Page 78 of The First Scar
The amulet ignited hot—too hot, the dampening stone burning against my skin as it fought to suppress the surge of my marks. They were screaming beneath the suppression, clawing at the cage Kaelen had locked them in.
Lies, they whispered.Something here is a lie.
The amulet seared like a brand. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't see past the muffling weight that had been blinding me since I'd walked into this godsforsaken keep—
I ripped it from my neck and let it shatter against the stone floor.
The worldexploded.
Color. Light. Truth—crashing over me like a wave I'd been drowning in without knowing it. My Unravel surged awake, ravenous after its forced starvation, and I looked down at the male pinned beneath my blade expecting to see the rot of a killer.
Instead, I saw grief.
It poured off him in suffocating waves, so thick I nearly choked on it. Not a hunter. Not a monster.
Afather.
Silver fire unspooled across my vision, singing as it unraveled Kaelen's lie thread by thread—and concealed within the burning falsehood, the truth: a daughter, fever-bright and fading. Medicine the rebellion wouldn't spare for his child. A deal struck in desperation—the location of a rebel supply cache. Just enough information for coin to buy the herbs that kept his little girl breathing one more day.
He hadn't hunted children.
He had sold pieces of his soul to keepone childalive. And for that, Kaelen had branded him a traitor. Cast him out. Left him to rot in a forgotten tower, guarding a key for the very Crown he'd once fought against—because it was the only work a disgraced rebel could find.
The dagger trembled in my hand. My arm was still pressed against his throat, still pinning him to the wall, but the rage had drained out of me like blood from a wound. In its place—
Horror.
I had almost killed him. Hadwantedto kill him. Had pictured his face superimposed over every child I'd ever failed to save and told myself this was justice.
And it was all a lie.
Kaelen's lie.
I released him so fast he nearly crumpled. Stepped back, chest heaving, my daggers hanging useless at my sides while he slid down the wall and gasped for air.
"The book," he rasped, clutching the journal like a lifeline. "Please. It's for my daughter. Everything I remember—everything I want her to know about her mother, about me, about—" His voice caught. "She thinks I'm a monster. Everyone does. But if she could justread—"
"Stop." The word came out wrecked. "Just—stop."
I couldn't hear any more. Couldn't stand here and listen to the wreckage of a life Kaelen had painted as a threat.
"When I sayveil," I breathed, "you run. You don't look back. You don't stop. Three districts minimum. Do you understand?"
He stared at me. Eyes wide. Uncomprehending.
"Now."
Understanding broke across his face—fragile and desperate. He scrambled to his feet, still clutching that journal, and I gripped his arm before he could bolt.
"The key. Where?"
His hands shook as he prised a slim tablet from the journal’s spine—dark metal etched with symbols that drank the light. The Shadow Key. He folded my fingers around it like he was sealing a prayer.
"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you, I—"
"Veil."
He ran.
