Chapter Six
The Door Beneath the City
Knox
The girl we lost is invited home.
The words burn behind my eyes long after Aldron takes the card from Briana’s hand. Home.
The beast inside me doesn’t understand language the way I do. Not all of it. He knows commands. Threats. Names. He knows the difference between a plea and a lie. But that word, written in blood on thick black paper, sinks into him like a hook.
Home.
They call the place where they hurt her home. They call their chains home. Their teeth. Their velvet rooms. Their hands on her skin.
A growl scrapes up my throat before I can stop it.
Aldron looks at me across the bar. “Knox.”
I drag in a breath through my nose, but it doesn’t help.
The Gin Room is too crowded now. Not with customers.
With power. Ari glows with fae fury near the bar, Malichai at her back like a shadow with fangs and dragon fire beneath his skin.
Akasha stands beside Korvin, her magic moving around her fingers in soft gold sparks that make the air smell like ozone and herbs.
Cruz leans against a barrel table, arms crossed, watching me too closely.
Briana stands beside the bar, chin lifted, face too pale. Not broken, never that, but pale as fuck.
The black envelope lies between us like a wound.
“It was delivered to my alley,” Aldron says, his voice colder than I have ever heard it. “Past my wards. Past my guards. Past protections older than most of the creatures in this city.”
Krishka’s mouth tightens. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
“No,” Aldron says. “It shouldn’t.”
Briana wraps both arms around herself, then seems to realize what she is doing and forces them down. I see the movement. So does everyone else. No one says a word.
If anyone tries to soften their voice at her right now, I might redecorate the bar with their spine.
Her gaze lifts to mine. For one second, the noise inside me goes silent. There’s fear in her eyes. But beneath it is something sharper. Colder. A blade being pulled slowly from its sheath.
“They want me scared,” she says.
Ari’s voice is gentle but not soft. “Yes.”
Briana nods once. “Then they’re idiots.”
My beast goes still. Pride is not the right word for what moves through me. It’s too clean. This is darker. Bigger. It spreads through my chest until I have to fist my hands at my sides to keep from reaching for her.
Because she is afraid but standing anyway.
Aldron places the bloody card inside a silver tray Krishka produces from somewhere beneath her coat. The moment the card touches metal, black smoke curls from the edges.
Briana flinches, and my feet move before I stop it. Her eyes snap to me. Not yet, they say. Or maybe I imagine that because I need to. I force myself still.
Akasha steps closer to the tray. “There’s magic in the blood.”
“Lucius?” Malichai asks.
Aldron’s fangs slide down. “No. Lucius doesn’t have magic.”
Krishka murmurs a word under her breath. The smoke bends toward her, then recoils. “No. This is witch work. Old, but not old-fashioned. Someone very skilled.” She sounds slightly impressed.
Akasha’s eyes sharpen. “A coven witch?”
“Or someone who has eaten enough of them to fake it.”
Cruz grimaces. “I preferred not knowing that was an option.”
“Most people do,” Krishka says.
Briana stares at the card. “Can it track me?”
Everyone remains silent.
Briana’s laugh is quiet and awful. “I’m starting to hate pauses.”
Akasha gives her the truth. “Maybe. Not through the card alone. But if the blood used to write your name came from you, then yes, possibly.”
The room goes sharp around the edges.
My vision tunnels. “From her,” I say.
Aldron’s gaze cuts to me. “Control.” The word hits my beast like a slap.
Briana looks at me, and I see the moment she understands. Blood. Her blood. They still have her blood. I expect her to sway. To go white. To reach for the bar. She does none of those things.
She steps forward, close to the tray but not touching it. “Can you use it against them?”
Akasha blinks, and Krishka smiles. Slow and dangerous. “Oh, I like her.”
I don’t like any of this. I hate this. I hate every single fucking second of it. I hate that Briana has to think like this. I hate that her fear has been forced into a strategy. I hate that I am proud of her for it.
Akasha looks to Krishka. “Blood calls both ways.”
“Yes,” Krishka says. “If we’re careful.”
“If we’re not?” Briana asks.
Krishka’s smile fades. “Then they know exactly where you are.”
My growl fills the room.
Cruz pushes off the table. “Maybe we don’t do the reckless blood spell, then.”
“For once,” Malichai says, “I agree with the bull.”
Cruz points at him. “Rude, but valid.”
Ari snatches the card from the tray with a napkin before anyone can stop her.
Malichai’s face goes murderous. “Ari.”
“What?” she snaps. “I’m half-fae. If it bites me, I bite back.”
“That’s not how spell work functions,” Krishka says.
“It should be.”
Aldron pinches the bridge of his nose like a vampire on the edge of regret. “Put it down.”
Ari does, but not before glaring at the card as if it had personally offended her. Maybe it did. Ari collects wounded things, lost things, and furious things. She collected Briana the moment she came through our doors. She would kill for her.
That should comfort me. It doesn’t. Nothing comforts me except Briana breathing.
Aldron looks at the group. “We assume the invitation is both threat and bait. They want Briana at The Marrow House tomorrow night.”
“I’m going,” Briana says.
“No,” I say.
The word leaves me before I can stop it, and the room goes silent.
Briana turns her head slowly.
Cruz mutters, “And he was doing so well.”
I ignore him as Briana walks toward me. Every step tightens the leash around my control. She stops close enough that I can see the faint shadows beneath her eyes. Close enough to smell the tea on her breath and the fear under her skin.
“You said you would try,” she says.
“I am.”
“No, you’re reacting.”
“Yes.” My honesty startles her. Maybe if I keep giving her the truth, I can avoid doing more damage.
My voice lowers. “They have your blood. They sent your name written in it. They bypassed Aldron’s wards.
They want you inside a building designed to trap, feed, and break people.
So, yes, Briana, my first reaction is no. ”
Her mouth tightens. “And your second?”
I inhale slowly. My beast claws at the inside of my ribs. He doesn’t want second thoughts. He wants me to take her upstairs, lock the door, stand guard, and let the rest of the world tear itself apart.
But she asked for more than my reaction. She asked me to try.
“My second,” I say, each word dragged out of me like bone, “is that if you go, I go with you.”
Her expression shifts. Not victory. Not relief. Something softer and more dangerous.
“That sounds like a condition.”
“It is.” Once more, I remain honest.
“I don’t like conditions.”
“I don’t like breathing while you walk into a blood club.”
Ari makes a choked sound somewhere behind us. “Goddess, you two are exhausting.”
Briana ignores her, eyes still on mine. “I won’t be controlled.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She tilts her head as she asks the question.
The same question everyone keeps throwing at me. This time, I deserve it.
“No,” I admit. “But I’m learning.”
Her lips part. For a second, the air between us changes.
Warmer. Thicker. My gaze drops to her mouth before I can stop it.
Her breath catches, and my beast presses forward, not in rage this time.
In want. In recognition. In something that makes my skin feel too tight, and my hands ache to cup her face.
I step back.
Her eyes narrow, not in anger. In confusion, before she can ask the question forming on her face, Aldron speaks.
“We need a plan.”
The moment breaks. I am both grateful and furious.
Over the next hour, The Gin Room becomes a war room. Aldron spreads old blueprints of The Marrow House across the bar. The theater sits above three basement levels, two of which aren’t on city records. Of course. Monsters love underground rooms. Makes the screaming harder to hear.
Krishka marks possible ward points in black ink.
Akasha adds gold symbols beside them, her brow furrowed in concentration.
Malichai studies the exits with the cold attention of a dragon deciding where bodies will fall.
Ari perches beside him, pretending not to worry while worrying loudly enough for everyone to feel it.
Cruz and I memorize every hall. Every door. Every choke point.
Briana stands on the other side of the bar, watching, listening, saying nothing for too long. That worries me more than her anger.
Finally, she taps a place on the blueprint near the second basement. “There.”
Everyone looks. She keeps her finger on the paper. “That hallway. Or something like it. I remember the floor sloping. Red velvet on the walls, but the floor was concrete underneath. Someone tripped and cursed because the carpet had pulled up near a drain.”
Aldron leans closer. “A drain?”
“Yes.” Her voice stays steady. “There were drains in the rooms too.”
My hands curl. Briana doesn’t look at me. Maybe she knows what she’ll see.
Aldron circles the area. “This level was used for dressing rooms when the theater was active. If Lucius converted it...”
“He would use the old service tunnels,” Krishka finishes.
“Can they lead out?” Briana asks.
“Yes,” Aldron says. “Or deeper.”
Briana nods, like this is normal. Like remembering drains in rooms where people bled is simply another clue.
My beast mourns her. The woman she was before this. The woman she’ll become because of it.
Aldron assigns roles. Malichai and Ari won’t enter unless necessary.
His presence would alert every old blood family before we reached the door.
Aldron can’t go in at first for the same reason.
Krishka and Akasha will work the wards from outside.
Cruz will enter as muscle with Moira’s invitation, glamoured as her guard.
Then Aldron says the thing I already know is coming. “Briana goes in as bait.”