Page 8 of The First Scar
I could've looked away. I'd done it before. Not this time. Light flared beneath my robes, my own sovereignty rising ruthless. The cobblestones quaked beneath the Enforcers. And the lie—split.
A crack wrenched the air—jarring, final. Satisfying as sin. Light ripped out of me before I could leash it. Silver fire tendrils unspooled from my mark, hissing with whispers as they coiled around the guards' throats and unraveled the lie thread by thread—pulling it apart like fingers teasing a knot from silk. The tendrils wrapped the girl too, but gently, like a fist closing around something breakable. It burned. And it felt damn good.
The crowd gasped. No shadowmark on the girl's skin. Just a young Luminar whose power hadn't yet risen. Just a trembling child, and the raw ache of fear laid bare. The truth held. She was innocent.
My jaw locked.
"False alarm," I said.
Then quieter, but with a defiance I didn't bother to hide:
"Even luminars ignite in the right light. Now you've seen what burns. Lies."
The nearest fae turned quickly, assessing me, measuring the weight of my words.
The enforcers, too far to hear me, gave me a slight bow.
"Thank you, High Luminar," one said, his voice dropping to a reverent murmur. He gestured vaguely at the grime of the square. "But you should be careful, My Lady. The air here is... unclean. It's not a place for one of your purity."
High Luminar, my ass. If they only knew.
"I go where the light leads," I lied smoothly.
A priest nodded in solemn approval beside a decaying fountain, the water dry and green with age. I bit back a scoff. Their praise wasn't comfort. Just permission wrapped in fear.
As the crowd shifted and the Unravel faded, its whispers died last—trailing off like the final note of a song no one else could hear. Air crawled back into my lungs—too thick, too slow. The Mark simmered. Not gone. Just leashed for now.
An instinct tugged at my attention. I turned, searching the upper tiers, at the far side of the square. Someone had been there. Watching. But when I looked, they were empty. The feeling of being watched didn't leave, though.
A few murmurs rose around us—barely whispers.
"They say the Crownforged is here."
"The soulbinder."
"No one sees him until it's too late."
The Crownforged.Great. Just what this night needed —a Crown-leashed weapon skulking around the square while I played saint with stolen balm in my bag. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Barely. The whispers made him sound like a ghost story. Something to scare children into obedience. But ghost stories didn't make my mark flinch. And whatever had been watching me from those tiers hadn't felt like a story.
Serenya appeared at my side, breath short, face drawn tight. She didn't speak at first. Just shook her head once. He wasn't at the shelter. If they'd taken him, someone had talked. Someone always did. And my stomach dropped. One mistake—mine, his, anyone's—and it was already too late. She must've run the whole way. Her braid stuck to the side of her neck, and the edge of her cloak was damp with sweat or mist or both. Her gaze swept the square: bare chests, marks blooming too bright to hide.
Face by face. Mark by Mark. We searched for him. Dreading it.
I turned to Serenya. "He's not here." My voice came out wrong, too steady for the dread underneath. "So where is he?"
The question hung between us, unanswered. Had he run? Had someone taken him? Was this luck—or a trap? My eyes bounced from one child to the next.
"We'll give it a few more minutes, in case he's brought in late." Serenya nodded, but neither of us looked away from the platform. "Then we check the shelter. Look for any signs of what happened or where they went."
We squeezed each other's hands, attention back on the dais.
The first name was called.
I'd watched Sortings before. Stood in crowds like this, teeth clenched, fists buried in my cloak. But it never got easier. Because the first time a boy was taken—I wasn't this close, I wasn’t able to stop them.
I was small. Hidden beneath the roots of the old prayer tree as our village burned. Dirt packed under my fingernails where I'd clawed into the ground, and the smoke was so thick it left a film on my teeth. The priests called it a cleansing—punishment for living in the wilds, outside their laws. After they slaughtered our parents, they took the children with potential, measuring worth by the soulmarks on our skin.
The boy with the rarest Mark stood before them. Mud on his knees. Jaw set. Chains already locked.
