Chapter 5

Then twenty.

I lunged after him and caught the front of his coat. The fabric tore through my fingers. His body slammed into the black grid below hard enough to crack the glass memory tiles.

"Adrian!"

His head snapped sideways. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

Then the chamber jerked backward.

His torn coat sealed itself. The broken tiles jumped into place. My hand closed around his wrist again.

And Adrian fell.

"What the hell is happening?" I yelled.

"You tell me!"

The tribunal chamber folded around us.

One second, Adrian lay facedown on the floor. The next, he stood beside the witness dais with a blade buried in his chest. Then he was choking against the wall, fingers clawing at the mark burning beneath his collar.

Every time, he looked at me before he died.

Every time, I reached him too late.

"Stop fighting the loop!" I grabbed his face between both hands. "Look at me. Stay with me."

His skin burned under my palms. His breath scraped across my fingers.

"That'd be easier if you stopped dragging me back into the same death!"

"I'm trying to get you out."

"You call this getting me out?"

"Do you want to keep dying?"

"Not especially!"

The chamber snapped again.

Adrian appeared on his knees in front of Chief Justice Marlow's empty bench. Black lines crawled over his throat and jaw. The judgment mark had spread since the last reset, turning his skin gray around the edges.

I knew that mark. Everyone in Vesper Bay did.

Marlow's oath-mark made an accusation stick. Once it settled on someone, the city's memory grid treated every lie about them as fact. Adrian had been branded a thief, a murderer, and the man who'd gotten my license stripped in front of half the city.

If the mark finished spreading, no appeal could touch him.

And if Adrian died inside the loop, the witness shard in his pocket would burn with him.

That shard was the only proof left that my mother's sealed memory had been accessed after her death. It was the only thing that might clear my name.

I jabbed a finger at his chest. "Where's the shard?"

Adrian pressed one shaking hand over his ribs. "Safe."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer you're getting while you're holding my face like you're about to break my neck."

"Give it to me."

His mouth twisted. "You'd sell me for it."

"You ruined my license. Don't lecture me about trust."

"I didn't ruin your license."

The loop snapped.

He died again.

I stood in the same spot, my hands empty, his blood splashed across my shirt. The blood vanished before it hit the floor.

"Adrian!" I screamed. "Wake up!"

His body reappeared behind me.

An arm locked around my waist. His mouth pressed to my ear.

"You have to say the line."

I twisted against him. "What line?"

"The private one. From the contract."

"I didn't write a private line."

"You did. You changed the last clause."

His chest pressed tight against my back. Every hard breath moved through me. His fingers hovered just above my waist, not quite touching the bare strip of skin between my shirt and belt.

Even trapped inside a death loop, Adrian still stopped there.

Always controlling the distance.

Always making sure I noticed when he chose not to touch me.

"You expect me to remember contract language while you keep getting murdered?"

"You remember everything that can hurt me."

"That's ridiculous."

"Mara."

His voice dropped against my ear.

Not his sharp courtroom voice. Not the polished heir's voice that made people step aside.

This one was rough. Low. Too close.

"Say it."

The chamber shuddered. His arm tightened around me.

For half a second, another version of him appeared across the room. His body hung from a wire of black light. His eyes found mine.

Then the wire snapped.

I flinched.

Adrian turned me around. "Don't watch it. Watch me."

"You're the one dying."

"And you're the one losing control."

"You don't know what I'm losing."

"I know exactly what you're losing."

His thumb brushed blood from my lower lip. I hadn't even felt the cut happen.

"Your name. Your license. Your mother's last memory." His thumb paused against my mouth. "You'd burn me alive to get any of it back."

"Would you let me?"

"No."

The answer came too fast.

His thumb stayed on my lip. The mark at his throat pulsed, but he didn't step away.

"Then tell me the line."

"You wrote it."

"I write legal clauses. Not love vows."

"Good. This isn't love."

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

The loop reset before I could answer.

Adrian vanished from my hands and appeared across the chamber. A deep crack opened through his chest. Black light poured out of it.

"Mara!" he shouted. "The line!"

I ran.

The floor stretched beneath my feet. Every step dragged the witness dais farther away. The chamber filled with versions of Adrian—one bleeding, one choking, one slumped against the witness stand, one staring at me with a knife in his hand.

"Which one is real?" I screamed.

"The one you hate!"

I followed his voice.

He stood beside the sealed witness vault, one hand braced against the metal door. His shirt had torn open at the collar. The black mark had reached his cheek.

"Say it!" he yelled.

"I don't remember!"

"You told me before we signed."

"I was making sure you couldn't twist the contract."

"You looked me in the eye and added one sentence."

"What sentence?"