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"On your knees! Hands where I can see them!" The clinic door exploded inward and hit my operating table so hard the legs screamed.
I hit the floor with Lyra right on top of me. Her wrist was burning against my chest.
"Church warrant! Nobody moves!" Three Inquisitors in black plate pushed in, halberds down. The one in front had the red sash. Aldrus.
"Don't," Lyra gasped against my ear. "Don't let them see it."
The mark on her wrist wasn't red anymore. It was black. Cracked black, like burned paper, and it was pulsing.
And underneath it, my blood was pulsing with it.
"Kael Vane," Aldrus said. He didn't shout. He just looked down at us like we were already tagged for the incinerator. "Banished surgeon. Forbidden practice. And you. Lyra Nocturne. Thought your family knew better than to breed with rot."
"Get your men out of my clinic," I snapped. My voice cracked. Great. "You don't have jurisdiction here. This is the lower ward."
"I have jurisdiction where the rot spreads," he said. He tapped his halberd against the floor. The crystal tip rang. "And that thing on her arm is spreading. Stand up. Both of you. Slow."
Lyra tried to push off me. Her hand slipped. Her skin was cold and then way too hot. The black lines were crawling up past her wrist now, thin as veins.
"Kael," she whispered, only for me. "What did you do to me? You said it would hold it."
"It was supposed to hold it!" I hissed back. I grabbed her arm, yanked her behind my table as the Inquisitors stepped closer. "Stay behind me. Don't show them."
"Too late," Aldrus said. "Girl. Show me your arm."
"No," Lyra said.
That one word. Flat. Hard. Even on her knees, shaking, she said it like a Nocturne.
Aldrus smiled. "No? You think you have a choice? The whole city heard that pulse. Every bell in the Cathedral just cracked. You lit up the Ruins like a flare."
I felt it then. A low note. Not in my ears. In my teeth. In the blood.
Lyra's eyes went wide. She heard it too.
"What is that?" one of the younger Inquisitors muttered, looking over his shoulder toward the window. Toward the Ruins in the distance. "Sir, do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Aldrus frowned.
He didn't hear it. None of them did. Only us.
Lyra grabbed my collar. Her nails dug in. "Kael, it's screaming. Why is it screaming?"
"I don't know!" I kept my voice low, fast. "The contract wasn't supposed to do that. It was just a tie, just blood for access, just to keep you alive long enough to get into the Ruins. It shouldn't have called anything."
"You said it was safe!" she snarled, right in my face. Her breath was hot against my mouth. "You said 'small price'! This doesn't feel small!"
"It is small compared to dying!" I snarled back. "You want to go back to crystallizing? You want them to cut that arm off and burn you?"
"Enough whispering," Aldrus barked. He slammed his halberd down. The crystal tip sparked against my floor. "You two are bound. I can smell the forbidden art on you. That makes you property of the Church. Lyra Nocturne, you will come with us for purification. And you, butcher, you will hang."
"Like hell she will," I said.
I shoved Lyra further behind me and stood up. My knees almost gave out. Forced proximity, yeah. Her back against the cabinet, my body between her and three halberds. There was nowhere else to go. The back door was blocked by a crate. The window was too small.
"You touch her and the bond kills her," I lied. Or maybe not lied. I didn't know anymore. "We did a blood-contract. Full sync. You pull us apart now, the backlash fries her heart. You want a dead noble on your report, Inquisitor?"
Lyra stared at me. "What are you doing?"
"Saving our asses," I whispered without moving my lips.
Aldrus narrowed his eyes. "A blood-contract? You think I'm stupid, boy? That rite's been banned for fifty years."
"Check her wrist then," I said. I grabbed Lyra's hand and held it up before she could stop me. The black veins were glowing faintly now. "Look at it. You know what that is. You separate us, she dies. And then you have to explain to the High Prelate why you killed the last Nocturne heir before you got anything out of her."
Lyra tried to yank her hand back. I held tight. Her skin burned against mine.
"Let go of me!" she hissed.
"Hold still," I hissed back. "Trust me for ten seconds."
"I don't trust you at all!" she said, loud enough for them to hear. "You did this to me!"
"And I'm the only one keeping you breathing!" I shot back. "You want to live or you want to be righteous? Pick!"
Aldrus watched us. He was calculating. I could see it. The Church didn't want a corpse. They wanted leverage. They wanted whatever was in the Ruins that just screamed for us.
"Fine," Aldrus said slowly. "Then you both come. Together. The Church has cells big enough for two."
"No," Lyra said again. Her voice shook but she stepped up next to me, shoulder to shoulder. Her arm was pressed against mine. The black mark flared and I felt a jolt right behind my ribs, like someone plucked a wire inside me. She gasped at the same time. "We aren't going anywhere with you."
"You don't get a vote, girl," Aldrus said. He nodded to his men. "Take them."
The two Inquisitors moved.
"Wait!" I threw my hands up. "Wait, wait, wait. You want the Ruins? That's what that pulse was, right? The Ruins woke up. You felt the bells crack. You don't know why. We do. Or we will. The contract tied us to it."
Aldrus held up a hand. His men stopped.
"Talk," he said.
"The blood-contract isn't just between us," I said, thinking so fast my mouth was dry. "It's a key. Old Nocturne blood plus forbidden surgery. It opened something. That's why it screamed. You drag us to a cell and you get nothing. You let us go into the Ruins, we bring you back what woke up."
"Kael, what are you promising?" Lyra whispered, horrified. "We can't—"
"We can and we will," I cut her off, staring at Aldrus. "Give us forty-eight hours. A head start. If we don't come back, you can hang me twice."
Aldrus laughed. It was a short, ugly sound. "You think you can bargain? You are rot. You are nothing."
"Then why are you still listening?" Lyra said. She stepped forward, chin up. That fierce heiress thing, even with black veins crawling up her arm. "Because you're scared. You heard the bells. You know something changed and you don't know what. My family built this city on the Ruins. My blood knows it. His hands can cut it. You need us."
I stared at her. Damn. Okay.
Aldrus stared at her too. Then at me.
The screaming in our blood got louder. Higher. Lyra winced and grabbed her head. I did too without meaning to. It was like a needle going through the ear, straight into the brain.
"Make it stop," she whimpered, only to me. "Kael, make it stop."
I grabbed her face with both hands. Her skin was fever-hot now. The black mark was spreading to her palm, branching like frost.
"Listen to me," I said, fast, low. "We have to finish it. The contract didn't close right. That's why it's screaming. We have to seal it properly or it will burn you out."
"Finish it how?" she said, eyes wet, angry. "You said it was done!"
"I was wrong! Okay? I was wrong!" I pressed my forehead to hers for half a second. We were breathing the same air. The Inquisitors were right there and I didn't care. "The price wasn't clear. It needs a vow. A real one. Not just blood. Will. You have to mean it."
"Mean what?"
"That you're mine and I'm yours until this is done," I said. The words felt insane coming out. "That you won't run. That I won't let you die. Say it."
"That's not a contract, that's—" She swallowed. Her hands were on my wrists, trying to push me away and holding on at the same time. "You want me to be bound to you?"
"I want you alive!" I said. "You want power back? You want to stop turning into crystal? Then say it! Say you're bound to me!"
Aldrus took a step forward, halberd lifting. "What are you doing? Step away from her."
"Don't touch us!" I shouted without looking. I kept my eyes on Lyra. "Lyra. Look at me. Only me. Say it."
Her lip trembled. Then it firmed. Her grip on my wrists turned to iron.
"Fine," she spat. "I'm bound to you, you bastard. Until this is done. Until we find the cure. Now fix it!"
"I am bound to you," I said back, and I meant it because if she died I was dead anyway. "We go into the Ruins together. We come out together. No one else."
I pressed my thumb hard into the black mark on her wrist.
It seared. White hot.
Lyra screamed. I shouted. It wasn't pain exactly. It was too much. Like every nerve lit up at once. Like someone poured light straight into the blood. I felt her heartbeat slam into mine and sync. One beat. One rhythm. Her fear, my panic, tangled together.
The black veins flashed — and then went darker. Solid black. Burned in.
And the screaming from the Ruins — it stopped.
For one second of perfect silence.
Then it answered.
A low, deep pulse rolled back through the city. Through the walls. Through our chests. The Inquisitors staggered. The crystal tip on Aldrus's halberd cracked right down the middle.
"What did you do?" Aldrus roared, stumbling back. "What did you do!"
Lyra was panting against me, forehead on my shoulder, my arms around her without me remembering putting them there. Her whole body was shaking.
"Kael," she whispered, voice raw. "Do you hear that? It's not screaming anymore. It's... calling."
I heard it. God, I heard it. A tone only we could hear, pulling like a tide toward the Ruins. Toward the forbidden zone no one had entered in ten years and lived.
The youngest Inquisitor dropped his halberd. "Sir, the warrant sigil — look!"
Aldrus looked down at his own wrist where the Church brand glowed. And next to it, fresh and bleeding, a new line of black crystal was forming, copying Lyra's mark.
He looked up at us, eyes wide with fury and fear.
"Seize them! Seize them now before it spreads!" he screamed, and the door behind him blew open again — but this time nothing was there except the dark street and that impossible, ringing call that only Lyra and I could hear getting louder and louder as if something deep in the Ruins had just opened its eyes and said —