Page 17 of The First Scar
I followed his gaze. The sewer grate. Ten feet behind me.
He realized the mistake the same moment I did. His hand shot out—
Too slow.
I dove.
My fingers latched onto the grate's edge and I wrenched it aside—the old iron screeching against stone. I swung my legs through the gap, caught the grate on the way down and slammed it shut above me.
I dropped into darkness, landed hard with a grunt and then the smell hit —rot and decaying tallow.
Serenya was already there. Pressed against the curved wall, dagger drawn, gasping for air.
"Remembered last time—" she managed between breaths. "Hid here. Ran as fast as I could."
Gods bless that girl.
We had maybe three seconds of stillness before the light above us disappeared. A shadow filled the grate—broad, armored, blocking out the smoke and the sky. Gauntleted fingers locked around the iron bars andpulled. The metal screamed. The whole frame shifted in its cradle, bolts grinding loose as the Crownforged wrenched the iron from the stone with plate-heavy shoulders.
He was coming down. And nothing about the way he moved suggested he planned to stop.
A grey blur landed across the grate opening. A cloth-wrapped fist cracked across the Crownforged's jaw—the sound thick and solid, bone meeting bone—and his grip broke just long enough for the grate to slam back into its cradle. The clang echoed down through the tunnels and kept echoing.
A face at the bars. Grey hood, keen eyes, blood already splitting his knuckles. The rebel from the plaza.
"RUN!"
We ran. The tunnels twisted ahead of us, dark and reeking, and I gripped Serenya's arm and pulled her with me through the worst of it. My lungs burned. My boots slipped on stone slick with gods-knew-what. But the distance was growing between us and that grate, and for a handful of seconds I let myself think it was enough.
Then—metal shrieking behind us. And the heavy, finalboomof the grate being ripped from its cradle and hurled aside.
He was in the tunnels.
I yanked Serenya through a partially collapsed archway, over a rusted pipe, down a ladder missing its bottom rungs. We fell the last few feet and kept going.
Behind us, his footsteps rang steady against stone. Not running. Walking.
Arrogant prick.
I sank into the muck of the lower level and let myself breathe. The junction was ahead—I could smell it, the draft from multiple exits swirling together. The tunnel widened into a round chamber where four passages split off into the dark. Weak light leaked through a grate above, enough to catch the sheen on the standing water. We'd scatter here, surface separately, and vanish.
I reached for the east passage out of habit—and stopped. A pipe had burst somewhere above, sending a torrent of water hammering down across the tunnel mouth. Not impassable, but loud. Too loud. I'd be deaf to his footsteps for thirty seconds, maybe more, and in the dark that was long enough to get a knife in my back.
"Left," I breathed, pulling Serenya down the second-best route.
Behind us, I strained for the sound of him at the junction—boots hesitating, splashing the wrong direction, getting lost like he should.
Nothing. Just the drip of water and the hammer of my own pulse.
But Ifelthim. That prickle at the back of my neck, the animal awareness of being watched, hunted—
I shoved it down and ran faster.
The next fork came quick. Right would take us toward the old market—more exits, more crowds to disappear into. I shifted my weight to veer right.
Plunk.
Faint. Somewhere down the passage ahead—the echo of a splash in the water. I froze with Serenya a step behind me, heartbattering against my ribs. Someone or something was already down there.
