Chapter 29 · The Clock Before Birth

The city did not resume after the thirteen minutes. It merely began moving again.

Rain slid upward from the cobblestones in thin silver threads before remembering gravity. A dead woman in a blue mourning veil blinked, found herself standing beneath the archway of Saint Orison, and screamed when she saw the knife in Kieran Voss’s hand.

Across the square, every clock remained frozen. Brass faces stared down from towers, shopfronts, tram stations, and private balconies, their hands aligned on the same date instead of the same hour.

Eve Calder tasted blood and cold iron. Her own blood ran warm beneath the torn seam of her coat.

The iron came from the pact, still burning under her skin like a brand pressed against bone. Kieran’s hand was locked around hers.

He had not let go since the rain swallowed their shared memory. He stared at her with the expression of a man reaching for a door in a dark room and finding only a wall.

Eve knew there had once been rain between them. She knew his mouth had touched her temple.

She knew she had trusted him enough to let the hourglass take it.