Chapter 15 · The Key Under Her Skin

The pain starts under my left palm.

Not a cut. Not a burn. Something moving. Something with edges.

I drop the ring. It hits the bathroom tile and rolls into the corner where the grout is black with old water damage. Elias is still talking but I cannot hear him because my hand is on fire and the fire has a shape.

"Mara."

I hold my hand up to the light. The skin is intact. No blood. But there is a line under the surface, thin and dark like a splinter working its way up. It runs from the base of my thumb to the center of my palm and it is moving.

"Mara, look at me."

I look at Elias. He is standing now, one hand on the sink, the other reaching for me. His face is pale and his eyes are doing that thing where the dark spreads too far into the white.

"It is the binding," he says. "The door marked you when you opened the second lock."

"You said I had time."

"I said we had time before Silas found us. I did not say the door would wait."

The line under my skin branches.