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The locks popped before Nora could grab the handle.
Cold air punched into the car from both sides. The back door on Caden's side swung open. Her own door followed a second later.
Then Milo's voice came through the speakers again.
"Nora, don't let him shut the door. Don't let him—"
The sound snapped into static.
Caden moved fast. One hand hit the lock controls. The other caught Nora across the chest before she could throw herself out after a voice that might not even be real.
"Don't," he said.
"Get off me."
"Not until you stop trying to jump out of a moving car."
The car was slowing, not moving. That almost made it worse.
They had stopped beside an old maintenance fence behind a shuttered subway entrance. No streetlights. No commuters. Just wet concrete, bent chain-link, and a black stairwell dropping under the city like somebody had cut a hole straight into hell.
Nora shoved at Caden's arm. His shirt sleeve was dark with blood near the shoulder. She had noticed it before. She just hadn't let herself care.
Now his grip tightened once, hard enough that she felt the tremor in it.
Not fear.
Pain.
"Milo's down there," she said.
"Maybe."
Her head turned so sharply her neck twinged. "Maybe?"
"That voice was routed through the car system. It could be him. It could be a recording. It could be Selene using a dozen clips and a voice model." His jaw clenched. "That's exactly why you don't run toward it blind."
"You knew this place would be here."
"I knew it was possible."
"Same thing in Caden-speak."
He let go of her, probably because she was about two seconds from biting him.
The locks clicked down again.
For one second, neither of them moved.
Then the dashboard went dead.
Not dim. Dead.
The screens blacked out. The air conditioning stopped. The little blue lights around the gear shift blinked once and vanished.
Outside, something scraped against the bottom of the car.
Nora's hand went to the door handle.
Caden caught her wrist. "No."
"Something's under us."
"I know."
"You keep saying that like it helps."
His eyes found hers in the dark. Gray. Flat. Too controlled.
It used to make her think he was impossible to read.
Now she knew better. Caden Cross wasn't calm when he got quiet.
He was holding a disaster in his teeth.
The scrape came again.
The car rocked.
Nora's stomach dropped. "What is it?"
"A feeder line."
"That means nothing to me."
"It means the thing under the station knows you're here."
She laughed once. Short. Ugly. "Great. Awesome. Love that for me."
Caden reached into the center console and pulled out a slim black case. Not a gun case. Too narrow.
He opened it.
Inside sat a pair of silver cuffs linked by a strip of black leather, a small folding knife, and a glass vial filled with gray powder.
Nora stared. "Tell me those aren't for me."
"They're not for you."
"That was not reassuring."
He pocketed the knife and took the vial. His fingers were already stained red from his shoulder wound. When he twisted the cap, the gray powder glowed orange at the edges.
Nora leaned back. "What the hell is that?"
"Ash salt."
"That's not a real thing."
"It is tonight."
He opened his door.
Nora grabbed his coat before he could step out. "You're not leaving me in here."
"I'm checking the line."
"And I'm checking the stairs."
"No."
"You do not get to say no like you're my dad. Or my husband. Fake husband, by the way. Huge difference."
His face changed at that. Just a little.
She saw it anyway.
Good.
Let it hurt.
"Nora," he said, low.
"You lied to me for days. Maybe longer. You stood in that fire when my mother died, and you looked me in the face at your stupid penthouse and acted like you had no clue why I hated flames. So don't sit there and give me one-word orders."
The scrape under the car stopped.
That silence was worse.
Caden looked down at her hand twisted in his coat.
Then he said, "You're right."
She blinked.
That was not what she'd expected.
He took her fingers off his lapel gently. No force. No sharp billionaire bullshit. Just warm fingers, too warm, folding her hand open.
"I should've told you the second I saw your name," he said. "I should've told you before I put that ring on your hand."
Nora looked at the ring.
The band was supposed to be white gold. Expensive. Clean. A polished little lie for cameras and gossip sites.
Now a hair-thin orange line glowed inside it.
Her breath caught.
Caden saw it too.
"It's reacting," he said.
"To what?"
His stare cut toward the subway stairs.
"To you."
Another sound came from beneath the car.
Not scraping this time.
A knock.
Three slow hits against the metal floor.
Nora's skin prickled from wrist to shoulder. Heat crawled under it, quick and nasty, like she'd shoved her arm too close to an oven coil.
Caden got out.
She followed before he could stop her.
The second her boots hit the pavement, the cold hit her face. The car sat crooked by the fence, one tire partly sunk into a cracked patch of asphalt. Steam curled from under the chassis.
Caden threw the ash salt in a circle around the driver's side.
The powder struck the ground and lit up.
Orange sparks raced across the wet pavement. They formed a rough ring around the car, then died into smoking lines.
Nora stared at it. "You carry demon sidewalk chalk now?"
"Not a demon."
"Sure. Because that fixes it."
He crouched beside the car, one hand pressed to the pavement. His shoulder shook.
The air around his fingers warped.
Nora took a step closer. "Caden."
"Stay back."
"You're bleeding through your shirt."
"I noticed."
"Do you need help?"
He looked over at her.
For a second, the hard mask slipped. He looked tired. Not rich-guy tired after a red-eye flight. Wrecked tired. Like he'd been standing in the same fire for ten years and nobody had told him he could leave.
Then the pavement cracked under his palm.
A line of orange split through the blacktop.
Nora stumbled back.
Heat blasted up from the crack. Her eyes watered instantly. The smell hit next—burned wires, hot pennies, something rotten and sweet underneath it.
The glowing split raced toward the maintenance stairs.
Caden swore and stood.
"We need to go. Now."
Nora looked at the stairwell. The chain-link gate had been cut open. Beyond it, concrete steps led underground, swallowed by dark.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
One message.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: HE'S COLD.
Attached was a photo.
Milo sat against a tiled wall, knees pulled to his chest. His face was bruised. His hands were zip-tied in front of him.
Behind him, Nora recognized the old subway tiles. White squares. Green trim. A faded ad frame on the wall.
He was down there.
Not maybe.
Not a recording.
Her brother was down there, and whoever took the picture wanted her to know it.
Nora started for the stairs.
Caden caught her elbow.
She whipped around. "Don't."
"Look at me."
"I don't have time."
"You have exactly enough time to understand what you're walking into."
"My brother is tied up underground."
"And Selene knows you will go after him. That's why he's there."
"Then tell me what she wants."
His grip loosened.
There it was again. That half-second pause. That calculation.
Nora yanked her arm free. "No. No, don't do that. Don't pick which lie I can handle."
"I'm not lying."
"You are constantly lying. You just do it in expensive coats."
The orange crack on the pavement widened.
Heat rolled over them.
Caden turned toward it, and Nora saw the mark at the base of his throat flare beneath his open collar.
It looked like a burn scar at first.
Then it moved.
Thin black lines curled under his skin, branching down his chest like ink dropped in water. Orange light pulsed through them.
His breath hitched.
He braced one hand against the car.
"Caden?"
"Back up."
"What is happening to you?"
"The breach is pushing."
"Then stop it."
A harsh laugh tore out of him. "Working on it."
He pulled the black leather-linked cuffs from his pocket and snapped one around his own wrist.
The metal hissed.
Nora stared. "Why are you cuffing yourself?"
"Because if this gets worse, I need an anchor."
"An anchor to what?"
He held out the other cuff.
Her eyes narrowed. "Absolutely not."
"Nora—"
"You want to chain me to you while you have some kind of fire seizure? Hard pass."
"It's not a seizure."
"That somehow sounds worse."
The pavement split wider.
A hand pushed up through the crack.
Not human.
It was black at the wrist, then red-hot at the fingertips. The fingers were too long. The nails dragged through the asphalt with a squeal that went right through Nora's skull.
She froze.
Caden stepped in front of her.
The thing under the street clawed for more space.
Caden raised his free hand, and fire burst from his palm.
Not movie fire. Not pretty.
It came out white at the center and screamed orange around the edges. It slammed into the crack. The creature's hand jerked back.
The whole ground bucked.
Nora hit the side of the car. Her ring burned against her finger.
Caden dropped to one knee.
The fire in his hand went wild, whipping around his arm. His face twisted, not with anger. With effort.
He was fighting it.
Fighting the thing in the ground and whatever was trying to crawl through him at the same time.
"Caden!"
"The cuff," he ground out.
"Tell me why."
"Because your fire can close it."
Nora went still.
The thing beneath the pavement shrieked again.
Caden's fire shoved downward, but the crack kept spreading toward the station gate.
"My what?"
He looked at her over his shoulder. Sweat ran down his temple. Blood soaked the front of his shirt now, bright under the orange light.
"Your mother had it too."
Every sound around Nora went thin.
The traffic in the distance. The hum of power lines. Her own breathing.
"Don't use her to get me to obey you."
"I'm not."
"You said she died because something came out of a fire."
"She did."
"Then what the hell are you saying?"
Caden shut his eyes for one second.
When he opened them, there was no cool CEO left in them. No polished control. Just a boy from an old photograph, standing too close to a burning building, knowing he had screwed up and not knowing how to undo it.
"She was trying to seal it," he said.
Nora couldn't breathe.
He swallowed hard.
"I was supposed to help her. I was supposed to hold the line long enough for her to finish. But I lost control." His voice broke on the last word, barely. "The seal failed. Your mother got trapped on the wrong side of it."
Nora stared at him.
Her hand had gone numb around her phone.
All those years.
The official report. Electrical fault. Flash fire. No body recovered because there hadn't been enough left to recover.
Her mother hadn't been trapped in an accident.
She'd been abandoned in it.
By him.
"You killed her," Nora whispered.
Caden flinched like she had hit him.
He didn't deny it.
The crack exploded wider.
Fire tore through the pavement in a violent orange column. Caden shoved both hands forward, catching it before it could reach Nora, but the blast threw him back into the car.
His head struck the door with a sick thud.
"Caden!"
He slid down, gasping.
The black lines on his neck had reached his jaw.
Nora ran to him despite every smart part of her brain yelling not to. His skin was burning under her hand. Not warm. Burning. Her palm should've blistered.
It didn't.
The heat climbed her arm instead.
Her ring blazed bright orange.
Caden grabbed her wrist. His eyes snapped open.
"Don't touch the crack."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Nora." His fingers tightened. "Whatever happens, don't let it take the ring off you."
She looked at the cuff dangling from his wrist.
Then at the second cuff in his other hand.
"You want me linked to you," she said.
"I need you linked."
"Need. Right."
His face shut down.
That hurt more than it should have.
Like he had admitted one horrible thing, and now he was slamming every door in his head before she could see anything else.
"Milo is down there," he said. His voice was flat again. Controlled again. "You can hate me after we get him out."
"I already do."
"Good. Stay angry. It might keep you alive."
The crack spat fire.
A second hand reached up through it.
Then a third.
Caden lifted the cuff toward her.
Nora should have walked away.
She should have run down those stairs, found Milo, and left Caden Cross bleeding beside his stupid armored car.
Instead, she shoved her wrist into the cuff.
The metal snapped shut.
Pain flashed hot and sharp up her arm.
Caden sucked in a breath at the same time.
The cuff chain pulled tight between them.
For one horrible second, Nora saw through him.
A room full of fire.
Her mother on the floor, one hand pressed against a glowing symbol burned into concrete.
A teenage Caden screaming her name.
A dark shape unfolding behind the flames.
Then the vision ripped away.
Nora staggered.
Caden caught her, his hand at her waist.
"You saw it," she said.
His mouth went hard.
"Later."
"No. You don't get later anymore."
The fire in the pavement roared.
Caden turned, dragging her with him as he raised both hands toward the crack.
"Hold on," he said.
"To what?"
His eyes met hers.
"Me."
Then he drove his fire into the ground.
Nora screamed.
Heat ripped through the cuff, up her arm, across her chest. It found something under her ribs and yanked.
A furnace answered.
Orange light burst from her skin.
The crack in the street shrank.
The black hands clawed at the closing gap. One of them caught Caden's ankle.
He grunted, nearly went down, and Nora grabbed his coat with her free hand.
"Don't you dare," she yelled.
His fire surged.
So did hers.
The thing under the pavement shrieked once, loud enough to shake dust from the station sign.
Then the crack slammed shut.
Silence hit.
Nora stood bent over, coughing smoke. The cuff around her wrist was red-hot. Caden was still holding her at the waist, both of them breathing too hard.
For one stupid second, she could feel his mouth near her hair.
Then the concrete wall beside the maintenance stairs began to glow.
A thin orange line cut across the old tiles.
Another line followed.
Letters burned into the wall, one by one, bright enough to hurt her eyes.
THE KEY IS AWAKE.
From somewhere deep under the station, Milo started screaming her name.