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"Don't."
The blade kissed Avery's chest before she got her hand around the hairpin.
The man in the black coat didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
Avery froze. One hand was wedged into the bone gate. The other gripped the black key. Smoke crawled across the ground behind him, carrying the stink of burnt meat and wet stone. Beyond the gate, the thing that had chased her through the square scraped its claws along the bars.
The hairpin bent under her fingers.
He pushed the sword closer. The tip pierced her torn shirt and touched skin.
"The city wants you alive," he said. "I don't."
"Great." Avery kept her breathing shallow. "We've got something in common."
His eyes narrowed.
She yanked the hairpin free.
The bone gate slammed shut.
The impact threw her backward. Her shoulder struck stone. The black key flew from her hand. The man moved fast, his sword sweeping down—not toward her heart, but toward the key.
Avery rolled.
The blade chopped into the stone where her fingers had been.
She grabbed the key and kicked his knee.
He barely shifted.
"Rude," she said.
He pulled the sword free. "Stand up."
"Why? So you can stab me more comfortably?"
"Stand up."
The gate behind them groaned. A thin red line opened in the bone. The city had started writing again.
Avery glanced over her shoulder.
Her name crawled across the gate in letters that looked carved by fingernails.
AVERY VALE.
A second line burned into place beneath it.
REGISTERED INTRUDER.
The cut in her palm opened again. Blood slid over the black key.
The gate shuddered.
The gatekeeper raised his sword toward her throat.
Avery looked at him. "You first."
For one second, neither of them moved.
Then the street beneath her boots rolled.
Not shook. Rolled.
Paving stones lifted in a long wave and sent them sideways. The gatekeeper caught a metal post. Avery grabbed a hanging chain and slammed into the side of a narrow building.
A bell rang somewhere ahead.
Another answered behind them.
Then the whole street began to move.
Buildings folded inward. Storefronts slid over one another. A butcher's stall rose from the pavement, still dripping red water into the cracks. Stalls rolled into place on iron wheels. Canvas roofs snapped open. Wooden signs swung from chains, each painted with a different rule.
NO BLOOD FOR GOODS.
NO CREDIT AFTER THE THIRD BELL.
NO STEEL DRAWN UNLESS STEEL IS OFFERED.
Avery stared.
The gatekeeper landed beside her and caught her arm before she hit the ground.
"Let go."
"You'll fall."
"I'd rather fall than let you drag me."
He released her.
The street dropped half a foot.
Avery caught his coat before she went down. His hand closed around her wrist at the same time. They ended up shoulder to shoulder, gripping each other while the market dragged itself into shape around them.
His coat was cold. Not winter-cold. More like metal left in a cellar. His fingers were warm around her wrist, and they stayed there a second longer than they needed to.
"You're welcome," she said.
"You grabbed me."
"You were the closest thing that looked expensive."
His mouth tightened.
The market bell rang a third time.
Every stall went quiet.
The people watching from the doorways stepped into the street. Gray skin. Dark eyes. Too many teeth. One woman wore a necklace made from little brass keys. A boy with a sack over his shoulder pointed at Avery's bleeding hand.
"She's got fresh blood," he whispered.
"She's got a city key," someone else said.
The gatekeeper turned his head.
The crowd backed away.
Useful. Avery filed that away.
A woman in a red scarf tapped a spoon against a glass jar. Her stall was packed with wire, teeth, bottled oil, and pieces of bone polished smooth.
"Well," the woman said. "The gatekeeper brought us a live one."
"Not yours," he said.
"Everything's somebody's if the price is right."
The woman's gaze dropped to the key in Avery's hand. Her smile sharpened.
Avery stepped in front of it.
The woman noticed.
"Name's Sera," she said. "You look lost."
"I'm not."
"You're bleeding in a street that rearranges itself every ten minutes."
"I'm injured. That's different."
Sera laughed once. "I like her."
The gatekeeper shifted his sword.
Sera glanced at him. "Still planning to kill her, Kellan?"
Avery turned toward the man beside her.
Kellan Rook.
He didn't look at Sera. "That's not your concern."
"It becomes my concern if she dies before she pays."
Avery's eyes moved over the stall. Wire. Bone. Small tools. A tray of black nails. Three pieces of pale metal sat beneath a glass dome, thin and curved, ridged like fish spines.
Bone-steel.
She knew the material from old locksmith manuals. Rare. Strong. Flexible when heated correctly. Almost impossible to work without a proper forge.
Almost.
Her fingers tightened around the key.
She needed a tool. A real one. The black key had opened the impossible lock at Blackmere Estate, but it had no teeth now. Smooth. Cold. Useless against the city's sealed doors.
If she could make a clamp, a pick, anything that could hold its shape under pressure, she might survive long enough to find an exit.
Sera leaned across the counter. "What've you got?"
"Nothing you want."
"Everybody's got something."
Avery pulled the black key from behind her back and held it up just long enough for Sera to see.
The market went still.
Even the bell stopped swinging.
Sera's smile vanished.
Kellan's hand tightened around his sword.
Avery lowered the key. "I'm not trading this."
"Good," Sera said quietly. "You'd be dead before the trade finished."
"Helpful."
"No, really. Put it away."
Avery kept it in her hand.
Sera leaned closer. Her red scarf brushed the counter. "The market has rules. Want something? Offer something equal. You can't use city property. You can't offer blood unless the merchant asks. And don't promise your name."
"Why?"
"Names are easy to collect and hard to get back."
Avery glanced at the bone-steel.
"I need that."
Sera followed her stare. "You can't afford it."
"I can fix things."
"Can you?"
"Locks. Mechanisms. Small metalwork."
"You have no tools."
"I've got hands."
Sera looked at Avery's scraped knuckles. "Those hands aren't worth bone-steel."
"What is?"
"Information. A favor. A memory. A piece of somebody who matters."
Kellan stepped closer. "Walk away."
Avery turned on him. "You're the one holding a sword at me. You don't get to give me shopping advice."
"You don't understand this market."
"Then explain it."
"No."
"Of course not."
His eyes flashed. Anger, maybe. Fear, if she wasn't imagining it.
Avery pushed anyway.
"You're not allowed to kill me here, are you?"
The crowd went quieter.
Kellan's stare flattened. "Don't test that."
"You said the city wants me alive. If you could kill me, you would've done it at the gate."
"Keep talking."
"Gladly. You're stuck following orders, and everybody here knows it."
Sera made a small sound behind her stall. Not quite a laugh.
Kellan's sword came up.
The market signs rattled overhead.
NO STEEL DRAWN UNLESS STEEL IS OFFERED.
His blade was already out, but the letters above them glowed red. The air tightened around the sword. Kellan looked up.
Avery looked up too.
Sera shoved a jar off her counter.
It hit the ground and burst.
Thick yellow smoke rolled over their boots.
"Trade's open!" Sera shouted.
The crowd surged.
Avery lost sight of Kellan for half a second. Long enough for three hands to reach toward her pockets. She slapped one away, drove her elbow into another face, and caught the third wrist.
The thief grinned at her.
His teeth had been filed to points.
"Give me the key," he hissed.
Avery twisted his arm until the joint popped.
He screamed.
"Ask nicer."
Kellan cut through the smoke.
Not at Avery. At the thief.
The thief dropped with a black line across his jacket. No blood came out. The cut filled with pale light, and the man crumpled as if someone had pulled his bones loose.
Avery stared. "You could've warned me."
Kellan grabbed her shoulder. "Move."
"Your customer service needs work."
"Move!"
He dragged her behind Sera's stall as more people rushed in. Sera kicked a wooden lever beneath the counter. The stall rolled backward, revealing a narrow opening between two buildings.
"Materials," Sera said. "Now."
Avery ducked through. "You said I couldn't afford them."
"I changed my mind."
"Why?"
"Because he's about to lose control."
Avery looked back.
Kellan stood in the middle of the market with his sword lowered. Black lines had appeared beneath the skin of his right hand. They ran from his fingers to his wrist, pulsing like cracks in glass.
His breathing had changed.
Slow in.
Too slow out.
The crowd kept its distance.
Sera shoved the bone-steel pieces into Avery's hands. "Make something."
"With what?"
Sera pointed to a small furnace tucked beneath the stall. "There."
The furnace had no fire. Avery grabbed the crank anyway and turned it. The metal groaned. A blue spark snapped inside the chamber.
A message appeared in the air above it.
CRAFTING NODE FOUND.
Avery nearly dropped the bone-steel.
Another line followed.
RECIPE UNKNOWN.
"Are you seeing this?" she asked.
Sera's face tightened. "Seeing what?"
"Nothing."
She shoved the bone-steel into the furnace.
The blue spark became a flame.
Heat punched her in the face. The material softened from pale bone to dull silver. Avery grabbed a pair of tongs from the side of the furnace. The handle was too short. Her fingers burned anyway.
Kellan made a rough sound behind her.
Avery looked over her shoulder.
The black lines had reached his elbow.
His right arm jerked.
"Get back," Kellan said. His left hand clamped around his wrist.
Avery kept working. "You first."
"Vale."
"You know my last name now. Cute."
His arm snapped hard to the side. The sword point swung toward the stall.
Sera ducked.
Avery bent the glowing metal around the mold on the counter. Two curved jaws. A locking hinge. She needed a pin.
Her eyes landed on the tray of black nails.
She snatched one.
Sera swore. "Those cost extra."
"Put it on my tab."
"You don't have a tab."
"I do now."
Kellan's sword slashed through the stall roof.
Wood crashed down.
Avery flinched as splinters tore her cheek. The blade stopped inches from her head, shaking in the air.
Kellan was fighting his own arm. His teeth were clenched so hard she heard them grind.
"Run," he said.
The word came out strained.
Avery grabbed the half-finished clasp with the tongs. It glowed at the edges. She jammed the black nail through the hinge and struck it against the counter.
Once.
The metal rang.
Twice.
The clasp snapped shut around itself.
A message flashed above it.
BONE-STEEL WRIST CLASP FORGED.
QUALITY: UNSTABLE.
EFFECT: BINDS A MOVING JOINT FOR THREE BREATHS.
Three breaths.
Fine. She could work with three breaths.
Kellan's arm ripped free of his control.
The sword came down.
Avery stepped into it.
Sera shouted her name.
The blade stopped against Avery's shoulder because Kellan caught it with his left hand. The impact drove him to one knee. His right arm kept pulling, muscles jumping beneath the black cracks.
Avery saw the curse crawling toward his fingers.
She didn't run.
She grabbed Kellan's wrist with both hands and slammed the hot clasp around it.
The metal hissed against his skin.
Kellan roared.
The sound shook the bottles on Sera's shelves.
His curse surged black beneath the clasp. The bone-steel bent inward and locked tight.
One breath.
The sword stopped moving.
Two breaths.
Kellan stared at Avery, eyes wide now, all that cold gone.
Three.
The black lines pulled back from his fingers.
The sword dropped into the dirt.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Kellan caught Avery's wrist and pulled her close. His grip was hard enough to hurt, but his thumb stayed clear of her pulse as if he was afraid to feel it.
"What did you do?"
Avery glanced at the clasp. The metal had turned dark, and tiny letters were burning across its surface.
BLOODLINE CRAFT CONFIRMED.
NOLAN VALE.
Her stomach dropped.
Kellan read the words over her shoulder. His breath touched the side of her face.
"Your father didn't just teach you to make locks," he said. "He forged the first seal beneath this city."
Avery stared at him. "My father died before he ever saw this place."
"That's what he wanted you to believe."
The clasp tightened around Kellan's wrist. A second message appeared, bright enough to cut through the smoke.
VALE HEIR RECOGNIZED.
Kellan's fingers closed around hers.
"If the city recognized you," he said, "then Nolan didn't send you here to escape. He sent you to open what he buried."
Avery pulled against his grip. "What did he bury?"
Kellan looked toward the bone gate, where her name still burned above REGISTERED INTRUDER.
Then the gate spoke in Nolan Vale's voice.
"Avery," it said, "if Kellan Rook is alive, don't let him take you to the—"