Kenza hurled the brass key across the parquet. It clattered into the gloom, useless. She seized Dario by the shoulders of his shredded coat, digging her palms into damp wool. Blood soaked through to her skin, slick and reeking of sulfur. "Help me lift him!" she snarled at Paloma. "Grab his legs. Move, Reyes, move!" Paloma cursed, dropped her spent nail gun onto a drift of torn crinoline, and grabbed Dario's ankles. Together they hauled him backward across the polished floorboards, carving a wide red ribbon from the catwalk edge toward the reinforced vestibule behind the tailoring bays. Steel boots crashed on the mezzanine stairs above. Shouts echoed across the rafters—harsh Velmora guttural orders barked through ballistic masks. "They're cutting the main circuit!" Paloma panted, her knuckles white around Dario’s boots. "We have ten seconds before the hydraulic overrides seal permanently!" "Then pull harder!" They dragged him through the threshold of the panic shelter—a windowless vault lined in brushed steel, built into the bedrock beneath the master cutting tables. Kenza slammed her palm against the manual deadbolt lever. Heavy cogs engaged with a deafening thud. Four titanium crossbars slid into the reinforced jambs just as heavy rifle butts slammed into the exterior casing. Boom. Boom. Boom. The steel shuddered, but the seals held. Paloma slumped against the vault wall, chest heaving, wiping oil and sweat from her brow. "The air scrubbers are running on local battery. We're safe from gas for maybe an hour. But Kenza... look at him." Dario lay sprawled on the cold tiles. His collar was drenched. A rancid, greenish fluid seeped from the laceration along his ribcage, curdling the dark hem of his linen shirt. His skin was the color of curdled tallow, his lips dry and cracked. Kenza dropped to her knees beside him. She pressed her palms to his cheeks. Heat radiated off him like an iron stove left in an open flame. His pulse fluttered beneath her thumb—erratic, shallow, a bird battering itself against wire. "The venom is boiling his blood," Paloma said, her aristocratic posture completely shattered. "It’s night-bane distillation. My father’s house lost three couriers to it during the border tariffs. It causes organ failure within thirty minutes unless the core temperature drops." "The preservation lockers," Kenza commanded, her voice level, refusing to let her throat tighten. She pointed to the back alcove where raw fur and experimental silicone textiles were kept in climate-regulated cold units. "Pull the dry-gel packs. All of them. Crack the reservoirs for the crushed ice bins." Paloma bolted to the stainless steel cabinets, ripping open the latches. Kenza pulled out her small tailor's bodkin and drove it down the seam of Dario’s shirt. The linen parted with a sharp tearing sound. She peeled away the sodden cloth, exposing the muscular plane of his chest and the thick, jagged scars crisscrossing his torso—scars born from the same burning cellar they had both fled a decade ago. He wasn't an untouchable titan. He wasn't the cold CEO who had held her under a legal lease. He was Leo, stripped to skin and bone, dying because he had thrown his flesh into the path of an assassin's blade meant for her. Every equation she lived by dissolved into ashes. There was no ledger for this. No profit margin. No balanced column. "Dario," she said, stripping away his heavy trousers, leaving him in only his linen briefs on the bare metal floor. Paloma dumped an armload of canvas-wrapped ice sacks beside her. Kenza tore them open with her bare hands, shoveling mounds of crushed frost directly over his thighs, his groin, his chest, packing it tight around his collarbones. The contact should have made him flinch; his skin remained slack. "Come on," she muttered. Her hands were going numb, freezing as she packed the ice against his burning ribs, but she didn't care. "Wake up. You don't get to buy my life with yours. That wasn't our bargain." Silence answered her, broken only by the muffled metallic pounding on the exterior door. Boom. Boom. Moisture slipped down her cheek, dripping onto Dario’s frozen collarbone. She lowered her head to the hollow of his neck, taking in the scent of cedar, copper, and salt. "Don't leave me alone again," she muttered against his damp throat. "I can't build this without you. Leo... stay." A rough, trembling palm lifted from the ice. Weak fingers caught a lock of her dark hair, tugging faintly. Kenza snapped her head up. Dario’s eyelids fluttered open, glassy, reflecting the cold white emergency strips overhead. "Kenza..." His voice was nothing more than air scraping over gravel. "I'm here. Keep still. The ice is working, it's slowing the venom—" "No time," he gasped. A violent spasm racked his ribs. A thin line of crimson bubbled at the corner of his mouth. "Listen to me. The syndicate... they don't want the dresses. They want the vault." "Be quiet. Save your strength!" "Listen!" he rasped, his grip on her hair tightening with shocking ferocity. His fevered gaze locked onto hers, burning through the agony. "The Golden Ledger... hidden in the foundation pillar beneath the dye vats. The cipher is your guild rank... seven-two-four-crimson. It gives you total ownership. Every asset. Every holding company. Every bullet and thread in Velmora." "I don't care about the company!" she said, her voice cracking over his pale lips. "Stay awake!" "It’s not an empire," Dario murmured, his eyes losing focus as his arm began to sag, the strength draining out of him like sand through a sieve. "It was... a cage to keep you safe. I built it for you. Take it... and burn them down..." His hand slipped from her hair, striking the ice-covered floor with a dull thud. His eyelids rolled back. His chest went dead flat. "Dario?" Kenza shook his shoulder. "Dario!" Nothing. She pressed two fingers to the artery in his neck. Stillness. The flutter had vanished. His pulse had stopped entirely. "His heart!" Paloma screamed, rushing forward and dropping to her knees on the opposite side of the ice pile. "He's arrested!" "No!" Kenza slammed both hands against the center of Dario’s sternum, driving her weight down. Once. Twice. She counted through gritted teeth, pumping rhythmically against his ribs, refusing the cold finality of his flesh. "Breathe, you coward! Breathe!" A sharp hiss pierced the panic room. Behind them, the four-inch steel blast door groaned. At the top edge of the seam, the brushed metal turned a faint cherry red. The red spread, bubbling the industrial paint into black blisters. Within seconds, a blinding, white-hot jet of fire punched through the upper hinge—a thermite lance melting steel like butter, showering sparks across the floor as the syndicate's killers began cutting their way inside.

The Fever Dream