Page 78 of Zenith Tower

“What is the intended result?” Caspian asked.

Marrow answered him because the question sounded procedural enough to deserve one. “The open channel will be returned to a stable suppressed state.”

“Permanently?”

“If the stabilization holds.”

Hale tested the straps once. “You intend to sever it.”

“An incomplete Tether is not a bond.”

“It is mine.”

Marrow’s expression did not shift. “Not once its completion places every Mark in this Tower within her reach.”

Two completed bonds confined my reach to Caspian and Kieran. If Hale’s line closed, every Mark the Council had altered might come within reach of my hands.

“I do not consent,” Hale said.

“Emergency stabilization does not require consent.”

“This is not stabilization.”

“The Council may decide otherwise.”

“The Council isn’t here.”

Marrow nodded to the reader. “Proceed.”

She took the first lead from the case.

Hale’s cuff was already open from my room. The reader pushed his sleeve above the elbow and placed the first contact over the channel nearest his pulse. His forearm tightened beneath her hand.

She fixed a second lead farther up the Mark, then a third near the place where the copper disappeared into darker lines. The trailing ends connected to a small silver plate at the edge of the water channel.

The open line at my wrist began to ache.

“Hale,” I said.

His eyes found mine. “I know.”

The reader pressed both palms to the plate.

Light moved out of Hale’s Mark.

It traveled along the leads in narrow copper threads and spilled into the water beneath the table. Hale’s shoulders locked. The strap buckles knocked once against stone as his hands clenched.

At my wrist, the unfinished line went cold.

The cold drove up my arm with the deep, scraping pain of something being pulled from beneath the skin. I caught the edge of the table. Across from me, the channel nearest Hale’s pulse dimmed.

The reader adjusted the second lead.

“Stop,” I said.

Marrow watched the fading line. “Continue.”

Hale bowed his head. His breath came slowly through his nose, each one measured, every part of him turned toward holding still.