The silver ring around Lyra's wrist contracted.

Pain shot from her hand to her shoulder so violently that her knees struck the black floor.

Kael collapsed with her.

His golden mark blazed beneath his torn sleeve, and through the bond Lyra felt something far worse than her own pain.

Emptiness.

For one impossible instant, Kael seemed to vanish while still kneeling beside her.

The warmth of his emotions disappeared.

No anger.

No fear.

No infuriating amusement waiting beneath the surface.

Nothing.

Lyra screamed his name.

Then the connection snapped back like a stretched chain released from tension.

Kael sucked in a ragged breath.

His fingers locked around hers.

"Still here," he said.

His voice was calm.

His terror was not.

The silver-eyed child watched them from across the basin.

"That was only the first turn."

Lyra forced herself upright. "First turn of what?"

Another metallic impact sounded somewhere above.

The chamber shuddered.

A crack appeared in the floating sphere of intertwined light.

Gold spilled through silver.

Silver bled through gold.

Kael stared upward as if he could see through hundreds of feet of stone.

"The device is not cutting the bond directly," he said.

"You sound disappointed."

"If it were cutting it directly, I would know how to fight it."

"And instead?"

He looked at the sphere.

"It is interfering with whatever feeds the bond."

The child nodded.

"It turns the currents against each other."

Lyra looked at the reversed markings on their wrists.

"Gold against silver."

"No," the child said.

Its expression became strangely severe.

"Self against self."

A third blow struck above.

This time Kael arched backward.

The vial inside his coat flashed.

Golden light burst through the fabric.

Lyra saw it immediately.

"The vial."

Kael tore open the clasp of his coat and pulled out the small glass container of black Saintess-derived substance.

The liquid had changed.

Threads of gold twisted violently through it, forming tiny spirals that matched the glyphs blazing around their wrists.

Lyra reached toward it.

Kael pulled it away.

"Absolutely not."

"It is reacting to me."

"Everything murderous beneath this palace reacts to you. That is not an invitation."

"Kael."

"Lyra."

She glared at him.

Pain pulsed again.

His expression broke for half a heartbeat.

Through the bond she felt the effort it cost him merely to remain standing.

"Give it to me," she said more quietly.

He did not.

The child moved closer.

"It remembers being whole."

Lyra stared at the vial.

"The magic inside?"

"The women."

The word settled heavily between them.

Lyra thought of the carved names lining the stairs.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

Saintesses whose deaths had become doctrine, whose power had been poured into conduits and barriers and whatever else Aurelia's institutions had built from their remains.

"Can they help us?" Lyra asked.

The child's face became sad.

"They already have."

Before Lyra could ask what that meant, the chamber filled with a distant shout.

Not a memory.

Not a vision.

Adrian's voice.

Muffled by stone, but real.

"Father, stop!"

Kael's head snapped toward the ceiling.

Another voice followed.

King Edric.

Lyra could not distinguish the words.

Then Cassian shouted something sharp enough to carry through the vault.

The child lifted one translucent hand.

The basin rippled.

The chapel appeared again.

King Edric stood beside the iron device.

Now its outer shell had opened.

Inside were seven rotating metal rings surrounding a central crystal the color of old bone.

Each ring carried the divided-flame glyph.

Temple knights held Adrian back.

Darius stood between two soldiers with his sword drawn, but three more blades were pointed at his chest.

Cassian was directly beside the machine.

Blood ran from his temple.

Lyra's breath caught.

The High Priest had one hand wrapped around a lever while a royal engineer fought to pull him away.

"Cassian is trying to disable it," she whispered.

Kael's jaw tightened.

"That does not make him innocent."

"I did not say it did."

King Edric struck Cassian across the face.

Lyra moved before remembering the image was only an image.

Her free hand slammed against the basin.

The sphere above them flared.

Silver fire raced across her fingers.

The silver-eyed child inhaled sharply.

Kael stared at Lyra's hand.

"You are doing that without healing me."

Lyra looked down.

Silver flame curled around her skin.

It did not burn.

For the first time, it had appeared entirely on its own.

The flame touched the basin.

The image changed.

Not the chapel.

A memory.

A woman stood where Lyra stood now.

Melian Arden.

Lyra recognized her immediately.

The same face from the staircase vision.

The same eyes that resembled her own.

Beside Melian stood a dragon in human form, not Kael.

His hair was white.

His eyes were silver.

Between them stood the same child.

Except the child was alive.

Solid.

Laughing.

Kael made a strangled sound.

Lyra turned.

He had gone utterly still.

"You know him?" she asked.

Kael did not seem to hear her.

In the memory, the silver-eyed child ran toward him—not the white-haired dragon.

Toward Kael.

The scene shifted.

Kael was there.

Younger only in expression, because his face had scarcely changed.

He knelt as the child climbed onto his back.

"Again," the child demanded.

Kael laughed.

Not the sharp, restrained laugh Lyra had heard on the staircase.

This one was effortless.

Warm.

He shifted partially, black scales sweeping over his shoulders as small wings unfurled.

The child shrieked with delight.

The memory shattered.

Kael staggered backward.

Lyra felt grief explode through the bond.

So powerful it nearly knocked her down.

"Kael."

He stared at the translucent child.

"No."

The child said nothing.

"No," Kael repeated.

His voice cracked.

Lyra had never heard it do that.

"You died."

The child's silver eyes filled with light.

"Part of me did."

Lyra stepped closer to Kael.

"Who is this?"

His throat worked.

"Aren."

The name carried recognition through the bond before Lyra understood it.

Love.

Old, devastating love.

Not romantic.

Something protective.

Familial.

"My sister's son," Kael whispered.

Lyra looked at the child.

"Your nephew?"

Kael closed his eyes.

The grief inside him deepened until Lyra could barely breathe around it.

"He was nine when the Temple took the eastern sanctuary."

The child's expression did not change.

"I was eight."

Kael's eyes opened.

Confusion cut through the grief.

"No."

"You remember what they gave you to remember."

The chamber seemed to become colder.

Lyra stared at the child.

"They changed his memories?"

"Not all."

Aren touched his own chest.

"Only the dangerous ones."

The machine struck again.

Kael screamed.

Lyra's vision went white.

When sight returned, she was lying beside him.

The bond was weaker.

Not gone.

Thinner.

Her wrist-ring had darkened from silver to gray.

Kael's gold had faded too.

Above the basin, the inscription changed.

TWENTY-NINE DAYS.

Lyra stared.

"No."

Kael pushed himself up.

The inscription flickered again.

TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS.

The child looked upward.

"Every turn consumes what the heart gave you."

"How do we stop it?" Lyra demanded.

Aren pointed toward the seven empty seats.

"Wake the witnesses."

Kael looked at them. "There are no witnesses."

"There are always witnesses."

The seven chairs began to glow.

One by one, names surfaced across their backs.

Not names Lyra knew.

Except the last.

MELIAN ARDEN.

Her breath caught.

The seat beside it bore another name.

AUREN DRAVEN.

Kael stared.

"My brother."

Aren shook his head.

"Your brother by oath, not blood."

Kael looked as if the distinction meant everything and nothing.

The remaining five seats glowed brighter.

Each carried a name.

Human.

Dragon.

Human.

Dragon.

Human.

Seven people who had apparently stood together before the world had been divided into saints and monsters.

The basin filled with writing.

THE WITNESSES SEALED THE CURRENT.

THEIR BLOODLINES MAY OPEN IT.

Lyra's gaze snapped toward Melian's name.

"Bloodlines."

Aren looked at her.

"You asked whether Arden was your name."

Lyra's heart began pounding.

"Is Melian my ancestor?"

The child tilted his head.

"Yes."

The answer landed with terrifying simplicity.

Lyra closed her eyes for one second.

She had expected uncertainty.

Another riddle.

Not certainty.

When she opened them, Kael was watching her.

Concern moved through the weakened bond.

She ignored it.

"Who were the other bloodlines?"

Aren looked toward the seats.

"Hidden. Hunted. Renamed."

Lyra thought of the inscriptions on the staircase.

Sera Thorne.

Her head lifted.

"Thorne."

Kael followed instantly.

"Mira."

Lyra had met the palace archivist often enough to remember her dry humor, her habit of appearing wherever sealed records were being moved, and the extraordinary number of restricted documents that somehow passed through her hands.

At the time, Lyra had assumed cleverness.

Now suspicion rearranged every memory.

"Mira Thorne," Lyra said.

One of the seven seats flared.

The name upon it brightened.

SERA THORNE.

Kael exhaled softly.

"There is our witness."

The chamber shook again.

TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS.

Lyra swore.

"We need to get back upstairs."

"The machine is between us and the palace," Kael said.

"Then we break it."

"A plan I support in principle."

"You support breaking most things in principle."

"Only badly designed things."

Despite everything, the familiar rhythm steadied her.

Lyra stood.

Her legs trembled.

Kael rose beside her, slower.

The centuries of weakness were returning rapidly now that the bond's circulation had been disrupted.

Lyra reached for him.

Silver flame ignited around her palm.

Kael caught her wrist before she could press the magic into him.

"No."

"You can barely stand."

"And you do not know what feeding me silver fire does to the countdown."

"We also do not know what letting you collapse does to it."

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Aren sighed with the immense disappointment only a child could convey.

"You argued like this before."

Both of them turned.

Lyra's pulse skipped.

"Before when?"

The child looked at their joined hands.

"Before the forgetting."

Kael went rigid.

Lyra stepped closer to the basin.

"You said I have not remembered yet. I was not alive three hundred years ago."

Aren's gaze shifted to the floating sphere.

"Not as Lyra."

Silence.

Kael's fingers tightened around hers.

Lyra felt his disbelief mirror her own.

"I am not Melian," Lyra said.

"No."

Relief came too quickly.

Then Aren continued.

"But Melian carried what became you."

The sphere opened.

At its center, Lyra saw a thread of silver-white fire passing from Melian Arden into the heart-vault.

Another thread, black edged with gold, passed from Kael himself.

The two currents twisted together.

Then separated.

One vanished into darkness.

The other entered the tiny form of a newborn child wrapped in cloth.

A blanket bearing the name ARDEN.

Lyra stopped breathing.

Kael whispered, "That is impossible."

Aren looked directly at him.

"That is why they made you forget."

Above them, the severing engine turned again.

The chamber screamed.

The countdown flashed.

TWENTY-SIX DAYS.

Then twenty-five.

Aren's form began to dissolve into silver sparks.

"Find Sera's heir," he said.

"Mira?" Lyra demanded.

The child was fading too quickly.

"Find all seven."

Kael stepped forward. "Aren!"

For the first time, the child smiled.

"You promised you would come back for me."

Kael's face broke.

"I did come back. The sanctuary was burned."

"Not there."

Aren pointed downward.

At the black basin.

At the intertwined current beneath it.

"Here."

Then he vanished.

The floating sphere went dark.

For one heartbeat the chamber was silent.

Then a final inscription appeared across the basin.

Kael read it first.

Lyra knew because fear entered the bond before she reached the last line.

THE SEVERING ENGINE CANNOT DESTROY A TRUE CONVERGENCE.

IT CAN ONLY FORCE THE NEXT STAGE.

The words changed.

STAGE THREE INITIATED.

Lyra's silver ring split open.

Kael's golden ring did the same.

Two new lines of light raced upward beneath their skin toward their hearts.

And somewhere inside Lyra's mind, a memory that could not possibly belong to her whispered in Kael's voice:

I swear, Melian. If they take the child, I will burn every throne in Aurelia to bring her back.