Page 29 of The First Scar
My hand found Serenya's wrist. Squeezed once. Our old signal:danger, follow my lead.
She shifted her weight slightly, ready to move.
Ten paces from Velish. The older fae looked up. Recognition flashed in her eyes—thena chilling hostility. A warning.
Don't come closer.
She glanced subtly to the left—toward the polished-boots healer, who had stopped folding bandages and was watching us now with predator-still focus.
They're watching her too.
Of course they were. Anyone who'd ever helped people like us was a thread the Crown could pull.
Serenya made a sound—small, pained. She'd seen it too. Her mentor, surrounded, unable to help without condemning herself.
Velish's hands kept moving, stitching, unhurried. But her eyes—those ancient, knowing eyes that had taught Serenya everything she knew—weren't watching her work.
They were watching polished-boots.
My eyes tracked hers just in time to see it happen. The Enforcer’s eyes fixed on mine, his pupils contracting as a stranger’s face sharpened into a target. His weight rolled onto the balls of his feet, his posture snapping into a hair-trigger. His hands stilled on the bandages he'd been folding.
He hadn't moved yet. Hadn't signaled the others. But his body knew what his mind was still catching up to.
And Velish saw it too.
She set down her needle.
"No—" Serenya breathed beside me, so soft only I could hear.
Velish picked up a ceramic bowl filled with instruments.
Polished-boots was turning. Opening his mouth to speak, to shout, to—
Velish hurled the bowl directly at his head.
Metal clattered across the dirt floor. The Enforcer staggered, cursing, blood blooming from a gash above his eye. Every head in the tent snapped toward the chaos—patients, healers, the other infiltrators whose covers shattered the moment instinct overrode training.
"Clumsy hands," Velish announced, her voice carrying with theatrical dismay. She grabbed his arm before he could recover, pulling him off balance, her frail frame somehow in his way no matter which direction he tried to move. "Forgive an old lady—let me help you, let me see the wound—"
The tent erupted—cots overturning, someone screaming—and the other Crown loyalists converged on Velish, abandoning their posts, their pretense, everything except the need to contain whatever this was.
Go, her eyes flashed and her mouth set.Now, while they're blind.
Serenya made a small wounded sound. I seized her arm andpulled.
We ran.
The back of the tent was a maze of supply crates and hanging sheets. I shoved through, fabric slapping my face like the tent itself was trying to slow me down. Serenya stumbled behind me, her grip on my wrist the only thing keeping us tethered to the same disaster. My heart hammered so loud I almost missed it—
Velish's voice, rising above the chaos: "You think I don't know Crown dogs when I smell them? Thirty years I've worked this tent. Thirty years of oathsyour kingdoesn't have the spine to honor—"
A piercing crack. The wet sound of a body hitting packed earth.
Serenya's hold on my hand went rigid.
"Don't stop," I hissed. "Don't."
A slash of moonlight ahead. The back exit—a slit in the canvas, half-hidden behind stacked pallets. Serenya dove through first. I followed, my shoulder catching the rough edge, and then we were out—stumbling into an alley that stank of canal water and rotting fish.
