Page 28 of The First Scar
I wasn't just hunted anymore.
I was contagious.
Anyone who helped me would burn. The people who'd once reached out their hands were learning, one by one, to pull them back. Friendships and alliances weren't enough to save us anymore. Not when my face was worth more than their futures.
So where do you go when no one will open their door?
I dragged the back of my hand under my nose. It came away red. Still bleeding from the Veil surge—or from whatever I'd torn open in that plaza. The blood was warm and steady and I was running out of sleeves to ruin.
Which reminded me—at least one place in this city still owed me stitches before opinions.
The Medical Tent. Neutral ground. Healers who'd taken oaths that predated kings. Oaths that were supposed to be stronger than fear.
Surely that still meant something.
Famous last words.
The medical tent crouched at the edge of the canal district like something the city had tried to shed and couldn't. Canvas walls, patched a dozen times over. The smell of crushed herbs and boiled linen drifting through the gaps. A place where healers asked no questions and the dying came to do it in peace.
And somewhere inside—if she was still alive, still working, still foolish enough to practice where the Crown could find her—was Velish.
She'd trained Serenya. Taught her the old ways, the ones the temples had tried to burn out of existence. More importantly, she ran the only smuggling line left that could move people past the city gates without a caste-brand check. If anyone could pull a miracle out of this disaster, it was a female the Crown had been trying to kill for thirty years and kept failing.
"She might not help," Serenya said quietly. "We haven't spoken in two years. Not since—"
"She'll help you."
Serenya's jaw tightened. Whatever had happened between them, she wasn't sharing. But I'd seen the way she flinched during certain rituals, the gaps in her memory she never explained. Velish had claimed a piece of her once. Maybe that debt ran both directions.
The guard at the entrance—thick-necked, scar bisecting his lip—looked us over. His eyes snagged on my face a moment toolong. Twenty million marks. I could practically hear him doing the math. To his credit, greed lost.
Then he looked away. Stepped aside without a word.
Neutral ground.The healer's code held fast. Or so I wanted to believe.
Inside, the air was thick with sickness—rot and the cloying sweetness of brewing herbs. Rows of cots. Bodies huddled in threadbare blankets. Healers drifting between them like ghosts who hadn't realized they'd died yet. This was where hope came to get practical.
Serenya scanned the space, searching. "There. The back corner."
I followed her gaze. A healer bent over a patient, her silver-streaked hair pulled back in a severe knot, hands steady as she stitched a wound by lamplight. Even from here, the precision was unmistakable. The calm.
Velish.
We started toward her—
And my Luminar mark prickled.
Faint. Almost nothing. Just a whisper of wrongness brushing the edge of my senses, the Unravel stirring in its sleep.
I slowed. Let my eyes drift.
There.A healer near the entrance, folding bandages. His movements were too smooth. Too practiced. And his boots—regulation black, steel-capped beneath the polish. Healers wore sandals. Soft leather at best. Those boots were built to kick down doors. An Enforcer's boots.
There.A female refilling water pitchers. Her aura held that same dissonance I'd learned to recognize, hardness disguised as compassion that didn't belong.
There.A male checking pulses who lingered too long on patients with visible marks, his gaze cataloging, assessing.
Three of them. Maybe more. Scattered through the tent like spiders in a web, waiting.
