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The church floor was cold. Mara's knees were already going numb from kneeling on cracked stone, but she couldn't move. Julian was sitting against the wall across from her, breathing like each inhale cost him something.
She wanted answers. She wanted to shake him until he told her everything Elias had done, every lie her brother had fed her before he vanished. But Julian's shirt was still wet with blood from the tower, and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"You said the key can rewrite oaths," Mara said. Her voice came out rougher than she meant. "What does that mean?"
Julian's eyes flicked to the key in her hand. The one Elias had left behind. The metal was warm against her palm, like it had its own pulse.
"It means your brother found a way to crack the oldest contracts in Greyhaven," Julian said. "The blood oaths that keep the city from tearing itself apart. He was going to rewrite all of them."
Mara's stomach dropped. "Why?"
"Because he got tired of watching people like my family enforce them." Julian's mouth twisted. "He wasn't wrong. The contracts are brutal. But tearing them down without a replacement? That's how you get a massacre."
She thought about the locksmith shop. The way Elias used to sit at the workbench for hours, tracing contract sigils onto practice locks. He'd always said the system was broken. She'd thought he meant the guilds, the taxes, the way the rich got to buy their way out of oaths while the rest of them bled.
She hadn't thought he meant the entire structure of the city.
"So what happened?" Mara asked. "Why didn't he finish it?"
Julian looked at her for a long moment. Then he stood up, slow and careful, like his ribs were still deciding whether to stay in one piece.
"Because the tower's warden found out," he said. "And my father made Elias an offer. Work for us, or watch your sister take the fall for every illegal lock you ever cracked."
The air went out of Mara's lungs.
She stood up too fast. Her vision blurred at the edges. "You're lying."
"I'm not."
"Elias wouldn't—" She stopped. Because Elias would. If it meant keeping her safe, he'd cut a deal with anyone. Even the Rooks.
Julian was watching her like he could see every thought crossing her face. "He agreed. Spent two years working in the tower's contract vault, cataloging every blood oath in the city. Then one night he tried to use your key to rewrite the warden's personal sigil. It backfired. The sigil burned into his chest and he barely made it out alive."
Mara's hand tightened around the key. "Where is he now?"
Julian didn't answer.
"Where is he?"
"I don't know," Julian said, and she wanted to hit him. "He disappeared the same night I got locked up. My father blamed me for the contracts starting to fail. Said I must have helped Elias sabotage them."
Mara's brain was moving too fast. Elias had been working for the Rooks. He'd tried to rewrite a warden's sigil. He'd vanished the same night Julian got arrested.
None of it made sense. Elias had always told her to stay away from the tower, to keep her head down and her hands clean. Why would he risk everything to rewrite one sigil?
Unless it wasn't just one.
She looked down at the key. The markings on it were older than anything she'd ever seen in the locksmith shop. Elias had told her it was a family heirloom, something their mother had left them. But if it could rewrite oaths—
"How many contracts did he change before he ran?" Mara asked.
Julian's face went carefully blank. "Enough that the city's starting to notice."
A chill ran down her spine. "What does that mean?"
"It means blood oaths are breaking," Julian said. "Guards who swore loyalty to the tower are walking off their posts. Merchants who signed trade agreements are defaulting without consequences. And my family's looking for someone to blame before the entire system collapses."
Mara stared at him. "And they think you did it."
"They know I didn't," Julian said. "But I'm a convenient scapegoat. Easier to execute the disappointing son than admit the city's most wanted locksmith played them all."
Her throat was tight. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you need to know what you're walking into," Julian said. "The key you're holding? It's the only thing that can fix what Elias broke. Or finish what he started. And a lot of very dangerous people want it."
Mara wanted to throw the key across the room. She wanted to go back to two days ago, when the worst thing in her life was an unpaid guild fine and a broken lock on her apartment door.
But Elias was out there somewhere. And if Julian was telling the truth, her brother had just painted a target on both their backs.
"Why did you really want me to break you out?" she asked.
Julian's expression shifted. For a second, he looked almost guilty.
"Because the tower's not just holding me," he said. "It's holding something my father bound into the execution contract. If I die in that tower, the binding breaks. And every oath in Greyhaven fails at once."
Mara's pulse was hammering in her ears. "What did he bind?"
Julian opened his mouth to answer.
Then the church door exploded inward.
Mara hit the floor on instinct. Dust and splinters rained down. Through the smoke, she saw three figures step through the ruined doorway. They were wearing the tower's gray cloaks, and the sigils burned into their sleeves were glowing red.
Contract hunters.
Julian swore and grabbed her arm, hauling her toward the back of the church. But the hunters were faster. One of them raised a hand, and the air around Mara went cold.
She felt the magic before she saw it. A silver thread shot out from the hunter's palm, wrapping around Julian's wrist. He jerked back with a choked sound, and Mara saw the sigil on the thread start to burn.
Julian screamed.
And Mara's chest exploded with pain.
She couldn't breathe. Her ribs felt like they were being crushed from the inside. She doubled over, gasping, and realized the pain wasn't hers.
It was Julian's.
The hunter yanked on the silver thread, and Julian went down hard. Mara collapsed with him, her hands clawing at her chest. She could feel his heartbeat under her ribs, erratic and desperate.
No. No, that wasn't possible.
But the pain said otherwise.
One of the other hunters stepped forward, a blade in his hand. The metal was etched with contract sigils, the kind that could cut through magic and flesh alike.
Julian tried to stand. The hunter drove the blade toward his chest.
Mara didn't think. She threw herself between them.
The blade caught her in the shoulder. She felt it punch through skin and muscle, felt the cold burn of the sigils searing into her blood.
Then Julian's hand closed around her wrist, and the world went white.
When her vision cleared, she was on the ground. Julian was above her, his face pale and his eyes wide. The hunter's blade was still buried in her shoulder, but she couldn't feel it anymore.
She could only feel Julian's heartbeat. It was hammering against her ribs, too fast, too loud.
And then she realized.
It wasn't just under her ribs.
It was synchronized with hers.
One heartbeat. Two bodies.
Julian's hand was still on her wrist. His fingers were pressed against her pulse point, and she could see the panic in his eyes.
"What did you do?" Mara gasped.
"I didn't—" Julian's voice cracked. "The cell. When you opened it. I thought it was just the lock, but—"
The hunter yanked the blade out. Mara screamed. Julian's chest jerked like he'd been stabbed too.
The hunter raised the blade again.
And Julian finally said it.
"Your brother's not missing," he said, the words tumbling out too fast. "He's the tower's new contract judge. And he's the one who ordered my execution."
Mara's world tilted.
The hunter's blade came down.
And everything went dark.