Page 10 of The First Scar
A flicker—same place as before. That presence. The one I'd tried to shake.
But this time—I saw him.
There—above the dais, alone on a terrace—stood a figure in slate and obsidian armor, brushed with Crown-blue.
Not just an enforcer. Something deadlier, made for war, not spectacle. Coiled and commanding, like the whole square existed for his gaze and he knew it.
The air around him thinned.
I stilled, as any prey should before a predator.
I didn't know whether to bare my teeth or bare my throat. It was threat laced with a tempting, lethal promise. A poison that would hurt me—and then make me beg for more.
Then I saw it—the V-shaped mark, burned in red, thin-lined and barely visible under his chestplate.
A Crownforged.
The V for the vow they make to the King. Made in blood. Sealed in law. Irrevocable.
Their soulmarks were too rare to be left to fate. So the King marked them back. Bound them in law and blood.
Only the Crown could command their power.
Only the Crown could set them loose.
And their top priority? Hunting someone just like me.
His kind weren't common—not here. That was exactly why Serenya and I had settled in Velmyra. I dared to look up again, toward where his eyes should've been—but the helm masked them in shadow. It didn't stop the force of his gaze.
My fingers found the satchel, feeling cloth and glass and purpose beneath the leather. The vials didn't shift. My pulse did.
His medals threw the light—sharp, blinding. I flinched, shielding my eyes, drowning in the glare and the sudden vulnerability of lost sight.
My Mark flared. My mind scrambled, clawing for coherence. Who was he?
A single thought slid through the chaos:
My Mark knew him.
Or worse—he knew me.
And when the glare faded—when my sight returned—
I saw him.
Looking directly at me.
As if he'd been waiting for me to look up.
Chapter 4
AMARIA
I tore my gaze from the terrace. Whoever he was—whatever he was—he wasn't my problem. Not tonight. The boy was.
He wasn't on the platform. He wasn't at the shelter. Which left the kind of possibilities that made my chest seize. But the shelter might still have answers—if we got there before the Enforcers scrubbed the place down to nothing.
Serenya was already moving. I fell in beside her, and we slipped out of the square the way we'd come—through the cracks the crowd left behind.
