Page 72 of The First Scar
"Stop it, Amaria!" His voice was raw. "Contain it. You're tearing the Veil!"
The words struck like a slap.
I looked at the lantern. At the loop still stuttering through its sick little cycle.
Me. This is me.
I stopped fighting his grip. Stopped fighting everything. Just... went still, letting his containment hold while I wrestled the Shadowmark back down, shoving it into the darkest corner of myself where I didn't have to look at it. The loop stuttered.Stabilized. The lantern's flame flickered once more, then settled back to normal.
The cavern went quiet.
Then Eryndor made a sound.
A strangled, guttural rasp tore out of him. His grip on my wrists spasmed, then released entirely as he lurched back.
I spun around.
His hand was pressed to his Mark, fingers clawing at the spot just above his heart. Through the gap in his cuirass, I saw it—black veins spidering along his skin, surging outward from a source that glowed with a sickening, dark heat. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles jumped.
"Damn it—" The words came out bitten off. "Too close."
He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the ground, on the wall, on anything that wasn't my face as he wrenched another step back, putting distance between us like proximity itself was poison.
Brannick hadn't moved. His practice blade hung loose at his side, and when I looked at him, I caught it—a flash in his eyes that wasn't warmth or encouragement or any of the reliable things I'd come to expect from him. It was fear.
The rebels who hadn't already fled were pressing to the far wall. The lantern's wax had pooled in the wrong direction on the stone.
Nothing clears a room like accidentally breaking reality.
I turned and walked out.
If I stayed one more second, everyone in that room would see my knees buckle, and I was not going to break in front of a male who was already breaking because of me.
Maxx reached me before I'd made it ten steps into the tunnel. A flask hit my palm, still warm. "Drink," he said, falling into step beside me. "You look like the last page of a tragedy." Apause. "The kind where everyone dies and the dog doesn't make it either."
I stared at the flask. "What is it?"
"Tea. Possibly. Don't ask follow-up questions."
My trust in Maxx's beverages ranked somewhere between my trust in Kaelen's praise and my trust in him to have my back. Maxx sighed, "Serenya prepared that. Drink." Fuck it. I drank. It burned going down—definitely not just tea—but the heat gave me something to focus on besides the tremor in my hands.
We walked in silence. Maxx kept pace beside me, present, but far enough to give me room to fall apart without an audience. Kind, but unsettling.
I looked at my shaking hands and then kept walking.
Lethal, something whispered.You're lethal to everything you are near.
Eryndor's face flashed behind my eyes—that mask of agony, those black veins crawling through his skin. He'd contained me. Held me together when I was flying apart. And it had hurt him. Whatever lived in his chest, whatever that dark light had been, my power had made it worse.
I took another sip. Let the burn chase the thought down.
I was dangerous. Not just to enemies. To everyone.
The second key. The Codex vault. Thirty heartbeats of sustained fusion, Kaelen had said. Thirty heartbeats without tearing reality apart or destroying myself or killing the people foolish enough to stand too close.
I couldn't hold three without bleeding.
How the hell was I supposed to be ready in time?
