Chapter 6 · Married for the Mark

The black box clicked shut.

Somewhere above them, deep inside the bones of Asterfall, ancient machinery answered.

The pump station shuddered. Rust flaked from the vaulted ceiling. A thin line of blue fire crawled across the old pressure gauges, waking numbers that had not moved in decades.

Beckett looked up. His smile disappeared.

“That,” he said, “is not a comforting sound.”

Nora pressed one hand against the cut beneath her ribs. Blood had soaked through her shirt and gone cold against her skin. Across the chamber, Kane stood with his back against a corroded pump housing, one palm clamped over his chest. Lightning pulsed beneath his skin in sharp, white veins.

He looked less like a man recovering from a magical overload and more like a storm trying to remember how to wear a human shape.

The black box rested between them on the floor, its brass seams glowing faintly.

A hidden route to the sky arena.

A route that required her blood.

A route that required him.

And a command burned into the projection like a sentence.

BRING THE BRIDE.

Nora’s laugh came out thin and humorless. “You knew.”

Kane’s eyes lifted to hers.

“I suspected.