"Move, Lia!" Sable slammed me against the iron gate just as a crossbow bolt punched through the wood beside my head.
"I am moving!" I snapped, shoving her arm away. "You picked the locked gate."
"Because the other way has six wardens and a murder charge with your name on it. Pick a complaint later."
Another bolt cracked against the gate. Metal screamed. My cheek scraped rust as I ducked under Sable's elbow and grabbed the chain wrapped around the bars.
The chain wasn't ordinary iron. Thin contract marks ran along every link, glowing a nasty blue. Whoever had sealed the gate wanted more than a lock. They wanted anyone trapped behind it to stay trapped.
Sable shoved a stolen key into the padlock. Her fingers shook once, then steadied.
"Tell me you can break it," she said.
"I can break anything."
"You said that about the duke's contract."
"And look how well that turned out."
The key snapped.
Sable stared at the broken half in her hand. "That was my last one."
"Then stop bringing cheap keys to expensive problems."
Boots pounded closer on the other side of the alley. A man's voice cut through the noise.
"Lia Vey! By order of the city wardens, drop your hands and kneel!"
"They're very polite for people trying to murder me," I said.
"They aren't trying to murder you."
A bolt struck the gate again. The wood split beside Sable's shoulder.
She flinched. "Fine. They are trying to murder you."
I pressed my palm to the chain. The blue marks crawled under my skin, searching for a name, a debt, a command. Every contract had a weakness. Every contract witch knew that much.
The problem was that most contract witches still had their magic.
Mine had been stripped from me in the duke's courtroom three weeks ago. The official reason was forgery. The real reason was that someone had needed a convenient criminal, and my family had handed them my name before I could defend it.
The marks burned harder.
"Lia," Sable said, lowering her voice. "If you can't open it, say so."
"Do you want the truth?"
"For once."
"I'm deciding whether the chain is more afraid of me or of what's coming through that gate."
The next impact bent the bars inward.
A man growled on the other side. Not shouted. Growled.
Sable's face lost what little color it had left. "That's him."
"Who?"
She looked at me. "The reason I told you to run."
The gate exploded inward.
I hit the wall hard enough to bite my tongue. Sable rolled across the alley, and the blue chain snapped loose from the bars. It whipped through the air and wrapped around my wrist.
A huge figure stepped through the broken gate.
Cael Rook.
Even half-shackled, he made the alley feel too small. His black coat hung open, torn at one shoulder. Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow and darkened the side of his face. Silver cuffs bit into both wrists, each one marked with binding script.
Behind him, three wardens stumbled through the wreckage.
Cael turned his head.
One warden raised a spear.
"Don't," Cael said.
The man did.
Cael moved faster than something that size should have been able to move. He caught the spear shaft, twisted, and drove the warden into the gate. The metal groaned. The other two stopped dead.
"Run," Cael told them.
They ran.
Sable scrambled up beside me. "You brought him here?"
"He followed me."
Cael's gaze cut to my chained wrist. His eyes were gray in the weak lantern light, but something darker pushed behind them. Gold flashed across his pupils and vanished.
He took one step toward me.
I lifted my free hand. "Stay there."
His mouth pulled tight. "You give orders now?"
"Only when men with claws are close enough to rip my throat out."
"You shouldn't have come back for me."
"I didn't. I came for Sable."
Sable pointed at him. "You said you could hold him."
"I said I could hold the contract."
"That is not the same thing!"
"You should have read the fine print."
Cael flexed against the cuffs. The metal creaked. A pulse rolled under the skin of his forearms, too strong, too fast. He looked like a man trying not to become a weapon.
That was the problem with Cael Rook. The city called him the Wolf King because he had ended three noble rebellions without losing a single night of sleep. The wardens called him their enforcer. The underground called him the thing you never let into a locked room.
I called him the man who had ruined my life.
He had been the one to drag me before the duke. He had placed the murder blade on the evidence table. He had looked me in the face and said, "Lia Vey, you are under arrest for binding Lord Harrow's heart."
Now he was bleeding in front of me, and the contract chain had chosen my wrist as his leash.
"Take it off," Cael said.
"Ask nicely."
His stare dropped to my mouth for half a second.
It shouldn't have mattered. It did.
Then his eyes went gold again.
"Take it off," he repeated, lower this time, "before I stop asking."
Sable grabbed my sleeve. "Lia, the eclipse starts in less than an hour."
"I know."
"If he changes in this alley, we're all dead."
"I know."
Cael's head snapped toward Sable. "What did you tell her?"
"The part you left out," Sable said. "The binding isn't holding your curse anymore. It's feeding it."
His attention returned to me. "Break the chain."
"Why? So you can kill us without the inconvenience of walking around a piece of metal?"
"If I wanted you dead, you would already be dead."
"That line needs work. You put me in prison."
"I put you in a cell."
"With a death order waiting outside."
"I kept you alive."
The answer landed harder than it should have.
I stared at him. "You don't get to rewrite that night."
"I am not rewriting anything. You are."
The chain around my wrist tightened.
Pain shot up my arm. I dropped to one knee, biting down on a curse. Blue script flared across my skin, then spread over the chain in thin, living lines.
Cael jerked forward.
The silver cuffs snapped taut. His shoulders locked. For one second, the gold in his eyes vanished.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
"Nothing."
"Lia."
"I said nothing!"
A new line of script appeared against my palm.
CLAIM HOLDER: LIA VEY.
BOUND SUBJECT: CAEL ROOK.
DISTANCE LIMIT: THREE STEPS.
Sable swore. "That wasn't there before."
"No," I said. "It wasn't."
Cael looked at the glowing words. "Remove it."
"I don't know how."
"You write contracts."
"Used to."
"You wrote this one."
My throat tightened. "I did not write a leash for you."
"Maybe you don't remember."
His voice was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that made my skin crawl.
I yanked at the chain. It burned my palm.
Cael crossed the three steps between us before I could stop him. His hand caught my wrist, hot and hard around the place where the script glowed.
The chain went cold.
I looked up at him.
His face was inches from mine. I could feel his breath against my temple, rough and uneven. He smelled like blood, steel, and the bitter smoke from a warding spell. His fingers pressed around my wrist, careful despite the strength in them.
"Let go," I said.
"Your pulse is racing."