Chapter 61 · The Name in the Blood

"Execute the Warden," my mother's digitized voice ordered from the central console. "Kill Ronan Vale, or the lower city gets vented in three minutes."

Ronan slammed onto one knee, coughing black brine across the iron floor. The counterfeit royal seal slipped from his bloody fingers and clattered against my boot.

"Don't look at me like that," he rasped. He wiped his mouth with the back of his scorched gauntlet. "Pick up the damn blade, Mara."

"Shut up."

I stabbed at the emergency bypass keys. Nothing. Every terminal flashed the same blood-red warning.

"I just severed our covenant," I snapped. "I'm not killing you to save my own ass, and I'm sure as hell not taking orders from a ghost."

Ronan gripped the rim of the primary intake valve and hauled himself upright. Smoke curled from the burns across his chest. His breath came wet and ragged.

"It isn't a ghost," he said. "It's a pre-recorded safeguard. Your mother built the gate protocol twenty years ago. If the Warden line betrayed the moon, this tower was designed to execute the Warden and lock down the harbor.