Chapter 2

Yet my hands refused. There was something in the slope of his shoulders, something in the tragic, desperate tilt of his chin that pulled at a phantom limb inside my chest. If I killed him here, whatever truth lay beneath the ashes of my ruined youth would drown with him forever.

"You want to die?" I growled into his ear, my breath hot against his scarred temple. "Not on your terms. You owe me ten years of blood, butcher. You don't get to cheat me with an easy death."

Before he could answer, I reversed my grip on the dagger and dragged the keen edge across my own left forearm, right over the seam of my leather gauntlet.

The blood gushed hot and dark, splashing over the stone wall and pooling into the water.

"Lucian—no!" he gasped, reaching to stop me.

I shoved his hand away, then grabbed his tunic, slicing through the heavy wool and dragging the blade along his ribs—deep enough to pour a river of blood, shallow enough to miss the lung. He choked on a breath, his hand flying to the wound.

"Make noise," I commanded between clenched teeth.

"Lucian, this is madness—"

I punched him across the jaw with my armored knuckles. The impact cracked sharply in the vault. He grunted, spitting blood, his head whipping sideways against the stone.

"Make noise or I gut you right here!" I hissed.

Understanding flickered in his pale eyes, followed by a look of such profound sorrow it nearly broke my resolve. He let out a ragged, guttural roar of agony that tore through the tunnels, perfectly mimicking a dying beast cornered in a trap.

*Clang.*

*Three.*

"Down the secondary drain!" I yelled toward the vaulted ceiling, projecting my voice with all the frantic panic of an outmatched hunter. "Commander! The butcher has breached the sluice! He’s armed with black powder! Stay back!"

I grabbed the heavy leather satchel from his hip, unhooked my own spare oil flask, and smashed it against the rusted iron grating. Sparks flew as I struck my flint against the masonry.

*Whoosh.*

A sheet of yellow and blue flame exploded across the surface of the stagnant canal, fed by the grease and coal oil floating on the water. Thick, oily black smoke surged toward the ceiling, choking the air and blinding the arched entryway behind us.

Through the curtain of fire, I heard the sudden halt of approaching boots, followed by the furious shouts of Commander Vane’s houndsmen.

"Hold! Hold the line!" Vane’s reedy, imperious voice echoed over the baying dogs. "The tunnel is primed with fire! Vance, you fool, do you have him?"

"He's dragging me under!" I screamed back, coughing violently as the sulfur fumes seared my throat. "The undertow—he broke the flood-grate!"

I grabbed the fugitive by the scruff of his neck, hauling his heavier frame out of the water and toward the narrow, forgotten drainage chute behind the iron grille—a half-collapsed Roman sewer pipe I had scouted three days prior during my vigil.

"Move your legs, damn you!" I whispered savagely, shoving him into the darkness.

He didn't argue now. He scrambled into the pipe, his boots slipping on moss and wet limestone. I followed immediately behind him, reaching back to shove a loose iron lever into the mechanism of the overhead portcullis.

With a deafening groan of ancient iron, the rusted gate dropped five inches, jammed, and then collapsed entirely under the weight of loose masonry, sealing the entrance behind a ton of rubble, fire, and suffocating black smoke.

Behind the stone wall, the fourth bell tolled.

*Clang.*

We were dead men. Both of us.

***

The undertunnels smelled of dead centuries.

Water dripped in a relentless, maddening cadence from the arched vaulting, each drop echoing like a miniature hammer against the silence. We crawled on hands and knees through three hundred yards of suffocating, sludge-choked pipe before the space finally opened into an abandoned crypt-cistern—an ancient burial vault submerged beneath the foundations of the Old Spire.

The fugitive collapsed forward onto the raised stone terrace, coughing violently. The sound was wet, rattling with the blood pooling in his mouth from my blow and the smoke in his lungs.

I didn't offer him a hand.

I hauled myself onto the stone ledge, kicked him onto his back, and pressed my knee hard into the center of his chest. My dagger point rested directly against the soft skin under his jaw, right beneath the carotid artery.

"Move a finger," I breathed, chest heaving, "and I finish what I started."

He lay panting under my weight. In the dim, phosphorescent green light cast by the cave moss clinging to the vaulted ceiling, his scarred face looked almost spectral. His gray coat was soaked through with red—partly mine, mostly his.

Yet his hands remained relaxed at his sides, open and uncurled.

"You ruined it," he wheezed, a faint, bitter smile tugging at the unburned half of his lips. "Ten years... all you had to do was bring them my head, Lucian. You would have been a free man. They would have struck your name from the Register of the Tainted."

"I don't want freedom bought with a lie," I spat, digging my knee harder into his ribs. He winced, a sharp intake of breath hissing through his clenched teeth, but he didn't push me off. "You butchered my family. You slit my father's throat. You poisoned the garrison at High Watch and left my mother to burn in the solar. Why did you stand there and offer your neck like an old dog?"

He looked up at me, his gaze steady, terrifyingly lucid amidst the agony etched across his features.

"Is that what the warrants say?" he asked softly.

"I read the trial records a thousand times!" I roared, the sound bouncing off the subterranean tombs. "I copied every word into my own flesh! Commander Vane brought me the signed confessions! The seal of the Vance family was found in your pocket when you fled the capital!"

"Vane," the fugitive repeated, tasting the name like poison. "Of course. Vane is very thorough with his paper."

"Do not speak his name as if you are above him!" I snarled, shaking him by his soaked lapels. "You were my father's chief retainer! You broke bread at our hearth! You taught me how to hold a foil before I could read a battle map!"

The words tore out of me before I could choke them back. The fury that had sustained me through a decade of cold cells, lashings, and hunting Inquisitorial prey had curdled into something frantic, ugly, and dangerously close to tears.

"I trusted you," I whispered, my voice breaking against my will. "Silas."

The name hung in the damp air like a severed chord.

The fugitive’s breath hitched. For the first time since I kicked down the iron gate, the impenetrable mask of his composure cracked. His pupils dilated until the amber in his eyes was nearly swallowed by black. His lips parted, trembling, but no sound came out.

"You haven't called me that in ten years," he whispered, so quietly the dripping water almost drowned it.

"Because Silas Vance died the night you became a monster," I hissed.

Readers also like

Every Clause Between Us Elias Vale · M/M Romance A ruthless CEO sets out to break his former right hand—only to fall for the man who obeys too perfectly. Thirty-Six Hours with the Enemy Asher Vale · M/M Romance A relentless detective corners his most dangerous obsession—until the interrogation turns into a game neither man can win alone.