Page 94 of Zenith Tower

I took the whistle from Astra and closed the annex door.

“He’s already working the cord loose,” Caspian said.

“We have minutes at most.”

We returned to the second door.

Two keyways sat in the iron plate. Astra took the administrator’s key. Caspian seated Marrow’s below it.

My left arm had begun to swell. The copper light beneath my sleeve no longer faded between pulses. It climbed the back of my hand and threw a dim reflection across the wet floor.

Each heartbeat drove the light farther into my fingers. I closed my hand, but copper still showed at the joints. For years, pain had made my suppression tighten. Tonight it was tearing the discipline open.

Astra saw it.

“Jonah.”

“Get Kieran.”

“Your Mark??—”

“After.”

I put my back to the passage wall where I could watch both approaches. Behind the annex door, wood scraped against stone as Marrow began working the restraint cord against the shelving.

“Turn together,” I said.

The keys moved.

The bolt drew back with a low iron note that traveled down the corridor.

On the other side, something struck the door.

“Astra?” Kieran’s voice came through the wood, rough and unsteady.

She reached for the handle.

I planted my feet at the junction and let the Mark burn.

Astra

The door opened inward.

Kieran sat on a cot bolted to the far wall. He was awake.

For one suspended second, that was all I could see. Then the rest of the room came into focus.

They had taken his shirt. Grease-pencil lines crossed his right shoulder in a close black grid, with numbers written along the green-gold curves of his Mark. The inside of his forearm was raw where strips of adhesive had been pulled away. A cup stood on the floor beside him, white residue dried around its rim.

He looked at me and tried to smile.

“You took your time.”

I crossed the room and dropped to my knees in front of him.

“Can you stand?”

“Not alone.”