Chapter 26 · The Dead File

The knocking came again.

Three slow strikes against the sealed door.

Eve’s breath caught halfway to her lungs. Her fingers tightened around the edge of the iron table, though her knees still trembled beneath her. The room had resumed its motion, but not its balance. Dust drifted through the lantern light. Somewhere beyond the walls, Nacre City groaned awake after thirteen stolen minutes, its clocks coughing their hands forward as if nothing had happened.

Behind the door, her voice whispered, “Don’t let him kill me again.”

Kieran stood between Eve and the threshold. His burned hand hung at his side, wrapped in the torn remains of his sleeve. Blackened lines climbed from his palm to his wrist, glowing faintly beneath the skin like dying embers. He stared at the door without blinking.

Eve watched his profile. The sharp cheekbone. The rigid jaw. The blood drying beneath one eye.

“You heard it,” she said.

“I heard you.”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Not now.”

“Not now?” Her voice scraped against the words. “You told me I died on October seventeenth, Blacktide Year, three minutes after midnight. You told me I asked you to remember me.