Page 152 of The First Scar
Another body hit the basalt near my feet. I didn't recognize the face. Couldn't tell if I'd ever known them.
The Hounds were closer now. I could smell them—rot and something burnt. One prowled the edge of the circle, head low, eyes fixed on me. Waiting. Patient as death.
A blade sparked against the void-iron rod to my left. Close enough that I felt the vibration through my spine.
We weren't losing the battle.
We'd already lost it.
I swept the battlefield, desperate, searching.
Where are they? Where—
Maxx. Near the cliffs. A rush of black cloak and flashing steel, daggers dancing, glamours flickering around him like heat shimmer. He fought three soldiers at once, movements acute and brutal, face stripped of every smirk I'd ever seen. He was drowning. Couldn't see me. Couldn't help.
Serenya. Huddled behind a glyph-ward near the altar, clutching her scry-notes to her breast, lips moving in a prayer. Her eyes were too wide. Her hands were shaking.
Dreadscale. A statue of controlled violence, carving through a knot of elite guards surrounding the King. His dragon tattoo smoldered through his skin, his blade an extension of his arm, his focus absolute. He couldn't break away. He was the only thing keeping the altar from flooding with soldiers.
None of them could reach me.
Then a flash of silver at the edge of the chaos.
My eyes caught it before my brain could process—a figure cutting through the maelstrom, Crownforged armor.
Eryndor.
But not the Eryndor I knew. Not the controlled weapon who'd pressed a brand into my chest without flinching.
This male wasbreaking.
He moved in staggering lurches, each step costing him something I could see. His jaw was clenched so tight the tendons stood out in his neck. Something blazed red-hot against his chestbone, smoking, and beneath it—
Black veins. Crawling up from under his armor, spreading across his throat like cracks in shattered glass. The King's leash, burning him alive from the inside.
His eyes met mine through the mayhem. Something flickered there—not the cold assessment I'd seen before. Something rawer. Horror.
He saw me. He saw the ropes. The conduits. My power ripping out of me and feeding the Codex instead of the Veil.
Heknows.
The sky cracked open above us. The King's voice boomed in fury, massive and terrible, his voice shaking the ground.
"Thread-Warden!" The word was a whip. "Your time is up, boy. Deliver her or die by your Oath-stone."
Oath-stone.
The unnatural light I'd seen pulsing on his Mark. The black veins. The way he moved like every step cost him something.
The King's second leash. That's how the King had kept him bound.
The King shook with barely controlled rage, eyes blazing, searing into Eryndor.
Eryndor stumbled. Fell to his knees.
He started crawling.
Toward me.
