She let go. Like my skin burned her.
She stepped back around to face me, arms crossed. The distance between us was maybe two feet and it felt like a wire pulled tight.
"What do you mean, both ways?"
"Soul-pact means linked, right?" I nodded at the paper. "Old law. If I screw you, I die. So if you screw me — you hand me to Victor, you shoot me in the back, you lock me up after I fix your toy — you pay too. Pain. Feedback. Whatever the resonance does. You feel what I feel."
"You don't even know how to write that."
"I do," I said. "My father wrote them. Before he disappeared. I watched him."
That got her. Her whole body went rigid.
"Your father was Joren Kael?" she said.
"Yeah. So you know I'm not bluffing. I can make that rifle scream again. But I need to know you can't just use me and dump me."
She stared at me for a long time. The interrogation room buzzed. That dead rifle on the table ticked faintly, like a cooling engine.
Then she grabbed the pen and the pact paper and shoved them at me.
"Write it," she said. "Write your both-ways clause. And if you're lying, I will make you regret not signing the quick death."
My hands were still cuffed. She had to unlock one. Just one. The metal clicked and my right wrist was free. Skin red underneath.
I flexed my fingers. Picked up the pen. My hand was shaking too, but not from fear. From the hum. That rifle was calling to the thing inside me that had lit up in the gearworks. The resonance. It was buzzing under my skin like a live wire.
I scratched words at the bottom of the pact. Fast. Ugly handwriting.
*Bound by resonance. Harm to one echoes to the other. Neither may betray nor abandon. Till the weapon sings or death takes both.*
"Poetic," she said, reading over my shoulder. Too close again. Her hair brushed my cheek. Dark, smelled like smoke.
"It's binding," I said. "You feel that?"
She didn't answer. I pressed my thumb to the bottom of the page, where the ink was still wet, and then I grabbed her hand — bare now, she'd pulled one glove off — and pressed her thumb down next to mine.
The paper flashed.
Not like fire. Like cold light. Blue-white. It shot up both our arms.
She gasped. I choked.
A line of heat seared around my throat, then my wrist — a thin, glowing brand, like a circuit, sinking into skin. I saw the same light flare around her wrist, her throat. Her eyes went wide and she grabbed the table to stay standing.
"What — what did you do," she hissed. Her voice was thin.
"Evened the odds," I gritted out. The burn was fading to a dull throb, but I could feel her. Weirdly. Like a second pulse next to mine. Fast. Angry. "Now you can't hang me without choking yourself, Inquisitor."
She stared at her wrist. The brand was already dimming, settling into a faint silver scar that looked like intertwined gears.
She looked up at me and for the first time she wasn't in control. She was furious. And trapped.
"You little —" she started. Her hand shot out and grabbed my collar, yanking me forward across the table until our faces were inches apart. I could see flecks of darker grey in her eyes. I could feel her breath hitting my mouth. "You think this makes us equal?"
"No," I said. My heart was hammering so loud I was sure she could feel it through the pact. "I think it makes you need me alive. Which is better."
Her grip tightened. The fabric of my shirt creaked. She was so close I could count her lashes.
"If you can't fix it by dawn, we both hang," she whispered. It wasn't a threat. It was a promise. "And I will make sure you —"
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Hard. Official. Three bangs on the interrogation door that made both of us freeze.
"Inquisitor Sloane!" A man's voice, muffled by steel. "Archon Victor's guard. Open up. The Archon wants the resonance heretic for questioning. Now."
Sloane's hand was still fisted in my collar. Her eyes snapped to the door, then back to me. The brand on her wrist gave a sharp, cold pulse — I felt it echo on mine —
"Don't you dare make a sound," she breathed, and the door handle started to turn —