course it was.
I looked at Elias.
He didn’t look back.
That told me enough.
"You took it," I said.
"Before we came down here."
"You searched me?"
"You were asleep for twelve minutes in the laundry tunnel."
I stared at him.
He had the nerve to look guilty.
Not guilty enough, apparently.
"You don’t get to say one more word to me." My whole body shook. Fear, anger, blood loss, whatever. I couldn’t separate any of it anymore. "Not one."
Micah made a rough sound behind Vera.
I snapped my attention back to him.
His face had gone gray. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. There was dried blood under one nostril and fresh blood on his shirt, right over his stomach.
"Mikey," I said, softer. "Hey. Look at me."
He did.
For a second, he was my little brother again. Fifteen years old, lying about where he’d been. Acting tough because our mom was gone and I was working too much and he thought being scared made him a kid.
Then his eyes dropped to the ring on my hand.
He flinched.
Not from Vera.
From me.
My throat closed.
"It’s okay," I said. "I’m getting you out."
Micah’s lips parted.
"No," he whispered.
Vera’s smile sharpened.
"He’s been trying to tell you that all night. You should listen to family."
"Shut up."
"Which one of you do you mean?"
I stepped toward her.
The blue light behind the gate jumped.
Every hair on my arms lifted.
Elias caught my wrist again, this time with both hands.
"Nora. Stop."
"She has my brother."
"I know."
"Then do something."
His jaw locked.
For the first time since Vera walked out of the dark, his control cracked. It was small. Just a twitch under one eye. His breathing went uneven.
But I saw it.
He was scared.
Not of Vera.
Of what came next.
"This is the something," he said.
I laughed once. It sounded ugly. "You handing Micah over? That’s your plan?"
"It buys us time."
"For what?"
He didn’t answer.
Vera did.
"For his brother."
Everything went still.
Even the knocking behind the gate stopped.
I looked at Elias.
He stared at the floor between us.
"What did she say?"
Vera sighed like I was slow. "Elias has a younger brother. Daniel. You didn’t know? That’s adorable. He really did leave out the important parts."
My fingers went cold.
I remembered the first night I met Elias. The blood on his shirt. The ring in his fist. The way he kept checking the dark behind him like someone was chasing him.
I had assumed it was Vera.
It was never just Vera.
"Where is he?" I asked.
Elias said nothing.
Vera tapped a fingernail against Micah’s shoulder. "Close. Close enough that he can hear the gate scratching at the walls. Close enough that he cries for his brother when he thinks nobody’s listening."
Elias moved before I saw it coming.
One second he was beside me. The next, he had Vera by the throat and slammed her into a pillar.
Her grip slipped off Micah.
"Don’t talk about him," Elias said.
His voice was low.
Not loud. Worse than loud.
The blood pact burned across my palm.
His pain hit me in a hot wave. Old pain. Not the knife wound in his side. Something deeper. A memory with teeth.
A boy screaming.
A red door.
Elias on his knees, younger, shaking so hard he could barely hold a ring in his hand.
Someone yelling, Choose.
Then the memory broke apart.
I staggered and caught myself on the platform bench.
Vera didn’t even look worried.
She smiled at Elias through his hand around her throat.
"There he is," she rasped. "There’s the boy who made the right choice."
Elias shoved her away.
Vera hit the pillar, laughed once, and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth.
Micah dropped to his knees.
I ran to him.
This time Elias didn’t stop me.
I got one hand on Micah’s shoulder before the chain around his wrists flared silver-white.
The shock blasted through both of us.
I cried out and fell back.
Micah slammed sideways into the tile. His body jerked. Smoke curled off the skin around the cuffs.
"Jesus Christ!" I crawled toward him. "Micah, don’t move. Don’t touch it."
He was breathing too fast.
Vera crouched beside him, smooth as a cat.
"That chain responds to intention," she said. "Try to take him, and it hurts him. Keep trying, and it starts taking pieces."
I looked at Elias.
"Break it."
He didn’t move.
"Break it!"
"I can’t."
"You just opened the one around his waist."
"That was a transport lock. These are binding chains."
"Then use your damn ring."
His face went blank.
That blankness scared me more than anything.
"If I use the ring on those chains," he said, "the gate opens another inch."
I stared at him.
Behind Vera, the black iron gate gave one slow groan.
Like it had heard us.
Something pressed against the narrow split between the doors.
A hand.
Gray. Wet. Human-looking except for the fingers, which bent the wrong way.
Micah saw it and started shaking.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no."
I grabbed his face gently, forcing him to look at me.
"Hey. I’m here. Look at me."
His pupils were huge.
"Nora, you need to leave."
"Not happening."
"You don’t understand."
"Then explain it."
His gaze slid back to the ring.
The thin silver band sat against my knuckle, dark with dried blood from when Elias had cut both our palms upstairs. It looked harmless. Cheap, even.
I wanted to rip it off.
I’d tried twice already.
Both times, it had sliced my skin open without moving.
Micah swallowed.
"That thing knows you."
Vera straightened.
"Careful, Micah. You don’t want to ruin the surprise too early."
"What surprise?" I asked.
Nobody answered.
The dead hand pushed farther through the gate.
Its wrist bent. Bone cracked. It kept coming.
Elias stepped between me and the gate.
"Vera," he said. "Take the deal."
She looked amused. "Which deal? You’ve made several tonight."
"You get Micah. You let Nora walk."
My head snapped toward him. "Excuse me?"
"She isn’t part of this."
Vera laughed hard enough to echo down the tracks.
"Oh, Elias. You still think that?"
He went very still.
I looked from one of them to the other. "What the hell does that mean?"
Vera walked closer.
Elias put himself in front of me.
Not touching me. Not looking at me.
Just blocking her view.
That should have made me feel protected.
Instead, I wanted to shove him onto the tracks.
"Move," I said.
"Nora—"
"Move."
He didn’t.
Vera’s voice came around his shoulder. "Your brother is a key. He keeps the gate tied down from the living side. We’ve known that for months."
Micah squeezed his eyes shut.
I felt sick.
"And me?"
Vera’s smile came back, slow and pleased.
"You hear the dead. That wasn’t an accident."
Elias turned on her. "Enough."
"No. She deserves one honest sentence tonight, don’t you think? You’ve lied to her since the beginning."
"I said enough."
The blue light flared.
Pain exploded across my hand.
I doubled over, clutching the ring.
Elias made the same sound at the same time.
The pact. It was reacting to him. To whatever he was trying not to say.
And suddenly I knew.
Not all of it.
But enough to hate him properly.
"You knew about Micah," I said.
Elias’s shoulders dropped a fraction.
"Yes."
The word barely made it out.
"Before you came to my apartment."
He didn’t answer.
"Before you let me think he was dead."
"I didn’t know where he was at first."
"But you knew he was connected to your family."
His silence said yes.
I slapped him.
The sound cracked through the station.
My palm stung. His head turned with the hit. Blood dotted his lower lip where he’d bitten it earlier.
He didn’t lift a hand against me.
Didn’t even look mad.
That made it worse.
"You used me," I said.
"I needed the ring to find him."
"You needed me."
"Yes."
"And now you’re trading him for your brother."
His eyes finally met mine.
There was so much guilt in them I almost hated myself for seeing it.
Almost.
"I already chose my brother once," Elias said.
Vera’s smile disappeared.
The station seemed to hold its breath.
Elias looked past me, toward the sealed gate.
"When I was seventeen, they put Daniel on one side of the ritual room and a boy from the south district on the other. They told me one of them could walk out."
His voice had gone flat.
Not calm. Just scraped empty.
"I picked Daniel."
Vera’s gray eyes narrowed.
"Elias," she warned.
"The other boy died screaming. My family called it necessary. They said I did what any brother would do."
He looked at Micah.
Micah stared back, terrified and furious all at once.
"I told myself I’d never do it again," Elias said. "Then Vera found Daniel. She put him back on the board."
My stomach dropped.
"So that’s it?" I asked. My voice shook, but I didn’t care. "You’re doing it again."
Elias closed his eyes.
"I’m trying not to."
"You shoved him at her."
"Because if I fought her here, she’d open the gate."
"And if you don’t?"
He opened his eyes.
The answer was right there.
Micah.
Daniel.
Me.
Somebody was going to pay.
Vera clapped slowly.
"There. Honesty. What a lovely family moment."
Then she pulled a small black phone from inside her coat and held it out to Elias.
The screen showed a live video.
A teenage boy sat in a metal chair under a single overhead light. Dark curls. Pale face. Bruised cheek. His wrists were tied behind him.
Daniel.
He lifted his head like he’d heard something.
"Eli?" he said through the phone speaker.
Elias stopped breathing.
Vera angled the phone toward him. "You have until the next bell. Give me Micah and the locksmith, and Daniel goes home. Refuse, and I start removing things he’ll miss."
"You said Micah was enough," Elias said.
"Plans change."
I looked at Daniel’s face on the screen.
Then at Micah on the floor.
Then at Elias.
He had put my brother in her hands because she had his.
It didn’t make it okay.
It made it real.
And real was always uglier than betrayal when you got close enough to smell it.
The gate knocked again.
Once.
Twice.
Then the dead hand slipped through up to its elbow.
Micah made a choking sound.
His body arched against the chains.
I dropped beside him.
"Micah? Hey. Stay with me."
His eyes rolled back.
The silver cuffs flashed so bright I had to cover my face.
When the light died, Micah lay still.
"Micah!"
I grabbed his shoulder.
Elias was suddenly beside me, checking Micah’s pulse with two fingers.
His face changed.
"What?" I demanded. "What is it?"
"He’s alive."
"Then why isn’t he waking up?"
Elias didn’t answer fast enough.
Vera did.
"Because the gate is calling its key."
The black doors groaned wider.
A thin line of blue fire crawled across the platform tiles toward Micah’s hand.
I reached for him.
His eyes flew open.
For one wild second, they weren’t Micah’s eyes anymore.
They were black. Empty. Looking straight through me.
Then he sucked in a breath and screamed, "Keep Nora away from me."
His hand shot up toward my throat.
And the gate behind him opened another inch.