Page 77 of The First Scar
And now he was guarding a key I needed, living out his retirement in the shadows while his victims rotted in the mines.
No more.
The cold fury sank into my bones. I'd killed before—in alleys, in desperation, in the wild scramble to survive. But this would be different. This would beclean. Justice served in the dark, where no one would mourn and no one would remember.
By the time I reached the Watcher's Keep, the fever in my blood had cooled into a surgical chill.
I was ready.
The Watcher's Keep smelled like mildewed mortar and scorched winterberries.
My steps slowed for a breath. Winterberries meant someone here was ailing. Someone here waspraying.
Then I remembered whose keep this was. Whose hands had dragged children screaming into cages.
Good, I thought, rolling my daggers in my grip.If he's sick, I'll deliver a permanent cure.
I moved deeper, every muscle coiled for the kill.
One job. Kill the monster. Take the key. Don't give him the dignity of a conversation.
My boots scraped on grit. The corridor narrowed, walls tight enough to brush both shoulders, and the winterberry smell thickened until it coated my tongue. Ahead, a candle hissed and spat—cheap tallow, the wick too long.
The chamber at the corridor's end was cramped and barely a room at all. A cot in one corner, blankets worn thin. A table with a single plate, a single cup. Humble digs for a former Crownforged who'd made a career out of stealing children from theirs.
And there, in the far corner—
Him.
I didn't give him a chance to speak. Didn't give him a chance to breathe.
I launched myself from the shadows, a blur of fury and sharpened steel. He scrambled backward, hands flying up—reaching for a weapon he didn't have—but I was faster. I kicked his legs out from under him and slammed him into the stone wall hard enough to rain dust from the ceiling.
Something skittered across the floor from the impact. Small. Wooden. A toy horse, the wood worn smooth on the flank where a small thumb had rubbed it bare. Over and over. Waiting for someone to come home.
Trophy, I told myself, pressing my forearm harder against his windpipe.Sick bastard keeps trophies.
But the thought snagged on something it shouldn't. Trophies were displayed. Mounted. This looked... lost. Dropped mid-play and never retrieved.
I shoved the doubt down and brought my dagger to his eye.
"Don't," I snarled, watching his hands twitch at his sides. "Give me one reason not to carve you out like the rot you are."
He didn't fight back.
He didn't beg.
He just squeezed his eyes shut and curled around that leather-bound journal, shielding it with his entire body like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. Like I could take his life, but notthat.
"Please," he wheezed against the pressure of my arm. "Just—give it to her. The book. Please. She needs to know I—"
"Give it toher?"
I heard the words but couldn't make them fit. This wasn't how monsters talked. This wasn't the bitter defiance of a killer caught, the snarling last stand of a male who'd spent a decade hunting children.
This was—
Wrong. Something here is wrong.
