Page 100 of The First Scar
His tone shifted. "But tonight is more than celebration. Tonight we also face truth—not the King's hollow fictions."
Kaelen stepped forward. "Each of you will craft two-layered masks. On the outside, wear the ugliest lie the King has etched into your skin. Traitor. Monster. Worthless. Beneath it, ink the lie you tell yourself—your hidden shame."
Cups were already passing from hand to hand, laughter cutting through the tension. Someone near the back let out a whoop that cracked the solemnity wide open. Leave it to rebels to turn a prophecy into a drinking game. Kaelen's eyes gleamed dangerously.
"At midnight, we flip the masks, exposing our deepest truths to the fire. Those lies will either burn—or betray how tightly we still cling to them."
The first notes of music spilled into the charged silence.
"Tonight's Veil-Masque will be unmasked, because true freedom begins with facing what we fear most!" Kaelen finished.
"Beautiful. Terrifying. I'm in," Maxx called over the rising music.
The cavern erupted.
Cheers broke loose, bodies swayed toward the open floor, and the night rushed out—a wild, wanting thing.
I plucked one of the unadorned masks from the pile. Papier-mache, rough-edged, lighter than it looked. It smelled like paste and chalk. A dozen small pots of memory ink sat between us—vine-black, bone-white, a red so deep it looked like blood. Brushes of varying thickness fanned out beside them, bristles stiff with old pigment.
Around me, the work had already started. The scratch of brushes on dry paper filled the gaps between conversation. Brannick sprawled beside me, wine-slick grin crooked, humming a distant tune as he scrawled runes down the jawline of his half-mask. Serenya worked in silence, her strokes careful, symbols exact.
The ugliest lie the King has etched into your skin, Kaelen had declared. Ha. He had an impressive collection of them for me: Abomination. The Rupture. Anathema.
I dipped my brush into the vine-black ink. The bristles were coarse and left thick, uneven lines — good. I painted the wordsacross the outer face in jagged strokes. The paint dried fast, pulling against the paper surface, and the charcoal grit worked under my nails as I steadied the mask with my other hand.
The inside was harder.
The lie you tell yourself. Your hidden shame.
My brush hovered. The noise of the cavern—the laughter, the scrape of work, Brannick's humming—pressed in around me and then faded, like someone had cupped their hands over my ears.
I wrote it before I could stop myself. A confession no one else would read:
If I'm loved, I'll destroy them.
The same words I'd choked out in Dreadscale's training chamber. The lie that wasn't quite a lie—because I believed it down to my marrow. The paint was still wet when I pulled my hand back. It had gotten on the pad of my thumb, black as a bruise.
After writing my lies on both sides I painted the lines of my marks. First, the stark silver spiral of my Luminar mark, then the deeper ink-black curl of my Shadow sigil. My marks on display for the world like some beast paraded for pleasure in a traveling menagerie.
Next, I pricked my thumb with the tip of my dagger. A bead of crimson bloomed against the black paint already staining my skin, and I mixed it with the red. I drew a thin, perfect circle that bound the two warring halves together. Circled it over the brow of my mask, sealing the light-sigil and the shadow-sigil in blood. A third ring. The forgotten ring.
“You know that’s going to stain permanently,” Brannick said, nodding at my hand. “Kind of poetic though.”
I didn’t look up. "So will the memory of you crying into your third cup last week, and yet here we are."
Brannick’s eyes widened in delight—like he’d been waiting weeks for me to swing back.
"Crying is a strong word. I wasemotionally overwhelmedby the vintage." He lifted his cup in a mock toast. "There's a difference."
"There really isn't."
He leaned in closer. “Careful. You keep drawing those rings in blood, and some primordial power might mistake you for a priestess.”
“Gods help us,” I muttered. “Last thing this realm needs is me leading rites.”
“Oh I don’t know,” he said, tipping his head. “You’ve got the whole unhinged mystic thing down.”
I dipped my thumb back into the paint. “Unhinged mystic? That’s rich coming from a male who once declared war on a curtain.”
