Chapter 2

"You don't get to give orders," he said.

"You're the one who offered me seven days."

Behind him, Calder Vane lifted a sealed memory case from the tribunal desk. The black glass inside caught the light. My stolen shard was in there. The only thing that could prove the bloodline records had been altered.

"She doesn't have seven days," Calder said. "She has seven minutes."

The extractor dropped another inch.

I jerked against the restraint bolted around my wrists. Metal cut into my skin. "You said the oath would stop the sentence."

"I said it might." Dorian looked over his shoulder at me. "You still have to agree."

"Agree to what? Being dragged around by your leash? Sleeping in your fortress? Letting you put your hands on me whenever the crown gets nervous?"

His jaw tightened. "You'd be alive."

"That's a low bar."

"It's the only one you have left."

The tribunal went quiet behind us. Dozens of officials watched from their raised benches. A few looked entertained. Most looked relieved. They'd already decided I was a traitor. If Dorian failed to claim me, the extractor would pull the memory of my own name right out of my head.

Then Calder would rewrite the rest.

He smiled as if he'd heard the thought. "Warden Rusk has until the next bell to make the accused useful. If she refuses, finish the extraction."

Dorian turned to him. "You don't command me."

"No. The crown does." Calder tapped the memory case against his palm. "And the crown wants the shard destroyed before she can touch it."

I stared at the case. "You don't even know what it contains."

Calder's smile thinned. "I know enough."

"You know what you planted in it. That's not the same thing."

His gaze snapped to mine.

There it was. The smallest break in his control. A twitch beside his mouth. A quick glance toward the recorder perched on the tribunal desk.

I laughed, even though my wrists were bleeding. "Oh, that's cute. You really did rewrite the record."

"Careful, Mara."

"You should be careful. If the original memory is still inside the shard, every lie you've stamped into my file will burn when it's opened."

Dorian's attention cut back to me. "You know what's in the shard?"

"I know what it isn't."

"That wasn't my question."

"And you don't get an answer until I see it."

The extractor gave a sharp click.

I felt the teeth touch my hair.

Dorian moved fast. His hand hit the control bar, and the machine stopped with a violent shudder. The tribunal erupted behind him.

"Warden!" someone shouted.

"Step away from the prisoner!"

Dorian didn't move. His broad frame blocked me from every pair of eyes in the room. Heat came off him through the dark wool of his coat. He smelled like iron, old smoke, and the clean bitter scent of the northern border.

I hated that I knew that smell.

He leaned close enough that his breath brushed my cheek. "You're going to listen now."

"I was listening when you tried to let them kill me."

"I wasn't trying to let them kill you."

"You dragged me here in chains."

"Because you ran."

"Because you came for me."

His eyes dropped to my mouth for half a second. It was quick. Barely there. Still, I saw it.

So did he.

His fingers tightened around the control bar. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know you could've brought me straight to the crown. Instead, you brought me to a tribunal with a memory extractor. That's not mercy, Dorian. That's a man making sure his prisoner stays quiet."

"If I wanted you quiet, I'd have gagged you."

"You should've. I'd still bite you."

His stare sharpened. "You already did."

"Then stop offering me your hand."

For one hard second, neither of us moved. His palm was still bleeding between us. My teeth marks circled the center of it, dark and wet. Under the blood, the old oath mark had started to glow.

A thin black line curled across his skin.

I looked at it. "That's not supposed to be there."

"Neither are you."

"Don't make jokes."

"I wasn't."

The mark pulsed once. Pain flashed through my chest, hot enough to steal my breath.

Dorian felt it too. His shoulders jerked. His free hand caught the edge of the restraint beside my head.

"What did you do?" he demanded.

"Nothing."

"You bit me."

"That was before the mark appeared."

"You touched the oath key."

My eyes flicked toward the small silver disk hanging from his belt.

Dorian followed my glance.

Too late.

I kicked the restraint release with the heel of my boot. The bolt snapped loose. I twisted hard, yanked one hand free, and grabbed the key from his belt.

His hand closed around my wrist before I could pull away.

"Mara."

"Let go."

"Give me the key."

"Ask nicely."

"Give. Me. The key."

"No."

I drove my knee into his thigh and tore myself sideways. His grip slipped. I hit the floor, rolled under the extractor arm, and ran.

The tribunal guards shouted. Boots slammed against stone behind me.

I shoved through the side gate with the oath key clenched in my fist. The passage beyond was narrow and dark, lined with sealed archive doors. My lungs burned. My wrists screamed. I didn't stop.

"Mara!" Dorian's voice cracked behind me. "Don't make me chase you."

"You already are!"

"You won't get past the outer lock."

"Watch me."

The key heated in my palm. Its metal edges dug into my skin. I reached the first security door and jammed it into the lock.

Nothing happened.

"Come on," I hissed. "Come on."

Dorian's boots hit the passage.

"Put it down," he said.

I looked back. He was coming alone. The guards had stopped at the gate, probably because even they didn't want to get too close to him when his temper broke loose.

"You brought me here to die," I said. "Now you want me to trust you?"

"I want you to stop running into locked doors."

"You could've mentioned the key doesn't work."

"It only answers to blood."

"Whose blood?"

"Mine."

He stopped six feet away. His chest rose under his coat. There was a fresh cut across his palm, and the dark oath mark had spread to his wrist.

I tightened my grip on the key. "Then come get it."

His eyes went to the small space between us. "You don't know what that key does."

"It opens the oath vault."

"It opens a binding chamber."

"Same difference."

"No. It isn't."

The old mark in his palm flashed again.

This time, pain ripped through me so hard my knees buckled.

I hit the door with my shoulder. A cry tore out of my throat before I could swallow it.

Dorian crossed the distance in two strides and caught me around the waist.

His arm locked against my ribs. My back slammed into his chest. Heat spread through my thin tribunal shirt. His mouth was close to my ear.

"Give me the key," he said, lower now. "You're not strong enough to hold it."

"I'm strong enough to steal it."

"You're shaking."

"I'm cold."

"You're lying."

"You don't know me well enough to call me a liar."

His grip shifted, careful but firm, pinning both my arms against my stomach. His fingers brushed the bare skin above my hip.

My breath caught.

He felt that too. His hand went still.

"Let me go," I said.

"Not while you're holding the key."

"Afraid I'll escape?"

"Afraid you'll die before I can use you."

The words landed harder than his hold.

I turned my head until my cheek nearly touched his. "There it is. The truth. I'm not a person to you. I'm a tool you haven't finished using."

"You want the truth? Fine. The crown ordered me to deliver you alive. Calder wants you erased. The tribunal wants a public execution. I want you breathing because you're the only witness left who can identify who altered the blood records."

"So you need me."

"Yes."

"Say it properly."

His breath moved over my skin. "I need you alive."

"And close."

"Yes."

"Where you can watch me."

"Yes."

"Where I can't get to the shard without you knowing."

His silence answered for him.

I smiled despite the pain in my chest. "There you are."

"Don't look so pleased. You still have no leverage."

"I have the key."

"You have a piece of metal that will burn through your hand if you keep holding it."

The key pulsed.

A line of heat cut across my palm. I bit back a curse.

Dorian's hold tightened. "Give it to me."

"I'll give you a deal."

"No."

"You haven't heard it."

"I know you. You want a way out."

"I want seven days. Protection under your seal. No tribunal access. No crown interrogations. No extraction. And the shard stays intact until I read it."

"You want my oath."

"I want yours."

His laugh had no humor in it. "You think I can protect you from the crown?"

"You can protect me from the tribunal. That's enough for now."

"And after seven days?"

"I walk."

"You'll be hunted."

"I already am."

"You'll be branded a fugitive."

"I already am."

His mouth tightened near my ear. "You think this is a game."

"No. I think you hate losing control. That's why you keep touching me instead of taking the key."

He went very still.

Good.

I let my head rest back against his shoulder, not because I trusted him, but because I wanted him to feel how little I feared his anger.

"You could take it," I whispered. "Break my fingers. Cut the key out of my hand. That's what your crown expects, right?"

"Don't tempt me."

"You don't want to hurt me."

"You don't know what I want."

"Then prove me wrong."

His fingers slid from my waist to my wrist. His thumb pressed against my pulse.

The contact was almost gentle.

That made it worse.

"If I take the key," he said, "the oath will choose the person who holds it."

"Then I hold it."

"And if you bind yourself to me, you won't be able to break the oath by walking away."

"You said seven days."

"Seven days of shared protection. Shared pain. Shared dreams. If one of us breaks the terms, the other pays for it."

"You left out the part where you get to control me."

"I don't get to control you."

"You get to track me."

"Yes."

"Feel when I'm hurt."

"Yes."

"Know where I am."

"Yes."

"And if I try to steal the shard?"

His thumb pressed harder against my pulse. "Then I'll know before your hand touches it."

I turned in his hold. We ended up face to face, my back against the locked archive door, his body blocking the passage.

He was too close. The front of his coat brushed my knees. His hand still held my wrist, and his palm was hot against my skin.

"You really hate that I can read you," he said.

"You can't read me. You just keep guessing until I get tired of correcting you."

"You're afraid."

"Of you?"

"Of what the oath will show you."

The words struck somewhere deeper than I wanted them to.

I shoved at his chest. He caught both my hands before I could push again.

"Move."

"Say yes."

"Go to hell."

"That wasn't the word."

"You don't get to make this sound like a marriage proposal."

"I don't want a marriage."

"Good. I don't want a jailer."

"Then stop making me choose between your freedom and your life."

For the first time, his voice cracked.

Only a little. But it was there.

I stared at him.

Dorian looked away first.

The tribunal bells began to ring in the distance. One. Two. Three hard strikes.

The next bell would start the extraction again.

I looked at the oath key in my palm. Blood had pooled around its edge. The metal had cut deep enough to leave a dark crescent.

"Seven days," I said.

Dorian's eyes came back to mine. "You agree?"

"I agree to protection. Not obedience."

"The oath won't care about the difference."

"Then write it into the terms."

"You think I carry a contract in my pocket?"

"You're a border warden. You carry orders, warrants, and enough legal paper to bury a city."

His mouth almost moved. Not a smile. Something close enough to make my stomach tighten.

He pulled a narrow strip of black parchment from inside his coat and pressed it against the wall beside my head.

"You planned this," I said.

"I planned for you to be difficult."

"That's a nicer word for impossible."

"Don't get attached to it."

The parchment unfurled by itself. Seven lines appeared in silver ink.

Protection.

No extraction.

No tribunal custody.

The shard preserved until the seventh day.

No physical restraint unless my life was in immediate danger.

I pointed at the fifth line. "You added that last one for yourself."

"I added it because you keep biting people."

"Only men who deserve it."

"There are six lines left."

"You said seven."

"The last one is the release clause."

"Let me see it."

He angled the parchment away.

"Dorian."

"The oath requires mutual consent."

"Then stop hiding the terms."

His gaze held mine. "After seven days, if the shard clears your name, I release you. If it doesn't, you remain under crown protection until the threat is gone."

I laughed once. "That's not a release clause. That's another cage."

"It's the only reason the crown will accept this."

"Change it."

"I can't."

"You can. You just don't want to."

"Mara—"

"Change it, or let the extractor finish."

His jaw flexed.

The bells rang again.

The fourth strike shook dust from the ceiling.

Dorian looked toward the tribunal gate. Then he looked back at me.

There was a dark cut along his cheek from the fight outside. I wanted to ask who had put it there. I wanted to touch it.

Instead, I pressed the oath key against his bleeding palm.

He inhaled sharply.

"Write it," I said. "When the seven days end, I walk free. No crown custody. No tracking. No claim on me."

"You want me to give up the right to find you."

"You want my cooperation?"

"I want you alive."

"Then choose."

The key burned between our hands.

Dorian stared down at it. His blood spread over my fingers. Warm. Sticky. Too intimate for a contract built from threats.

"Fine," he said.

The silver ink changed.

The final line rewrote itself.

At the end of seven days, Mara Vale walks free.

Dorian's eyes lifted. "Now say it."

"I agree to the seven-day protection oath."

"Say my name."

I swallowed. "I agree to the seven-day protection oath with Dorian Rusk."

The mark on his palm opened like a cut.

Pain punched through my chest.

I screamed and grabbed his coat. He caught me around the waist before my knees hit the floor.

The passage vanished.

For one breath, I stood somewhere else.

A black door rose in front of me. Tall. Smooth. Carved with one name in deep, clean letters.

MARA VALE.

Dorian stood on the other side of it.

No coat. No blood. No hard tribunal face.

He was asleep.

His hand rested against the door as if he'd been trying to reach me through it for years.

"Dorian," I whispered.

His head snapped up.

His eyes were full of terror.

Then the vision broke.

I slammed back into my body against his chest. His arms locked around me. His breath came rough against my hair.

"What did you see?" he demanded.

I tried to pull away. He held me tighter.

"Let go."

"What did you see?"

"A door."

His grip went rigid.

"What kind of door?"

"Black."

The color drained from his face.

"What was on it?"

I looked at the mark burning across his palm. "My name."

Dorian released me like my skin had turned to fire.

I stumbled into the archive door. He stepped back, breathing hard, his hand pressed to his chest.

"You knew it," I said.

"No."

"You knew about the door."

"No."

"You were there."

"I said no."

"You were dreaming about it before the oath even sealed."

His eyes cut toward the tribunal gate.

That was answer enough.

Before I could grab him, the black parchment flared between us.

Every line turned red.

The oath key melted into our joined blood.

A sharp band of heat snapped around my ribs. Dorian doubled over at the same time, one hand clamping over his side.

"What the hell is happening?" I shouted.

The archive doors slammed shut one after another.

Dorian's wound opened.

Not the cut on his palm. The old scar beneath his ribs. Blood pushed through his coat, spreading fast across the fabric.

I felt it in my own chest.

A hot line tore under my breastbone.

I pressed both hands against it. "You said shared pain. You didn't say you'd bleed through me."

"I didn't know the oath would reach that deep."

"You didn't know? You're the one who wrote it!"

He staggered toward me. I caught his arm before he fell.

His body was heavy and hot against mine. His breath broke against my neck.

"Don't touch me," he said.

"You're bleeding."

"Don't—"

The wound inside my chest opened wider.

I cried out. Dorian's hands closed around my waist, dragging me against him so I wouldn't hit the floor.

His forehead pressed to mine.

"Stay with me," he said.

"You don't get to give me orders."

"Then yell at me after you stop bleeding."

"I hate you."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know."

His voice had gone rough. His thumb moved once over my side, barely touching me through the shirt.

The pain eased by a fraction.

I felt his relief inside my own bones.

That terrified me more than the wound.

A slow clap echoed from the tribunal gate.

Calder stepped into the passage with the memory case tucked under one arm.

Dorian turned, putting his body between Calder and me again.

Calder looked at the blood spreading across both of us. "There. It's done."

"Get out," Dorian said.

"The oath has taken hold. The crown will be pleased."

"I said get out."

Calder's attention slid to me. "You should've asked what happens on the seventh day."

I forced myself upright. "I asked. He lied."

Dorian's head turned slightly. "I didn't lie."

"You left out the part where I inherit your wounds."

"That wasn't supposed to happen."

"You keep saying that like it makes me feel safer."

Calder opened the memory case.

The black shard inside gave off a dull red glow.

My chest burned in answer.

I took one step toward it.

Dorian caught my hand. "Don't."

"It's mine."

"Not yet."

"You promised I could read it."

"On the seventh day."

"You promised to keep it intact."

"I will."

Calder tilted the case toward me. "You won't be able to read anything in seven days."

"Shut your mouth."

"The rewriting chamber is already prepared. When the oath expires, every memory connected to the stolen bloodline will be replaced. Your mother's face. Your childhood. The name you were born with. All of it."

My fingers went cold around Dorian's.

"You're bluffing," I said.

"Am I?"

Dorian pulled me behind him. "Calder, leave."

"You really think your little protection oath will stop the crown?"

"It will hold for seven days."

"Yes." Calder smiled. "And on the eighth, she won't remember why she was fighting."

The red wound inside my chest pulsed.

Dorian's old scar tore open wider beneath his coat. His body jerked, and the pain slammed into me so hard I lost my grip on his hand.

He reached for me anyway.

Our fingers caught.

The oath mark flared between our palms.

Calder lifted the memory case and spoke toward the recorder hidden above the archive door.

"Let the record show that Mara Vale accepted a seven-day oath with Warden Dorian Rusk. At the end of that term, her memories will be rewritten under crown authority."

Dorian's hand closed around mine.

I stared at the blood soaking through his shirt, then at the black shard glowing inside Calder's case.

"You knew this would happen," I said to Dorian.

"No."

"Then why did you look afraid when I saw the door?"

His eyes locked on mine.

The oath burned hotter.

Calder took one step closer. "Ask him, Mara. Ask him what he saw behind that door before he came for you. Ask him why your name was carved there. Ask him why the crown has been erasing every record of the Vale line for twenty years. Ask him—"

Dorian lunged, but the oath yanked him back. His wound opened through the center of his chest, and the same raw pain split mine wide as he dragged me against him, his mouth inches from mine, his hand locking around the back of my neck while Calder said, "Seven days from now, she'll forget you ever existed, unless—"