Chapter 11 · Traitor's Door

The blue flame jumped six inches high, and Julian grabbed my wrist hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t touch it,” he said.

I looked at his hand around mine. Black veins crawled under his skin, starting at his knuckles and running up beneath his sleeve like spilled ink.

“Cute,” I said. “You’re dying again, and now you’re giving orders?”

“Nia.” His voice went rough. “That door is not for you.”

Behind the oil lamp, the broken wall had opened just enough to show stone steps dropping underground. Cold air breathed out of it. Not normal cold. Grave cold. It smelled like wet ash and old metal.

The white words over the entrance stared back at us.

ONLY A TRAITOR MAY ENTER.

I held up the burned key I’d pulled from my family’s floorboards. “My father hid a ledger under our house. Somebody hired people to burn us alive. I’m pretty sure I qualify for answers.”

“That’s not what it means.”

“Then tell me what it means.”

Julian didn’t answer.

Of course he didn’t.

His jaw locked so hard I could see the muscle jump.