Chapter 3The Hound's Choice

The market district stank of smoked fish and desperation.

Cinder pulled her hood lower, matching Brier's pace through the crowd. Merchants hawked salted eels from the floating lakes. Children darted between stalls. Normal life, oblivious to the dead girl walking among them.

"Two more blocks," Brier muttered. "The safehouse is behind Old Marrin's forge."

"Too easy."

He glanced at her. "You want trouble?"

"I want to be ready for it."

They passed a fruit vendor. A woman buying plums glanced at them—held the look a heartbeat too long. Cinder's hand found the hilt of her knife.

"Watcher," she breathed.

Brier didn't flinch. "Keep walking."

They turned into an alley reeking of fish guts. The watcher didn't follow, but Cinder felt the weight of eyes on her back. The second heartbeat pulsed in her chest—steady, waiting. Seven days. She pushed the thought down.

The alley opened into a square. A fountain sat dry in its center, cracked from the last war. Three exits. Each one had a man in plain clothes pretending not to scan the crowd.

"They've got the whole district locked," Brier said, voice tight.

"Where's your forge?"

"Past the north exit. But—"

A hound's howl ripped through the market.

The sound was wrong. Too deep, too resonant. Oath-forged vocal cords, magically amplified. The crowd scrambled, mothers grabbing children, merchants overturning carts. Through the chaos, Cinder saw it: a massive wolfhound with iron bands wrapped around its muzzle, oath-light glowing from its eyes.

Its gaze locked on her.

"Run," she said.

They bolted east, into a tangle of washing lines and stacked crates. The hound's claws scrabbled on stone, gaining. Cinder's lungs burned. Her scars ached, the dead magic in them pulsing in counter-rhythm to the hound's tracking spell.

She grabbed Brier's arm and yanked him into a tannery.

The stench hit first—ammonia and rot. Hides hung from rafters like flayed ghosts. Empty vats sat cold. The back door was boarded shut.

Dead end.

The hound stopped at the entrance, hackles raised. Its iron muzzle steamed in the cool air. The tracker's light in its eyes flickered, searching for her oath signature.

Cinder looked at her hands. At the silver-white scars that mapped every promise she'd broken.

*I can't cast anymore. But I can still disrupt.*

She pressed her palms together and *pushed*.

The scars flared—not with magic, but with absence. A hollow ache that spread through the air like ripples in water. The hound whined. Its oath-light stuttered. The bond between beast and handler frayed for just a moment.

The hound turned and fled.

Brier stared at her. "How did you—"

"Scars remember what oaths feel like." She grabbed his arm. "Move."

They slipped out a side window, dropped into a reeking alley, and ran until the market sounds faded. The loyalists would regroup. They had maybe ten minutes.

Brier led her to a dead-end street, pressed a brick in a sooty wall, and a door swung open into darkness.

---

The safehouse was a room carved behind Old Marrin's forge. Heat bled through the stone. Tools hung on every surface—tongs, hammers, strange spiraled instruments Cinder didn't recognize. A workbench dominated the center, cluttered with half-finished oath-rings and binding seals.

Brier locked the door and slumped against it. "We're safe. For now."

"Decode it."

He blinked at her. "You want me to—"

"We don't have time for recovery." She pulled the cylinder from her pocket. "Thorne said someone close funded the lab. I need a name."

Brier took the cylinder, his hands shaking. He placed it in a brass cradle, connected wires to its base. The device hummed, then projected a stream of symbols onto the wall—Oathscript, dense and layered.

"This could take hours," he said.

"We don't have hours."

He worked. Cinder paced. The second heartbeat pulsed, a constant reminder of the clock ticking inside her chest. She pressed a hand to her sternum, felt the faint tremor of something *other* beneath her skin.

*Seven days.*

The forge's fire crackled. Brier muttered incantations under his breath, the symbols shifting, re-forming. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

"Almost there," he said. "The encryption is layered seven deep. This last layer—"

The lights went out.

Not the forge fire—that still burned. But the oath-light in the room, the ambient magic that powered the lamps, the hum of the cylinder—all of it died.

Brier's face went pale. "Nullification field. We're—"

The door exploded inward.

Armed agents flooded the room. Six of them, all in plain clothes, all with the same hard eyes. At their center stood a woman with a scar from temple to jaw, her left ear missing, a coil of rope at her belt that pulsed with imprisoned oath-light.

"Vex," Brier breathed.

The scarred woman smiled. "Little Oathsmith. I was wondering when you'd crawl out of your hole." Her eyes found Cinder. "And the Vowbreak herself. Thorne's favorite project."

Cinder's hand went to her knife. "I'm nobody's project anymore."

"Thorne says otherwise." Vex uncoiled the rope. "He sends his regards. And this."

The rope lashed out—not at her, but at the air around her. Oath-light flared, and Cinder felt the magic wrap around her chest, constricting, *binding*. Her scars screamed in protest.

She couldn't move.

"Seal her mouth," Vex ordered. "We'll take her to the Spire. Thorne wants to ask her some questions."

Two agents grabbed Cinder's arms. She struggled, but the oath-rope held, draining her strength. The second heartbeat pounded in her ears, frantic, angry.

*No. Not like this.*

Brier moved.

She saw him raise his hands, saw the glow that surrounded them—wrong, too bright, too *forbidden*. His eyes met hers for a split second, and she saw the fear there, the knowledge of what he was about to do.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Then he spoke a word that burned the air.

The nullification field shattered. The forge fire roared to life, heat blasting through the room. Vex screamed as her oath-rope unraveled, its magic severed at the root. The agents stumbled, clutching their ears.

Brier's hands were smoking. Blood dripped from his nose.

"Run," he said.

They ran.

---

The tunnel was narrow, wet, and dark. Cinder's shoulder burned where a knife had grazed her during the escape. Blood soaked through her sleeve. Brier led the way, his breath ragged, his hands still smoking.

"Brier," she said. "That technique—"

"I know." His voice was hollow. "It's forbidden. Only Oathsmiths who studied under the old masters know it."

"And you studied under them."

A pause. "I was an apprentice. Before the war. Before—" He stopped. "I didn't tell you because I was ashamed. I wanted you to see me as... useful. Not as someone who learned from the same people who created the Harvester."

Cinder's legs gave out.

She hit the ground hard, pain lancing through her shoulder. The world tilted. The second heartbeat swelled, drowning out her own.

"Hold on," Brier said, kneeling beside her. "You're losing too much blood. I need to—"

"No." The word came out wrong. Too high, too young.

Brier froze.

Cinder's mouth opened, but she wasn't the one speaking.

"You need to listen," the clone's voice said, sweet and terrible. "Korr. Former Sunstone general. He leads the cabal. He wants the Harvester activated because he believes the war never truly ended."

Brier's face went white. "Korr? He died in the last battle—"

"He went underground. Literally." The clone's lips curved in a smile that wasn't Cinder's. "The Ashwood Hegemony. Under the roots of the Great Tree. That's where the final piece of the Harvester is hidden."

The presence receded like a tide pulling back. Cinder gasped, her own voice returning, raw and shaking. She grabbed Brier's arm.

"Did I—"

"She spoke," Brier said. "The clone. She gave me a location."

Cinder closed her eyes. The second heartbeat was slower now, steady. Waiting.

"How much time?"

Brier pulled out the cylinder, attached a diagnostic wire. His hands still trembled, but he worked quickly, reading the symbols that flickered across its surface. His face went grim.

"Twenty-eight percent stability. You've got six days."

Six days until she stopped being herself.

Cinder pushed herself up, ignoring the pain. "Then we have six days to reach the Great Tree."

"And if we don't?"

She looked at the cylinder, at the name she still didn't know. Korr. A dead general. A living threat.

"Then the clone takes over, and I become the Harvester's heart."

Brier helped her stand. The tunnel stretched ahead, dark and cold.

They had six days. And nowhere to run but toward the enemy.