Chapter 37 · The Price of the Deal

"Put the blade down, Lyra. Unless you want to cut the hand holding your contract."

Her knife stopped a finger's width from my shadow-core.

Not my throat. I didn't have one anymore. She'd learned that detail the hard way. My body was a thin black shape spread over the stone, with two hooked limbs pinned beneath her boot and a pulse of blue light beating where a heart should have been.

Lyra leaned closer. Her braid brushed her shoulder. The edge of the knife caught the blue glow.

"You said the contract was real," she said.

"It is."

"Then why can't I feel you?"

"Because you're standing on my chest."

Her eyes narrowed. "You don't have a chest."

"You still managed to step on it."

She pressed harder.

The contract flared between us. Thin silver lines snapped around my shadow and pulled tight. Pain didn't work on me the way it worked on humans, but the binding did. It squeezed every stolen fragment of power until my shape started to split.

She knew it. I knew she knew it.

That was the problem with deals. They made every weakness useful.

"Tell me what you changed," she said.

"Nothing."

"Kael.