Page 48 of The First Scar
Its attention fixed on me. Ancient magic that stirred like a beast catching a scent. The right eye flickered—my Shadow, leaking through despite every effort to cage it.
Both sensors. Both registering.
The golem's fingers twitched. Stone ground against stone.
Now or never.
I stopped in the center of the room. Closed my eyes. And searched for both Marks at once.
The Light came first. I coaxed the Shadow to meet it, to fuse it again.
It didn't come.
I pulled harder. The Shadow coiled deeper, stubborn, retreating from the Light's flare like a wounded animal refusing to be touched.Come on. Come on.
The left sensor drank in my Luminar pulse. Catalogued it.Known. Single-marked. Threat.
No—that's not—I need both—
Then the golem's runes blazed hotter. Amber bled toward red, spreading across its stone shoulders like infection. The massive head turned, archaic joints grinding, and its hand drifted toward the sword at its hip.
Intruder. Luminar. Threat.
It was waking up.
Fuck.
My eyes snapped open. I abandoned the fusion, abandoned the plan, and ran back to the opening in the stone.
Below, the enforcers had closed the gap. Less than twenty yards now—near enough to catch the gleam of their armor, the hungry set of their shoulders as they circled Maxx like wolves scenting a wounded deer. He was still fighting the lasso, the rune-lock flaring brighter with every struggle.
Behind me, stone ground against stone. The golem. Rising.
I looked at Maxx. Looked at my knife—the only blade that could save him, the only blade that could save me.
One knife. Two impossible problems.
"Probably the worst moment to be noble," I muttered.
I palmed the blade, let out a piercing whistle, and threw.
The knife spun end over handle, a flash of steel cutting through the air between us. Maxx's head snapped up. Our eyes met—then the blade arced toward him—and went wide.
Don't move, idiot.
He didn't. Went rigid as a corpse, breath held, every muscle locked. Even the enforcers faltered, tracking the blade's trajectory with the kind of morbid fascination reserved for things that were about to go very wrong or very right.
The knife struck home with a solidthunk—buried in the leather toe of his boot, an inch from flesh.
Maxx's eyes narrowed at me. I'd deal with that look later.
He dropped into a crouch, sawing the rune-locked rope against the blade's edge with desperate, jerking motions. The fibers split. Frayed. Held—then snapped with a sound like a bone breaking.
The enforcers lunged.
But Maxx was already moving—rolling, rising, his own sword singing free of its sheath, joining my blade . He met the first enforcer's strike with a grin that promised violence, and then he was a blur of steel and spite, holding the line so I could finish what I'd started.
I turned back to the golem.
