Page 48

"So witnessed," the other four men say in unison.

I remove my hand from the text. My blood has left a perfect print on the page, dark and damning.

Nathaniel looks at me with something that might be respect or might be pity—I can't tell. "You have twenty-four hours."

I blink. "For what?"

"To marry her," he says simply. "That's what a binding means in this context, Atticus. Marriage. Legal, binding, documented. You have twenty-four hours to make Elara Cross your wife, or the protection you just purchased with your life becomes void."

The room spins slightly.

Twenty-four hours.

One day to convince Elara to marry me. One day to explain why her life depends on a ceremony she never asked for with a man who just sold his soul to save her.

One day to figure out how to tell her that I just condemned myself to a lifetime of servitude because the alternative was watching her die.

"I understand," I say, my voice hollow.

"Good." Nathaniel closes the sacred text with a soft thud that sounds like a door slamming shut. "Then you're dismissed. And Alexander?" He uses my fake name deliberately, a small mercy. "Don't make us regret this."

I nod once and turn toward the door, my bleeding hand clenched into a fist at my side.

As I step into the hallway, only one thought loops through my mind on repeat:

What the fuck have I done?

14

ELARA

The car is suffocating.

Alexander's hands grip the steering wheel with enough force that his knuckles have gone white, the tendons standing out in sharp relief against his skin. He hasn't said a word since we left the club five minutes ago, just grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise and hauled me out through a back exit I didn't even know existed. Now we're speeding through the dark streets of Belgrave, the city lights blurring past the windows, and the silence between us feels like something alive and dangerous.

I should say something. Ask where we're going. Demand an explanation for what the fuck just happened back there.

But my throat is closed tight, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs that I can barely breathe, and all I can think about is the look on James's face when he found me in that office. The cold calculation in Dominic's eyes. The way they talked about throwing me in the river like it was a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem of my existence.

And Alexander. Alexander, standing in that doorway like an avenging angel, his voice dropping to something lethal when he said mine.

"Where are we going?" I finally manage, my voice coming out smaller than I'd like.

"My house," he says without looking at me.

"Your house," I repeat dumbly.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because we need to talk, and we're not doing it where anyone can overhear."

The tone of his voice—clipped, controlled, barely restrained—makes something in my stomach twist. He's furious. Not at me, I don't think, but at the situation. At the fact that I was stupid enough to get caught. At the universe for putting us in this position in the first place.

Good. Let him be angry. I'm fucking terrified.

We drive in silence for another ten minutes, leaving campus behind, moving into neighborhoods I don't recognize. The houses get bigger, more spread out, the kind of area where people have privacy and money and secrets they can afford to keep. Finally, Alexander pulls into a driveway leading to a house that's somehow exactly what I expected and nothing like it at the same time.