Page 140 of The First Scar
My hands hung free at my sides. Empty.
Good. I'd need them for the daggers.
Then I stepped out.
The mill went quiet.
Conversations around the quiet fires died mid-sentence. Rebels turned to look. Let them. I was done being something people whispered about behind closed doors.
I stood there, spine straight, chin lifted. Dreadscale's warrior braid hung heavy down my back. The vest left my arms bare, my collarbone exposed—and my Marksvisible.
Light and Shadow spiraling from my breast. Both of them flashing in tandem, alive and awake anddone hiding.
Let him see, a fierce flame ignited in my gut.Wherever he is. Let him feel this.
For the first time, I didn't hunch. I didn't cover myself. I didn't apologize for what I was.
My Marks were screaming. And so was I.
I looked at Dreadscale.
His obsidian eyes swept over the Marks. He didn't look away.
Slowly, deliberately, he placed a fist over his heart.
"The mountain made us separate," he quoted, his voice a baritone growl that vibrated in the floorboards. "The sky made us free."
He bowed. Not to a queen. To a truth.
I picked up my daggers. The metal felt warm against my skin, drinking in the light, drinking in the shadow.
Let the King come. I had two hands fitted with blades, two Marks, and absolutely nothing left to hide.
The reprieve of the mill didn’t last long. It couldn’t, we didn’t have time for that. The mill door groaned shut behind us and the wind found me immediately—cutting straight through the new leathers, finding every gap. The warmth of the fire, the soap in my hair, the brief animal comfort of a roof—gone in three steps. My braid swung heavy against my back. The daggers sat snug in my grip. The wind hit me again, harder, and this time I leaned into it.
The sky had turned the color of a week-old wound. The light was wrong for the hour—too dim, retreating too fast, the sun pulling away from the horizon like it wanted no part of what came next.
Serenya set the pace. The change in her was immediate. She moved with fluid, lethal grace—eyes scanning the treeline. The healing had done its work. The grey cast to her skin was gone, her stride long and sure, eating ground like she was repaying a debt to every mile we'd carried her. That was Serenya. Break her and she comes back stronger.
The terrain grew rougher as the afternoon bled into evening, the path narrowing into a deer trail choked with brambles. We were losing time. Every snapped branch, every stumble, every pause to catch our breath felt like a gift we couldn't afford to give.
Maxx had gone quiet two miles back. That was never good. Quiet Maxx was thinking Maxx, and thinking Maxx usually ended with someone's plan getting dismantled. He walked with his hands in his pockets, eyes sweeping the canopy, cataloging. When I caught him looking at me—at the new leathers, thebraid, the marks blazing uncovered—he didn't look away. Just raised an eyebrow, like he was recalculating something he'd already figured out.
Kaelen's scouts ranged ahead and behind us, silent shadows flitting through the trees. No reports yet. No sign of the King's forces on our trail.
The snap of a branch brought me up short.
Not the dry crack of deadfall underfoot. This was green wood. Forced. A weight pressing where it shouldn't be.
Brannick's hand went to his blade and Serenya stilled beside me.
I raised a fist and the column froze.
Silence. The forest breathing around us, shrouding its secrets in its twisted canopy.
Then the undergrowth erupted.
He came from the left—one of the King’s scouts, starved and wild-eyed, probably separated from his unit days ago and surviving on desperation. But desperation made men stupid, and stupid made them dangerous. He had a short sword and he swung it at my neck with both hands and everything he had left.
