Page 79 of The First Scar
I stood alone in the silence, the key cold in my hand, and felt the aftershocks of what I'd almost done trembling through my bones.
Kaelen had lied.
And I had almost become exactly the monster he'd told me I was killing.
Kaelen would send a cleanup crew. Standard protocol—bodies didn't stay in Crown territory, and the rebellion didn't leave loose ends. When they arrived, they'd find... what? An empty room. No corpse. No blood. Just the story of a killer who'd shown mercy and lied about it.
Unless there was nothing left to find.
I looked at the cot. The table. The sad, sparse evidence of a life lived in exile. The wooden horse still lying where it had fallen.
Burn it, the Shadow whispered.Burn it all.
I grabbed a torch from the wall sconce, its flame guttering in my grip.
Fire bloomed across the threadbare blankets. Climbed to the cot. Found the table and the single plate and consumed them with a hunger that matched my own. I fed it—a broken chair, a stack of old papers, anything that would burn.
I let the Shadow loose to deepen the heat of the flames. I didn't gentle the power this time. Didn't coax or contain. I let it surge up from that dark place I usually kept locked, feeding it my fury at Kaelen's lie, the sick taste of what I'd almost done.
The Shadow answered—hungry—eager—and wrapped itself around the fire. The flames turned darker at the edges. Hotter. Hot enough to crack stone. Hot enough to leave nothing behind.
The heat hit my face like an open hand. Smoke banked against the ceiling and rolled toward me, thick and greasy, and I backed toward the door with my sleeve pressed over my mouth. The blankets were gone. The chair was splitting apart with rapid-fire snaps.
One more thing.
I drew my dagger across my forearm. Pain twisted, serrated and grounding. Blood welled up—hot, bright, undeniably real. My blood for his escape. Fair trade. I flicked it across the threshold as I backed toward the entrance, droplets sizzling where they hit the heated stone.
Blood for blood. My pain for his life.
By the time the cleanup crew arrived, there would be nothing but ash and char and the implication that I'd been thorough. No body because I'd burned it. No evidence of escape because there was no evidence of anything at all.
Just ruin. Just proof that Kaelen's weapon had fired true.
I stepped back and watched the flames eat the last traces of Jorath's exile.
It would hold. It had to hold.
I waited, heartbeat loud in my ears, smoke curling past me into the corridor.
The corridor stayed silent. Then, a soft thud behind me. Boots hitting stone.
"Well, well." Maxx's voice drifted out of the shadows, lazy and amused. He stepped into the flickering light of the burning room, arms crossed, that insufferable smirk firmly in place. "Looks like I get to report to the boss that his little flame passed with flying colors." He tilted his head, eyes glinting. "Didn't hesitate one minute. Very impressive. Very... thorough."
He gestured at the inferno behind me, one eyebrow raised.
I held his gaze. Waited. Let him see nothing but steel certainty on my face.
He'd seen everything. He had to have seen everything.
And he was choosing to lie anyway.
I pocketed the Shadow Key and walked out of the Watcher's Keep with steady hands and a heart full of questions I couldn't afford to ask.
The night air bit after the heat of that room. Smoke clung to my hair, my sleeves, the inside of my mouth. I could still taste the tallow and the char. Three rooftops out, the cold finally cut through, and my fingers stiffened around the key in my pocket—small, sharp-edged, warm from being held too tight.
Kaelen had lied to me—it was a test. Would his weapon fire when he pulled the trigger, or would she ask questions first?
And Maxx had just become the only person in the rebellion I might actually be able to trust.
