Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
The front door was locked.
Of course it was.
I yanked the handle again anyway, hard enough to rattle the black steel frame. Nothing. No click. No little give. Just glass, metal, and my own pissed-off face staring back at me from the reflection.
Behind me, the house stayed quiet.
Too quiet.
I slid my motel key card out from under my sleeve and held it between two fingers. Cheap white plastic. Blue stripe. Room 214. It felt stupid that something so small could be the only thing Evan had managed to get to me.
Find the ledger.
That was what his eyes had said through the recording. Not the words. The words had been him begging me not to sign anything.
Too late for that.
I looked at my palm.
No cut. No blood. Not even a scar.
Just smooth skin where I had sliced myself open and pressed my hand to that contract like the world’s dumbest bride.
Somewhere in this glass coffin, the Vesper Court had my brother. Somewhere else, apparently, my new husband was dying before an eclipse.
And somehow I was supposed to care if Julian Cross lived long enough to use me as a key.
I pulled my lock roll from inside my boot.
Sera had taken my phone, my knife, and every sharp thing on me. She hadn’t checked my heel. Rookie mistake.
Or maybe she wanted me to try.
I crouched beside the lock. It wasn’t normal. No keyway. No visible seam. Just a thin black panel beneath the handle, smooth as polished bone.
“Cute,” I muttered.
I ran my thumb along the edge.
Cold bit into my skin.
Then the panel flashed red.
A voice came through the ceiling speakers.
“Don’t touch the door.”
I froze.
It wasn’t Sera.
Male. Low. Tired. The kind of voice that had probably made a lot of people do stupid things just because he sounded like he expected them to.
I stood slowly and looked up.
“Who the hell is that?”
A beat passed.
“Your husband.”
I laughed once. No humor in it.
“You people work fast.”
“Technically, we’re not married yet.”
“Technically, I don’t give a shit.”
The speaker clicked off.
Then a door opened somewhere behind me.
I turned.
A man stood at the end of the long white hallway, one hand braced against the wall like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
Julian Cross looked nothing like the picture in my head.
I’d expected old money. Perfect suit. Cold eyes. A man who got other people hurt while he kept his hands clean.
He had the suit, sure. Black shirt, dark trousers, expensive coat hanging open. But the shirt at his ribs was soaked through with blood. His face had gone pale under a few days of dark stubble. And there was something wrong with the way he held his left arm tight against his side.
Like breathing hurt.
Like existing hurt.
His eyes landed on me.
Gray. Not soft gray. Storm gray was too poetic for them. They looked like steel left in dirty water.
“You’re Nia,” he said.
“You’re bleeding on the floor.”
He glanced down at the drop of blood near his shoe.
“Yeah. That happens.”
“That’s your opening line?”
“I had a better one. Lost it when someone drugged me.”
I looked past him. No guards. No Sera.
Just him.
He watched me clock the exits, the distance to the knife block in the open kitchen, the heavy vase on the table. Good. Let him know I was doing it.
“You signed,” he said.
“You already knew that.”
“I felt it.”
That made me pause.
He lifted his right hand.
A thin black line circled his wrist. It wasn’t ink. It moved under his skin, slow and ugly, like smoke trapped in a vein.
“When you bled on the contract,” he said, “it woke up.”
I swallowed the first answer that came to mind.
No chance I was giving him fear for free.
“So that’s the curse.”
“That’s part of it.”
“Wonderful. Love a package deal.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then his knees buckled.
He caught himself on the wall, jaw locked tight. The black mark jumped beneath his skin and crawled two inches higher up his forearm.
I should have walked away.
Seriously. I should have grabbed the motel card, found a window, and figured out how many floors I could survive falling from.
Instead, I stepped toward him.
“Sit down before you crack your head open.”
“I’m fine.”
“Guys who are fine don’t drip blood on Italian marble.”
“It’s limestone.”
“Great. You can correct me after you stop dying.”
His mouth twitched again, but he let me guide him toward the kitchen island.
He was warm through the coat. Too warm. Fever warm.
The second my fingers touched his elbow, that black line snapped under his skin.
Julian sucked in a breath.
I jerked my hand back.
“What was that?”
“Don’t touch me unless you have to.”
“Pretty easy rule to follow.”
He leaned against the counter, breathing through his nose. Up close, I could smell iron, smoke, and something sharp underneath. Like burnt rosemary.
I hated that smell.
Didn’t know why.
Not yet.
“Where’s Sera?” I asked.
“Trying to convince the Court this was their idea.”
“She forced me to sign a blood marriage contract.”
“She forced you?”
I stared at him.
His expression changed a little. Not enough. But enough that I saw he hadn’t known every detail.
“You think I volunteered?” I asked.
“No.”
“Your people have Evan.”
“They’re not my people.”
“Funny. They keep saying your name like it opens doors.”
“It used to.”
“Yeah? And now?”
His eyes dropped to the blood on his shirt.
“Now it gets people killed.”
Before I could answer, the lights overhead flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then every screen in the house came on at the same time.
The wall panel by the fireplace. The tablet on the kitchen counter. Even the dark glass over the stove.
Sera’s face filled all of them.
She looked like she’d been running. Her hair was loose around one cheek, and there was blood on the collar of her coat.
“Julian,” she said.
His whole body went still.
“What happened?”
“Don’t leave the house.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“The Court convoy was hit.”
My heart slammed once against my ribs.
“Evan?” I said.
Sera looked at me through the screen.
That one second was enough.
“What happened to my brother?”
“He’s alive.”
“Where is he?”
“We moved him.”
“You moved him where?”
“Nia—”
“Where?”
The screen went black.
I grabbed the tablet and threw it across the kitchen.
It hit the wall hard enough to crack.
Julian didn’t flinch.
That almost made me angrier.
“You knew,” I said.
“I didn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nia.”
“You people keep moving him around like he’s a box. You make me sign your creepy little murder marriage contract, then you tell me he’s alive like I should say thank you?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“And I said bullshit.”
The hallway door behind Julian exploded inward.
Not burst open.
Exploded.
Black splinters flew across the white floor.
Julian moved first.
He grabbed my wrist and hauled me down behind the island as something metal whipped through the air where my head had been.
It hit the counter with a screaming scrape.
A chain.
Thin. Black. Barbed all along one edge.
It curled across the marble like it was alive.
I stared at it.
“Please tell me that’s not normal.”
Julian’s hand stayed locked around my wrist.
“No.”
A woman stepped through the ruined doorway.
Not Sera.
Tall. Dark coat. White hair braided tight against her skull. Half her face was covered by a silver mask that ran from temple to jaw.
She smiled when she saw Julian.
“Still breathing,” she said. “Your father would be disappointed.”
Julian let go of me and stood.
Bad idea. He swayed the second he got upright.
The woman noticed too.
Her smile got wider.
“Cross blood really is getting thin.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was gum on her shoe.
“The bride.”
“Unfortunately.”
Julian stepped in front of me.
I hated that. I hated the automatic way my body noticed his back blocking mine. I hated that he was bleeding and shaking and still trying to play shield.
The woman lifted one hand.
The chain snapped off the counter.
It came straight for me.
Fast.
Too fast.
I ducked, but it changed direction in midair.
The barbed end whipped around my shoulder and shot for my throat.
Julian shoved me down.
The chain cut across him instead.
He made a rough sound. Not a scream. Worse. Like he was trying to bite it back and couldn’t.
Blood sprayed across the floor.
The black mark under his wrist flared bright red.
The woman’s smile dropped.
“Oh,” she said softly. “There you are.”
Julian hit one knee.
The chain was wrapped around his chest now, digging through his shirt. Every barb that touched his skin smoked.
I grabbed the nearest thing I could reach.
A heavy brass candleholder.
Then I ran at her.
Not smart. Not graceful. Just pissed.
She turned too late.
I swung with both hands and caught her across the masked side of her face.
The crack rang through the room.
She stumbled.
I swung again.
This time she caught my wrist.
Her fingers were freezing cold.
“You don’t know what he did,” she hissed.
“Then explain it while I break your teeth.”
Her grip tightened.
Pain shot up my arm.
Julian made a choking sound behind me.
I looked back.
The chain had climbed to his throat.
No.
No, no, no.
The contract flashed in my head.
The groom dies at eclipse.
If he died before that vault opened, Evan died too.
I drove my heel down on the woman’s foot, twisted free, and dropped to the floor beside Julian.
The chain was hot enough to make the air stink.
He grabbed my forearm.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“It’ll burn you.”
“Everything burns me lately.”
I shoved my lock pick under one of the links.
The metal screamed.
The woman laughed behind me.
“You think you can pick a blood chain?”
“I think you talk too much.”
The pick softened in my hand.
Actually softened.
Like wax.
I cursed and threw it aside.
Julian’s fingers slid from my arm. His head tipped back, throat working around the chain.
The black mark had spread past his wrist now. Up his forearm. Over his bicep. It crawled under the collar of his shirt, dark branches under pale skin.
I saw one thick line near his chest.
Not a line.
A lock.
A shape I knew.
Old Vale work.
Three hooked turns. A false gate. A pressure point hidden in the center.
My mother had taught me that pattern when I was eight.
Never open one of these, Nia. Not unless you know what’s on the other side.
I put my hand over the mark.
Julian’s eyes snapped open.
“Nia—”
Heat punched through my palm.
Not heat.
Fire.
The kitchen vanished.
Smoke filled my mouth.
I was standing in a burning hallway, barefoot and small and choking on ash. Orange light crawled across the walls. Somebody was screaming behind a locked door.
Then I saw him.
A boy stood at the end of the hall.
Maybe twelve. Maybe thirteen.
His dark hair was wet with sweat. Blood ran down one side of his face. He held a brass key in both hands like he was afraid to let it go.
Young Julian Cross looked straight at me through the fire.
And he whispered, “Run.”