Page 35 of The First Scar
How?
How had he found me? How had he gotten that close without a sound? And why—why—had he let me go?
The questions spiraled, unanswerable. But one truth cut through the noise, barbed and undeniable.
I climbed down from the roof, my hands steadier than they had any right to be. Serenya was awake—of course she was. That girl slept like a cat: one eye open and an opinion already forming.
"We're joining them," I said. "The Uncrowned."
She didn't gloat. Didn't sayI told you so. Just nodded, like she'd been waiting for me to catch up.
"I already told them we'd agree to meet," she said softly. "At the stronghold. At dawn."
Of course she had.
I sank down beside her. Too tired to fight what was already decided. We had a few hours until dawn, and I planned to spend them pretending unconsciousness was the same thing as peace. My head jerked as I drifted in and out of sleep, resting on Serenya's shoulder—the one fixed point in a world that wouldn't stop spinning.
Chapter 9
AMARIA
Dawn was starting to expose what the dark had hidden. The air was crisp and biting, carrying woodsmoke and the first clatter of cart wheels on stone. Serenya and I moved through the outer quarters, hoods up, heads down, two more bodies in the thin stream of early risers heading toward the labor gates. Nobody looked twice. Nobody wanted to.
The rendezvous point was a canal marker on the city's western edge—a crumbling pillar swallowed by moss, where the streetdead-ended at a retaining wall above stagnant water. The canal below hadn't moved in years. It stank like it, too—silted and green, breeding flies even in the early chill. We piled into the alcove behind the pillar and waited eleven minutes before a girl no older than twelve materialized from behind a drainage grate, looked us over, and said "follow me" without introduction.
She led us down. Through a sewer access, then a degrading basement, then a passage so narrow we had to turn sideways. Because apparently the rebellion's grand entrance was a crack in the earth that smelled like it had digested someone. The city fell away above us—the noise, the patrols, replaced by the smell of torch smoke and the crowded hum of too many people living underground.
The passage opened into the stronghold. Or what passed for one when your revolution couldn't afford windows.
A cavern carved into living rock, vast and echoing, lit by sputtering torches that threw shadows across faces I didn't know. My hands went flat against my thighs. Three exits. I counted them before I counted people. Walls never kept danger out. Only in. My fingers grazed the band at my forearm—steel stars, cold and flush against the leather. Still there. Still mine.
A voice cut through the murmur of the camp. "Well, well, little flame. Took you long enough."
A broad-shouldered male stepped forward, grinning like we were old friends. He stuck out his hand. I stared at it.
"Brannick," he offered, unbothered by the fact that I hadn't moved.
I didn't take the hand. His grin didn't falter. He clapped me on the shoulder instead—easy, familiar, like he'd known me for years instead of seconds.
"Weird eyes, wild mark. You'll fit right in."
I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. Too friendly. Too fast. People who smiled that easy were either stupid or selling something.
The noise of the camp died as the crowd parted.
Ah. So this was the one they all bent the knee for.
He was finishing a conversation with a scarred warrior holding supply ledgers, and he didn't rush. Didn't even glance my way until he'd dismissed her with a nod—as if the dual-marked fugitive bleeding desperation in his doorway could wait until he'd sorted out grain counts.
My eyes narrowed. Every instinct I had said the same thing:challenger.
He moved like a king—no, worse. Like a male who'd convinced everyone the crown was their idea. He scanned the assembled rebels, acknowledging a murmur here, a nod there, before finally settling on me.
"I'm Kaelen," he said, crossing the distance between us without hurry. Each step a statement. "Unofficial leader of the Uncrowned."
Unofficial my ass.They were all practically bowing. Even the ones pretending not to look had shifted their weight toward him.
He stopped three paces away—close enough to study, far enough to keep the high ground.
