"Take your hands off me, Warden," I snarled, his leather-clad forearm shoving me flat against the vault door as six iron deadbolts slammed shut behind us.
Dorian didn't let go. His chest pressed into my shoulder blades, broad and solid, pinning me in place while his fingers locked around my wrist. "Stop fighting me, Mara. You want Calder to hear us before we even touch the case?"
"He already branded me a traitor in front of half the city!" I twisted, trying to dig an elbow into his ribs. "Don't play the savior now."
"I'm keeping you alive long enough to clear both our names." His breath was hot against the shell of my ear, sending an involuntary shiver straight down my spine. "Or did you forget who signed the seven-day oath?"
"Like you gave me a choice."
"You had the choice to hang on the south wall." His grip loosened just enough for me to whip around, but he stayed inside my space, crowding me against the cold steel plate. His eyes were dark, tracking the erratic pulse hammering at the base of my throat. "You're welcome, by the way."
"Go to hell, Dorian."
A low metal groan shuddered through the floor. The oath mark under my collarbone flared with sudden, sickening heat. Right through his heavy black coat, the matching brand over Dorian's heart lit up red, glowing like a dying coal.
Two matched scars. One shared nervous system. One countdown ticking down in Calder's record books.
"The ward is waking up," I said, stepping past him into the gloom. "Open the inner gate. You have the crown's seal."
Dorian unhooked a heavy silver cipher from his belt and slammed it into the central console. Sparks exploded in his face. The cipher cracked down the middle with a sharp ping, spitting dead gray ash across the bronze floor.
He stared down at the ruined metal, his jaw tight. "Calder re-keyed the lock."
"So your precious crown can't buy us an exit."
"Don't sound so thrilled about being trapped in a tomb."
"I'm trapped with the bastard who put iron cuffs on me two days ago," I said, stalking toward the raised pedestal in the center of the vault. "Forgive me if I don't throw a parade."
"You were caught carrying classified imperial memories!"
"Evidence you refused to look at!"
"Evidence that left three senior archivists dead with their minds cooked to cinders," Dorian snapped, closing the distance between us in two long strides. His boots rang against the stone. "I brought you here instead of letting the high recorder burn out your brain. You want the truth, archivist? Look at the damn box."
On the stone plinth sat a shattered glass reliquary. Suspended inside was a jagged sliver of black crystal, dripping with dried, oxidized blood.
"That shard holds the original line record," I whispered, my voice rough. "Calder didn't just alter my trial. He altered the city's entire registry twenty years ago. You need my bloodline code to read it. I need your blood ward clearance to break the casing."
"Then we cut together," Dorian said.
Before I could answer, static hissed overhead. A brass speaker horn mounted high on the vaulted ceiling crackled to life, followed by a dry, patronizing chuckle.
"Six days, twenty-two hours, and forty minutes, Mara Vale," Calder's smooth voice drifted down, cool as ice water. "That is precisely how long you have before the state remakes what little is left of your mind."
Dorian's hand dropped instantly to his broadsword hilt. "Show yourself, Calder."
"Always the obedient dog, Dorian. Tell me, does the warden know what he's protecting? Or did she fail to mention why her blood sings to the vaults beneath our feet?"
"Shut up!" I shouted at the brass horn.
"Break the glass, little girl," Calder purred. "See what wakes up when you touch your stolen inheritance."
The speaker cut out with a violent pop. Silence crashed back in, thick and suffocating.
Dorian turned to me, his gray eyes narrowing. "What did he mean by inheritance?"
"I don't know," I lied, though my hands were shaking. "We break the ward or we starve in this cage."
"Stop lying to me." Dorian stepped closer, towering over me, until his leather vest brushed the front of my shirt. The scent of rain, steel, and old cedar rolled off him. He caught my trembling right hand, his bare fingers wrapping around mine. His skin was scorching hot against my clammy skin. "Mara. Stop shaking."
"I'm not shaking because of you."
"I can feel your heart hammering against my own ribs, remember?" His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, deliberate and slow, right where my pulse hammered wildly. His gaze dropped to my mouth for a fraction of a second, heavy with something dark and unsaid. "Don't lie to the man tied to your spine."
"Then stop talking and help me break it," I breathed, refusing to back down.
Dorian drew his dagger, pressing the flat of the cold blade across our joined palms. "On three."
We sliced together. A shared crimson line welled across our palms. As our blood mingled, we slammed our hands onto the glass box.
The reliquary didn't just unlock—it detonated.
A spray of obsidian glass shrapnel blasted outward. Dorian shoved me hard behind his back, taking the brunt of the shockwave. A sickening wet crunch echoed through the chamber.
"Dorian!"
A six-inch needle of black crystal had impaled his right side, just under the ribcage. Dark arterial blood soaked through his uniform instantly.
Through the oath bond, agony tore through my own ribs like an iron hook. I dropped to my knees, gasping for air, clutching the exact same spot on my own body. The pain was blinding, screaming through my nerves.
"Stay... back," Dorian wheezed, falling to one knee, his face chalk-white. "The shard... it's cursed."
"Shut up!" I scrambled across the bloody stone on my knees, ripping open the fasteners of his jacket. My bloody hands pressed hard against the puncture wound. His muscles seized under my touch, burning with fever. "It's barbed. If you pull it out wrong, you'll bleed out before the door unlocks!"
"Then let it bleed," he ground out through clenched teeth, his fingers digging into my shoulders with bruising strength. "Take the piece and get to the lower tunnels."
"I can't leave you! The oath will rip my chest apart if your heart stops!"
"Is that the only reason?" His feverish eyes locked onto mine, pupils blown wide with pain and raw, furious intensity. He was leaning on me now, his forehead dropping against mine, his ragged breath mingling with my own. "Just the contract, Mara?"
My breath hitched. The heat radiating off him was overwhelming, filling my head, blurring the panic with the electric hum of the bond. I could feel his heartbeat tripping against my palm, desperate and stubborn.
"You're an arrogant bastard," I whispered, my lips brushing his cheek as I gripped the crystal shard. "Hold on to me."
"I'm not letting go," he growled.
I yanked the shard free in one brutal motion.
Dorian let out a strangled roar, his head falling back into the crook of my neck. As the crystal tore clear, a shockwave of memories ripped through the bond—not mine, but his. A blinding vision flashed in my skull: Dorian standing before a colossal, rune-carved black door buried miles beneath the city, staring at an ancient army frozen in obsidian chains, and on the lintel above them, my own family crest.
Before I could process the vision, the central pedestal violently rotated.
The blood on my hands reacted with the crystal shards strewn across the plinth. The broken pieces dragged themselves together like iron to a magnet, locking into a seamless, glowing black tablet. Runes burned through the dark, blazing with terrifying clarity:
MARA VALE — FIRSTBORN OF THE OBSIDIAN THRONE. SOLE HEIR TO THE UNBROKEN LEGION.
Dorian froze, blood dripping from his side, staring at the letters. "The royal records didn't erase a rebel... they erased the true crown."
"Dorian..." I backed away from the pedestal, horrified. "What did Calder do?"
A deafening subterranean crack split the floor right between our feet. The entire foundation of the tribunal building dropped an inch. Deep within the bedrock below, an iron bell tolled—a sound that hadn't echoed in three hundred years.
Through the widening chasm in the floor, two massive, burning red eyes opened in the pitch-black abyss, locking directly onto my face.
A voice like grinding granite tore through the vault: "The Heir has bled. Awake, my—"
Dorian lunged, throwing his uninjured arm around my waist and dragging me back as the stone gave way, his sword clearing its scabbard with a deafening ring. "Mara, what did you just wake—"