Chapter 37 · Seven Seconds, Commander

The thirteenth bell was still trembling in the bones of the city when Kieran opened his eyes.

Eve heard the sound before she saw him move—a wet inhale, dragged up from somewhere deep beneath his ribs. His fingers scraped across the black stone floor. Silver dust clung to his knuckles. Around them, the vault groaned as if the mountain had swallowed a blade.

Then Kieran sat up.

His head snapped toward Eve with military precision. His pupils were too dark, his face too still. The man who had kissed her in the drowned clockwork chamber, who had taken the pact’s burning into his true name, was gone behind that expression.

He looked at her as though she were a battlefield he had once commanded.

“Commander.”

The word struck harder than the bells.

Eve stumbled backward. Her heel hit a fallen gear, and it spun beneath her boot with a shriek of metal. “Don’t call me that.”

Kieran rose in one smooth motion. His coat was torn at the shoulder. A thin line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, but his posture was perfect—