Page 51 of The First Scar
A crack.
Faint at first, spreading across the surface in hairline fractures I hadn't noticed before. I turned it over in my palm, watching the way the dawn light bounced off each tiny fissure.
"That wasn't there before," Maxx said, peering over my shoulder.
No. It wasn't.
The realization settled in my gut like swallowed stone. Removing the key hadn't just deactivated the wards. It had torn something loose. Something that was supposed to stay sealed. We hadn't just stolen a key. We'd picked at a wound that was already bleeding.
Ryla set her hand on my shoulder. “You should still be proud, no one has been able to do that in centuries.” She squeezed before she went back to Torin’s side.
The others murmured what might have been approval, or maybe just relief. Torin inclined his head—the closest thing to praise I suspected he ever offered.
But I saw their eyes flick to my hands. The tremor I couldn't hide.
The adrenaline was fading. And in its absence, unease crept in.
They'd seen me.
Not just the Luminar flare—they'd seen theShadow. Watched it unspool from my torso like a parasite, a secret I'd spent my life denying. Witnesses. People who could talk, could whisper, could decide I was exactly what the King's posters claimed.
I waited for the disgust. The fear. The careful distance that always came when people saw what I really was.
Ryla was checking her crossbow. Torin was watching the horizon. Maxx was still catching his breath, and Brannick—
Brannick was looking at me like I’d performed a miracle instead of an atrocity.
I didn't know what to do with that.
Brannick stepped closer.
"You good?" he asked. Quiet. Just for me.
I shoved the key into my pack and pushed myself to standing. My legs protested. I ignored them.
"I'm fine," I lied.
We still had one more key to find. And if the first one had cost me this much—if the Veil was already cracking from a single stolen piece—
I didn't let myself finish the thought.
Some math was better left undone.
Chapter 11
AMARIA
I don't remember making it back to the stronghold.
One moment I was lurching through the pale wash of dawn—one foot dragging after the other—and the next I was waking on a bedroll that smelled of dust and old wool. A single torch guttering in a wall bracket. A room I didn't recognize.
Serenya sat cross-legged beside me, a book open in her lap, her eyes not on the pages.
"You collapsed in the corridor," she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact—the one she used when she was trying not to be angry. "Brannick carried you the rest of the way. You've been out for six hours."
I pushed myself upright too fast. The room tilted. I grabbed the wall and waited for the world to stop being a bastard about gravity.
"The key—"
