Juhan and I were halfway down the hallway when I heard a woman's scream, followed by shrieked words. Then a man's voice, shouting, and the thudding of heavy footsteps. Office doors opening as the top floor's other residents emerged to investigate. More shouting. We'd reached the corner, and just ahead of us was the door to the back stairwell.

Juhan reached for it, but I paused, jerking hard on his hand.

Confused hazel eyes found mine. I pressed myself in close against him, pushed up on tip toes to try to reach his ear as I dropped my voice down to the lowest whisper possible. "Our footsteps. They'll echo."

Juhan's eyes flared wide with understanding, and he nodded. Without releasing my hand, he reached down to trace a set of runes on his own thigh. I felt the rush of spell as it closed around us, a brief iridescent haze in the air. Then Juhan was moving again, easing the stairwell door open.

His footstep was silent on the metal landing. Even my heels didn't clatter as I followed him, using one hand to gently settle the door back into its frame. Unlike the main stairs, this back stairwell was intended strictly as an emergency exit: one could enter from any floor, but the doors only opened in the one direction. Once the lock clicked behind us, the only exit was down on the ground floor. Our only escape.

We started running. I could not describe how strange it was to feel our bodies hurtling down the stairs, to feel the percussion of my stilettos against the steel steps, and to not hear a thing. We ran in total silence, down one flight, then two, fingers tightly interlaced as we fled towards the ground floor.

Somewhere below us, a door opened.

We both came to a startled stop, eyes meeting.

There was the crackle of a radio, then a woman's voice. "I'm checking the stairwell now."

I knew that voice. It was Siobhan. If Kasimir had been Brendan's right hand, she had been his left. She was strong enough to qualify for her own Catalyst — an older woman named Myrna who was as much a battle axe as Siobhan was — and third in Brendan's business hierarchy. Well, second now, I guessed. Regardless, running into her wasn't good. Juhan might be able to hide us from Meaghan and Vicente, but I didn't know if he had enough juice to keep us off Siobhan's radar.

Her footsteps clanged upwards.

Juhan whirled. His hands shoved me back into a corner, and then his back was in front of me, herding me into that narrow space. Putting himself between me and Siobhan. I squeezed myself back into the corner as tightly as I could, being careful not to break contact with Juhan.

Siobhan was almost upon us; I heard the stomp of her boots on the landing directly below.

Shit. If it had been Kasimir, I might have tried to talk it through, to reason with him. There was no reasoning with Siobhan. She would strike first, and not even ask questions later. Could Juhan take her?

He seemed determined to try. His fingers hovered above his bared forearm, directly above an unfinished rune. Preparing to cast a spell, but not yet. Waiting to see if the invisibility would hold.

Maybe if we were perfectly still, perfectly quiet… I ducked my head down, eyes squeezing shut. If I could just focus on silence, on stillness, on being as cool and calm as those arctic waters that lay thick and heavy at my core, maybe that would be enough.

I felt that chill flow through me, heavy and mammoth as a glacier, big enough to engulf me, to engulf Juhan, to enrobe us both in that clear, still ice. For a second I felt as if I were there, standing somewhere beneath the floe, where the wind and sun couldn't reach, a kind of cold dark that stood outside of time: a place where nothing moved, nothing lived, nothing decomposed.

Where nothing could find us, not even Siobhan.

Her footsteps banged onto the landing where we stood. I heard them pause, and I should have felt fear, but such emotions were too far away now. Her boots were clomping directly towards us, each step seeming loud as a gunshot — and then they were turning, pounding up the stairs. She jogged up to the next landing, paused again, then thumped upwards once more.

The radio crackled on, and I heard the sharp staccato of her voice as she reported in. "Nothing in the emergency stairwell." A pause as a response came through, too garbled and distant for me to understand. "Because I can't open the fucking door from this side. Get someone over here to open it — no, right now, unless you want me blasting my way through." One last static-warped reply, and then the radio clicked off.

We all waited for the door to open. It seemed like a small eternity, Siobhan tapping an impatient foot against the floor, Juhan tense and rigid in front of me, and my own body frozen in place.

The door swung open. There was Vicente's deep baritone as he greeted Siobhan, her own sour reply, and then the creak of the door as it swung shut.

I gasped in a sudden breath, crashing up through the ice, feeling it crack and fall away. My body was shivering now, and gooseflesh roared across my skin. When had I gotten so cold?

Juhan turned, and I felt his warm arms slide around me, pulling me tight against his chest. One hand was rubbing up and down my back, moving long soothing circles along my spine. His head was tucked down close to mine, and though I couldn't hear the words, I could feel the heat of his breath as it misted against my temple. He seemed a small sun, come to melt away my frost, chase away the darkness.

I wanted to bask in it, bask in him, but there wasn't time. We had to get out of here before we had any more close calls. I lifted my head, my eyes pointedly flicking downwards.

That was all the signal Juhan needed. His hand was tight around mind as we raced down the final flights, feet soundless as falling snow as we stampeded down the stairs.

By some miracle, we made it to the ground floor without encountering anyone else. We could have kept going, descending down into the garage where his car must have been parked, but I doubted he would be able to drive it out. By now, they had probably ordered the gates closed to prevent any escape by vehicle. Juhan seemed to have reached the same understanding because he stopped and looked at me, then glanced at the two doors available to us.

One door lead directly into the building's main lobby. The other was an exit to the outside.

I lifted a finger and tapped at my lips. Juhan nodded in response, fingers making a quick motion that I recognized as one to cancel a spell's effects. Suddenly I could hear our breathing, the rustle of our clothes, even the beating of my own heart. Everything seemed terribly loud after having been so silent.

"There's an alarm on the door," I whispered. "As soon as you open it, the alarm will sound. You need to run towards the back of the building, then cross the street. There's an indoor market where you—"

"We," he interrupted. "You're coming with me, Severine."

I blinked, then shook my head. "I need to stay here, to tell Kasimir what's going on. That they're hunting for the wrong person, and the real murderer is running free."

Juhan's fingers clenched tight around my own. "No, I'm not leaving you here. Someone in this building killed a Catalyst, and I only know it wasn't me. I can't let you take that risk."

"Kasimir will protect me," I countered, shaking my head. "I know it wasn't him. He wouldn't kill Odyssa. I know it."

"And the real murderer might kill you before you reach him." Those hazel eyes blazed with emotion as they stared down at me. A type of fury, almost, but not an anger directed at me. "Someone is trying to set me up to take the fall, and you're the only one who knows it. That puts you in just as much danger as me."

I frowned up at him, ready to argue — if only I could figure out how.

"I am not letting you stay," Juhan insisted, voice as hard and unbending as iron. "I'm not leaving without you, Severine. I'll stay here with you if I have to."

My mouth opened, then closed. Every second spent talking was a second we could be discovered, and then it wouldn't matter what choice we made. Besides, I recognized that stubborn set to his shoulders. I'd seen in other men before. Juhan wasn't going to budge on this.

"I'll get you out of here, but I'm not promising that I'm leaving the city with you," is where I settled.

He nodded, one hand reaching for the door, the other still firm around my fingers. "Get ready to run."

The fire alarm blared the moment he pressed down on the door's push bar. It screamed at us, red lights flashing and whirling, as we scrambled out into the sunshine. The shrill noise followed us as we bolted across the manicured lawn, my heels sinking into the soft grass and only Juhan's unyielding grip on my hand keeping me from falling behind.

I didn't remember how we made it across the street without getting hit by a car — just following blindly behind Juhan, eyes affixed on his back, lungs straining to gulp down enough oxygen.

He slowed only when we reached the indoor market. At some point he must have dropped the invisibility spell, because I saw a woman with a baby carriage glance up at us, catch the red flushing my face and the breath still gasping past my lips, and then push the stroller out of the way. A man in a business suit looked at us, smirked, and looked away.

Apparently, we looked more like a couple fresh from a midday tryst than a pair of people running for their lives.

Juhan let me take the lead as we wove through the crowded stalls. The lunch rush wasn't here, not yet, but the early birds had already arrived, and some vendors were still in the process of setting up. There was enough noise and movement for us to blend in. Just a pair of lovers, holding hands and casually browsing the displays as we walked through.

On the other side of the market, I led Juhan down through a claustrophobic alley. We crossed a boulevard, headed west a block, then north another block and a half, before cutting through another cluttered alley and across a tiny parking lot. Last we traversed a bookstore, sneaking out its back door into the hidden courtyard where the owner liked to take her smoking breaks. A single tree dominated the center of the space, offering only narrow glimpses of the blue sky above.

"Can they track us?" I asked, letting my fingers loosen around his.

Juhan didn't let go of my hand. "No, not magically. I've been casting dispersion spells every dozen yards. We should be safe for a little while."

I nodded, thinking. There was so much I wanted to ask: how he'd ended up in Brendan's office with two dead bodies, who he thought the real murderer was, why his illusion had been able to open the office door, how he planned to get out of the city, why his arm was slathered in magical tattoos. The only question was which topic to tackle first.

"Juhan, I—" My words came to a hard stop.

On my wrist, my dead Wielder's mark pulsed with a sudden, intense heat.