Chapter 25 · Your Name's Up Next

"Take the blade, Mara. Now."

Calder shoved the black-handled knife into her palm and closed her fingers around it.

His other hand was locked around her wrist. Hard enough to hurt. Not hard enough to stop the shaking in his fingers.

Behind him, the contract chamber groaned.

Chains hung from the ceiling, each one threaded through a strip of silver paper. Names crawled across the paper in red ink. Some burned out. Some kept moving.

One name had stopped moving.

Calder Rook.

Mara yanked against his grip. "You want me to stab you?"

"I want you to live."

"That isn't what you said."

"I said take the blade."

"And then?"

Calder stepped closer, putting his body between her and the contract. His coat brushed her knees. His breath hit the side of her face, warm and uneven, while the chamber's cold metal bit through her boots.

"Then you cut the chain," he said.

Mara stared at the knife. The blade had a thin white line running down its center. It looked like a crack trapped in steel.

"The chain is inside you," she said. "You told me that."

"It is."

"So if I cut it—"

"You lose the backlash.