"Don't let go, Voss. You let go and I die."
Cael's hands were locked around my wrist and his throat was still caught in that thing. That black fire collar I'd made without meaning to. It burned against his skin and it burned inside my chest at the same time.
"I'm not holding you," I snapped. "It is."
"Then tell it to let go!"
I couldn't. The fire wasn't listening to me. It was listening to my panic.
Outside, the whole city screamed.
Not a siren. Sirens. Every single Crown alarm from the upper ring to the undercity, all at once. And then Evelyn Hart's voice, cold and clean, rolling over every loudspeaker like she owned the air.
"Citizens of the capital. By order of the Crown. Full lockdown. Spellbreaker Mara Voss is armed and extremely dangerous. Night lord Cael Rook is to be executed on sight. Repeat, Voss alive, Rook dead. Bounty tripled."
Cael's eyes cut to mine. Blood on his mouth. That collar still squeezing.
"Great," he rasped. "She just put a price on both of us. In opposite directions."
"Get off me," I said. My arm was shaking. The black mark on my forearm was crawling. Literally crawling, thin black veins pushing toward my elbow, toward my heart. "Get this thing off your neck before it kills you and takes me with it."
"You think I know how? You made it!"
The roof access door behind us blew open. Boots. Shouts. Crown hounds barking.
"Move!" I shoved him.
The collar snapped tight for half a second and Cael made this choked, furious sound against my palm. Then it flickered. Loosened. Just enough for him to breathe.
We ran.
We hit the fire escape and dropped three stories in two jumps. My knees screamed. His hand never left my jacket. Not gentle. A grip. Like if he lost me the bond would snap and we'd both drop dead right there.
"Where?" I yelled over the alarms.
"Down. Under. They can't track the bond through running water and old iron. Come on!"
He dragged me into an alley that wasn't an alley, just a crack between two buildings that smelled like piss and fried oil. He kicked a rusted grate. It gave. He shoved me in first.
"You first is not chivalry, is it?" I said, landing hard in the dark. Water up to my ankles. Cold as hell.
"No. If it's a trap, you die first," he said, dropping in after me and slamming the grate shut. Darkness swallowed us. Only the faint red glow from my arm lit the tunnel.
Close. Too close. The tunnel was maybe four feet wide. His shoulder hit mine. His breath hit my face. That collar was still there, a thin band of black fire around his throat, pulsing with my heartbeat.
"You need to calm down," he said.
"I'm calm."
"You're not. Your pulse is doing that thing again. I can feel it. Right here." He tapped his own chest. "You spike, it chokes me. So breathe."
"Don't tell me to breathe."
"Then I'll do it for you. In. Out. Come on, spellbreaker."
I shoved his hand off. "Don't call me that."
"What should I call you? The girl who stabbed me and then leashed me?"
"The girl who should've stabbed you harder."
He laughed, but it was short and pained. He leaned back against the wet wall and slid down until he was sitting. Blood on his shirt. My blood? His blood? With the bond I couldn't tell anymore.
"You’re bleeding," he said.
"You're bleeding."
"Yeah, well, you’re bleeding on my behalf, so sit down before you fall down."
I didn't want to sit. I sat anyway because my legs were shaking. The alarms were muffled down here but I could still hear Evelyn's voice echoing through the drains.
Cael pulled a knife. I flinched.
"Relax," he muttered. "Not for you. For me." He cut a strip off his own coat lining. Black wool, expensive even torn. "Give me your arm."
"Why?"
"Because that thing is eating you alive and you're pretending it's not. Give me your arm, Mara."
The way he said my name. Low. Not soft. Like an order he knew I’d fight.
I stuck my arm out. Just to prove I wasn't scared of him.
His fingers were warm. Too warm. He wrapped the cloth around the black veins crawling up my forearm, not tight, careful. His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist where my pulse was hammering.
Heat shot up my arm. Not fire. Not pain. Warm. Like someone poured hot water straight into my veins and it went right to my chest. His eyes widened. He felt it too.
"What was that?" I whispered.
"Bond," he said, voice rough. "It likes when we... cooperate."
"It likes when you play nurse?"
"It likes when we stop trying to kill each other for five seconds." His hand stayed on my wrist a second too long. His thumb pressed once, light. My breath caught and I hated that it did. "Better?"
"Worse," I said, but I didn't pull away right away. The glow under the cloth dimmed a little. The crawling stopped.
A light clicked on at the far end of the tunnel.
We both went rigid. Cael was on his feet in a second, knife up, putting himself in front of me without thinking.
"Whoa! Whoa! Friendly! So friendly it hurts!" A skinny guy in a patched coat held his hands up, a lantern swinging. Greasy hair, big grin, eyes darting between us. Toby Quill. "Mara! My favorite almost-dead client! And... oh hell. You brought him."
"Toby," I breathed. "You took your sweet time."