Long-press a paragraph to send danmaku
"They're coming up the south stair." Calder's voice cut through the ringing in my ears. "Three hounds. Maybe four."
I yanked at the cuff. It didn't budge. The metal was warm now, almost hot, and a thin red line glowed along the seam where it joined our wrists together. His stone skin. My bare arm. Midnight, or one of us dies.
"Get it off," I said.
"Can't." He tilted his head, listening. His wings scraped the alley wall behind us. "You locked it. You're the key."
"I didn't lock anything. It just—"
"Snapped shut the second you touched the sigil. Yeah." He flexed his claws. "Cute trick. Did Pike tell you that part, or did he forget?"
Footsteps echoed closer. Boots on stone. I could hear the hounds now, low growls and the scrape of claws on brick.
"We run," I said.
"They'll shoot you in the back."
"They'll cage you and grind you into powder."
Calder grinned. His teeth were sharp and white and wrong. "Then we're both having a bad night."
I grabbed his arm. The cuff yanked us closer. "You said you didn't steal the ward-core."
"I didn't."
"Then who did?"
"Don't know. But whoever set me up wants me quiet, and they want you dead for asking."
The first hound rounded the corner. It was bigger than the alley should've fit, all black fur and red eyes and a collar that buzzed with containment glyphs. The handler behind it wore city silver and carried a crossbow.
"Voss," the handler called. "Step away from the suspect."
I didn't move. The cuff burned hotter.
"Can't," I said. "Little problem."
The handler swore. He raised the crossbow. "Then you're both coming in."
Calder shifted in front of me. Not much. Just enough that his shoulder blocked the bolt's line. "She didn't sign up for your mess," he said. "Let her go."
"You don't get to negotiate," the handler said.
The hound lunged.
Calder shoved me sideways. The cuff jerked us both into the wall. I felt his wing snap out, trying to shield me, and then the hound's jaws closed on his arm. Stone cracked. Calder made a sound I'd never heard from him, something between a snarl and a gasp, and then his other hand came up and caught the hound by the throat.
He squeezed.
The hound yelped. The collar sparked. Calder's claws sank deeper, and I saw the stone of his hand splinter, thin cracks running from his knuckles to his wrist.
"Stop," I said. "You'll break—"
"Already broken." He threw the hound back. It hit the handler, and they both went down in a tangle of fur and cursing.
Calder grabbed my wrist. The cuff flared white-hot for half a second, and then he was pulling me down the alley, away from the shouts and the second hound and the crossbow bolt that punched into the brick where my head had been.
We ran.
The cuff made it awkward. Every time I sped up, he had to match. Every time he turned, I stumbled. His wing dragged on my shoulder, and I could feel the heat of him even through the leather of his coat.
"Left," he said.
I went left. The alley narrowed. Trash bins. A broken lamp. The stink of old piss and older magic.
"How much time?" I said.
"On the cuff? Eleven hours. On the hounds? Not enough."
I could still hear them behind us. Closer now. They didn't get tired. We did.
"Where are we going?" I said.
"Somewhere they won't follow."
"That's not a place."
"It is if you know where to look."
He turned again. This time I was ready. We came out onto a wider street, and he pulled me across it, straight toward a building I recognized. The old assayer's hall. It'd been condemned for years, ever since the ward-lock failed and something inside ate the last crew that tried to salvage it.
"No," I said.
"Yes."
"That building's blacklisted."
"That's why they won't follow." He kicked the door. It didn't open. He kicked it again, harder, and the frame splintered.
We went in.
The air inside was cold and stale and wrong. I felt it on my skin, a prickle that said the wards here weren't just broken. They were reversed. Turned inside out. Whatever had been locked in was now holding the door.
"This is a terrible idea," I said.
"You have a better one?"
I didn't.
The hounds stopped at the threshold. I could see them through the broken door, pacing, growling, but they wouldn't cross. The handler stood behind them, his face pale.
"Voss," he called. "You walk in there, you don't walk out."
I looked at Calder. He was breathing hard. His hand, the one that had caught the hound, was still cracked. Thin lines of light bled through the stone, faint and gold and fading.
"You're hurt," I said.
"I'm fine."
"You're leaking."
"It'll hold."
"Until what?"
He didn't answer.
The handler fired. The bolt came through the doorway and punched into the wall behind us. Calder pulled me deeper into the hall, past the front room and into a corridor lined with old lockboxes. The walls were scorched. Something had burned here, hot enough to melt the brass fixtures.
"What's in here?" I said.
"Used to be records. Deeds. Audit logs."
I stopped. "Audit logs?"
"Yeah. Why?"
The cuff on my wrist flared. Not red this time. Gold. Bright and sharp and sudden, and it didn't burn. It pulled. I felt it tug at something inside my chest, something I didn't know I had, and then the metal started to hum.
Calder stared at it. "What did you do?"
"Nothing. I didn't—"
The glow spread. It crawled up the cuff's surface, tracing lines I hadn't seen before. Symbols. Old ones. And in the center, stamped into the metal like a maker's mark, a seal I recognized.
My father's audit seal.
"That's not possible," I said.
Calder's face went still. "You didn't know."
"Know what?"
"Your father made this cuff."
The hallway tilted. I braced against the wall, but the stone was too cold, and my hand slipped. Calder caught me. The cuff yanked us close, his chest against my shoulder, and I could feel his heartbeat. Fast. Too fast.
"He's been gone five years," I said.
"I know."
"How do you know?"
He let go. The cuff kept us tethered, but he put as much distance as the chain allowed. "Because I saw him the night he disappeared."
The hounds outside started howling.
The seal on the cuff pulsed once, bright enough to hurt, and then a new line of text burned itself into the metal. Thin. Red. Counting down.
Nine hours left.