Page 135 of The First Scar
"Don't talk. Don't—just hold on—"
Behind me, I heard the Talon grunt. A wet thud. Then silence.
I didn't turn around. Didn't care. Just kept working at the straps until they finally gave, and Serenya slumped forward into my arms.
I lifted her to me, cradling her like something precious. Something I'd almost lost.
The tears came without permission. Hot and stinging, streaming down my face, soaking into her hair.
I didn't care. I had her back.
Her eyes peeled open. A ghost of a smile flickered across her lips—pale and bloodied, but stillher.
"Your eyes..." she breathed.
I cried harder.
"Liraethian Fury," she mumbled, the words barely a whisper. Then her eyes drifted shut and her head settled against my shoulder.
My mother's bloodline. The fire that sleeps until it doesn't.
Maxx appeared beside us, his hand hovering near Serenya's shoulder like he wanted to touch her but didn't know if he was allowed. His jaw was tight. His eyes were wet.
"Hey, starlight," he said softly. "Next time you get kidnapped, leave better directions. I almost lost you." His voice broke on the last word and he bent to kiss her forehead.
Without opening her eyes, Serenya let out a soft hum, easing the heavy weight in my stomach with nothing but a breath.
"Come on," I said. "We need to get her to a healer."
Kaelen moved to my side, his voice rasped and urgent. "The army is massed above. We're not going back the way we came."
"Then how—"
"Dungeon tunnels." He gestured toward the far wall, where a narrow passage gaped like a wound in the stone. Air moved from it—brisk, steady, carrying the smell of wet earth and pine instead of blood and torch smoke.
"It runs beneath the walls, comes out past the perimeter. Dreadscale scouted it on the way in."
Dreadscale gave a single nod, already moving toward the passage.
"It's tight," Kaelen continued. "And it's not pleasant. But it gets us out without fighting through a thousand soldiers."
I looked down at Serenya, limp in my arms. She couldn't fight. She could barely stay conscious.
"Then we move," I said. "Now."
Kaelen turned toward the passage. Brannick fell into step beside me, one hand hovering near my elbow in case I stumbled. Maxx lingered for a heartbeat, his eyes still on Serenya's face.
The tunnel swallowed us single-file. Dreadscale first, then Kaelen, then me with Serenya's arm slung over my shoulder, her feet dragging grooves in the mud. Brannick behind us. Maxx at the rear.
The ceiling dropped within the first ten steps. I hunched, then crouched, then bent nearly double, Serenya's dead weight pulling me sideways into the wall. The stone was greased under my free hand—coated in an organic slime that squeezed between my fingers when I braced against it. The air was so close I was breathing what the person ahead of me had just exhaled.
Serenya moaned, but the sound had nowhere to go. It just sat in the passage with us, pressed against the rock.
No one spoke. The only sounds were boots sucking out of mud and the scrape of armor against stone.
We kept moving. The tunnel narrowed, widened, narrowed again. Time dissolved. Distance meant nothing without light to measure it by.
Then the air changed. A thread of fresh air cut through the stale heat—alive, and carrying the taste of pine and frozen earth.
