Blood mattered.

“Good. It better stay that way, too,” Aaron said. “I am not going to tell my sister that her fiancé’s liberator fell not to a bullet, but to one of cupid’s fucking arrows.” When he caught me staring at his coffee, he stood and pulled another mug from the cabinet. “Please tell me you know you’re being played.”

“I know I’m being played.” But so was she.

“You’re being played like a fucking harmonica, Ian.” Aaron dumped sugar into the mug and followed it with creamer he didn’t bother to stir. “She’s getting paid to do what you want done, show you what you want to see and say what you want to hear, but she’d kill you in a heartbeat if Tower told her to. Do whatever you need to do. Fuck her, kill her, stuff her into a crate bound for China, for all I care. Just don’t let her get in the way of the mission.”

Meghan cleared her throat from the doorway, and Aaron’s mouth snapped shut. He set my mug in front of her when she sank into an empty chair at the table.

“Any change?” I asked, eyeing the circles beneath her eyes. Had they grown darker since she left the kitchen?

“His kidneys,” she said, her voice a weak whisper. “He’s better for the moment. Sleeping again.”

Aaron’s hand shot across the table so fast I barely saw him move. He grabbed his sister’s left wrist, and she tried to pull away from him, but obviously lacked the strength. Aaron pushed her sleeve back, and we both groaned at the sight of her arm.

Her skin was pale, nearly translucent, and every vein and artery below her bunched sleeve showed through. But they weren’t blue. They were black. Every single one of them, like they ran with tar, rather than blood.

“You’re killing yourself,” Aaron said through clenched teeth.

Meghan shook her head and pulled her sleeve back into place when he let her go. “I’m saving him.” But she couldn’t hold out much longer, which was exactly what Aaron’s accusatory glare at me said.

He stood and started pulling food from the refrigerator. “You need to call Dad, Meghan. If you don’t, I will.”

“I’ll never forgive you,” she whispered, and he flinched as he piled meat onto a slice of bread. It was the same argument they’d been having for two weeks. Their father was a Healer, too, and he could help her save Steven. He could share the burden. But she wouldn’t call him because of what he’d say, and what he’d do.

Meghan’s father would tell her she was championing a lost cause—no Healer can save someone from death by broken binding, because as soon as she repaired one organ, another began to shut down.

And he would take her away, by force if he had to, to keep her from dying alongside her doomed love. My doomed brother.

“Eat.” Aaron set the sandwich in front of her, then pulled a carton of milk from the fridge. “This is crazy, Meg.”

She ignored him and turned to me as she lifted the sandwich. “What about the binding? Have you at least figured out what that bitch bound him to?”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Kenley alone,” I said. “She’s definitely strong enough to do it.” I’d never heard of a Binder using her skill at ten years old, and Kori’s story had scared the shit out of me. “But are you sure she’s the one? I’ve never seen her before, and she didn’t seem to recognize me or my name.”

“It’s her,” Meghan insisted. “That Tracker cost nearly every dime we had saved up, and he swears it was Kenley Daniels. He’s come across her work a lot, with people running from the syndicate. Her blood sealed the binding, and it’s strong. But he can’t tell what kind of binding it is.”

In a way, that was the worst part. Steven was mostly conscious, but usually incoherent from the pain, and even during his rare lucid periods, he hadn’t been able to tell us what binding he’d accepted, and from whom. And there were too many questions the Tracker couldn’t answer.

All we really knew was that it was a name binding, and that meant that whatever had happened was my fault. Steven and I had switched names years ago—when we were still kids—to give ourselves an extra layer of protection. If anyone tried to track my name, they’d find Steven and assume they’d made a mistake.

But the plan we’d concocted in childhood had backfired on us as adults.

At some point—we had no idea when—Kenley Daniels had bound Steven to something using her blood and his real name. But I’d been answering to Steven’s name since we were eighteen years old, which meant she’d actually meant to bind me.

Steven was inches from death’s doorstep, and it was all my fault.

Mine, and Kenley Daniels’s.

Eleven

Kori

That time when I shadow-walked into my bedroom, I stopped a foot short of smashing my nose on the wall. Two weeks, and I was finally getting the hang of the tight space, which Kenley had used as an office before I’d moved in. Well, before Tower’s men had moved my stuff in, while I was still in the basement. Eventually I’d get my own place. Once I was sure I was going to live long enough to need one.

I felt my way along the wall to the light switch and flipped it up, then peeled my wet pants off, cursing in my head. I wasn’t sure whether profanity in the privacy of my own room—away from Ian’s ears—would violate the terms of our bet or not, but you can’t police someone’s thoughts. That was one of many, many truths I’d learned working for Jake—the only one that brought me any comfort.