The First Scar (Heirs of the Shattered Veil #1)

Chapter 1

AMARIA

The Sorting would begin at dusk. And if the Enforcers reached the Rhain boy before we did—if they saw the mark rising beneath his collarbone—there'd be no questions. No mercy. Just a sentence straight to the Veil Mines.

My satchel dragged heavier with each step—three wax-sealed vials, enough to blur his mark for a day. Maybe two. Enough to damn me if found. My own mark was covered, but it pulsed anyway—low and savage.

Some scars stay hidden. Others demand to be seen. I wasn't sure which mine wanted.

Serenya moved at my flank—silent, steady. Two girls, one mission, and a satchel full of treason.

Then the bells rang out.

Three strikes. Sharp. Exact.

A shutter slammed.

Charcoal scattered across the stones.

A child bolted.

The Enforcer sweep.

They were checking for caste violations.

Anyone who dared act above their station, or hide what they were.

Serenya caught my eye. We knew the rules of this game: keep your hands visible, your spine straight, and chin high.

Like you're not waiting to be dragged out for inspection at any moment.

A flicker surged through me though—searing and hungry.

Part of me wanted it. Let them try. Let it end in blood.

I crushed the urge down the best I could and grasped the amulet beneath my collar.

The metal burned from my skin's heat, reminding me it was more of a shackle than a shield.

The pale blue of my cloak marked me as Luminar. True enough. On the surface. But surface truths had a way of unraveling under scrutiny. I kept walking. I would not be caught. Not yet—not with a child's life waiting at the end of this path.

Beside me, Serenya kept pace in the shadows.

I didn't have to look. I trusted her rhythm more than my own.

Maybe because I remembered the first time she chose to match it.

A ravine. Blood dripping from my chin. Boys with stones.

I'd stepped between them and something soft—something they wanted to break. Serenya. I took the first rock to the face. The second. The third shattered my jaw, and when I lunged, they scattered like the cowards they were.

I collapsed after that. Drifted. Until small, stubborn hands pulled me back—cool fingers on the swelling, tending wounds I'd earned protecting her.

Then she slapped me.

"This is not the place for a nap. On your feet."

So much for soft and fragile.

She'd said I shouldn't have done it—but she said it like a vow, not a reprimand.

One we never broke.

Her footsteps beside me now pulled me back—same rhythm, same vow, years later and still holding.

Midnight-blue Enforcers in silver-banded helms fanned out across the outer quarter, capes snapping like they'd rehearsed it. They moved door to door, boots in perfect rhythm. The kind of precision that only exists when someone's terrified of getting it wrong.

One stepped into the path of the male ahead of us, a merchant we'd traded with once in the inner quarter, and barked the command that turned every soul to stone: "Sternum."

The Soulmark-check.

My focus snapped in. I stepped forward—measured, casual—just enough to bump the merchant's shoulder with mine. His bundle dipped—low enough to cover his mark. One more second, one more inch, and the whole street would've seen.

The Shadowmarked weren't allowed to sell wares. Gods forbid they make a living.

Serenya didn't miss a beat. She adjusted her priestess robe with ceremonial grace, then pointed past the Enforcer at a crooked post plastered with old rebel flyers.

"That symbol's wrong," she said coolly. "They're faking it again."

The Enforcer's eyes followed. Just for a beat. Just long enough.

I caught the merchant's strap mid-fall, steadying him with a firm hand.

"Careful," I murmured, as his bone-white fingers closed around it, shaking.

The Enforcer was already behind us. A growl, then flesh hitting stone. Not us. Someone else. A life punished for proximity. For being in the wrong skin at the wrong time. I gritted my teeth, pulled my cloak tighter over my own mark, and kept up my stride.

Blood coated the street—thick as wax as we turned down the next alley. No Enforcers in sight now—just closed shutters and crooked laundry lines.

Then—

Cinnamon.

Warm and sweet and cloying, the scent wafting toward me... pure, unadulterated seduction.

My head snapped toward the scent like I'd been yanked by the braid—the thin razors woven through my hair nicking my neck with the motion. I barely noticed anymore.

And there it was—the rickety little cart that held a piece of heaven.

"No," Serenya said flatly behind me.

I swallowed the saliva that had already gathered and side-eyed her.

"I'm just looking."

I was not just looking.

I was already moving, fast and quiet and a little reckless. The world narrowed to that steam rising from the cart—sweet, creamy, impossible. Trays of honeyed promise shimmered in the heat, soft edges crisping to perfect brown. Butter sliding down...

"You're worse than a shadowmarked child," Serenya hissed, catching up in a rush of fabric and disapproval.

"That's slander," I countered.

My grin curled. "I'm better. I've got technique."

And I did. My dagger flashed—quick, clean, and wicked.

Not toward a throat. Toward blazing glory.

A single unguarded bun, steaming, delicious, and mine.

I tossed the saintly baker a coin and pitched the bun between my teeth, letting it melt in all its splendor.

A pleased hum vibrated through my entire body.

Maxx was there, of course. Arm slung around the baker's daughter, talking fast, laughing louder. He winked as I passed. I rolled my eyes. Not my flavor of madness. Not anymore. He always turned up where trouble simmered—too loud. Too pretty. Too curious to stay away.

I didn't slow. The bun was better company.

Still warm.

And definitely worth dying for.

We paused beneath a crumbling awning. A spout trickled from a chipped stone basin—just enough to refill our canteens.

I drained mine in a single pull.

Serenya huffed, and handed me hers while she knelt to refill mine.

I chugged it down without apology again, uncouth but satisfied. Beside me, her lips pressed together, fighting a smile.

"You ever think about what it'd be like," I asked, "if we weren't marked?"

She tilted her head, considering. "You'd still be chasing cinnamon buns. And I'd still be following you into alleys I swore I wouldn't."

My laugh was louder than I meant. Strange. Alive.

"Admit it," I said. "You like the thrill."

She snorted and adjusted her cloak. "I like sleep. And common sense."

"Liar." I bumped her shoulder. "You've never had either."

"Not with you around," she muttered.

I grinned and poked her. "We're a terrible idea."

"We're your idea."

Serenya met my eye—and for once, let her wicked grin win.

I barked a laugh. She snorted. And just like that, we were gone—giggling like fools.

For a moment, we weren't rebels or marked. Just two girls in the heat, pretending we weren't hunted.

But pretending required forgetting. And Serenya had made damn sure I couldn't. She'd drilled the old temple prophecies into me until I could recite them half-asleep, half-starving, bleeding from the mouth.

She'd been tasked with unraveling them before the priesthood sealed the archives—and she held onto them the way I held onto grudges.

We turned down a narrower street. The cobblestones here were older, uneven, weeds pushing through the gaps.

The version the temples taught went like this:

It began long ago—when the Veil, the membrane tethering our realm to reality, first thinned. It frayed as greed and malice rose—and one fae believed he could stop it.

A Master Fae thought he could drink in the world's pain—halt the Veil's unraveling by taking it into himself.

But sorrow is a hungry thing.

And the world feasted savagely.

When he drank too deeply of their suffering, it consumed him. His soul ruptured—scattering like glass shards. And the Veil tore with him.

Serenya and the priestesses who still had spines whispered that the Rupture didn't just break the world. It intensified and magnified duality itself.

The fracture didn't split the world.

It split us.

Our greatest enemy wasn't shadow. Or light.

It was the war between them.

Ever since, every fae-born child bore a mark—etched by the fracture itself. Luminar or Shadowmarked. Light or Dark. Blessed or cursed. Sovereignty or slavedom.

One mark decided everything. Where you slept. What you ate. Whether anyone would mourn you when you disappeared. But it was not destiny.

It was division weaponized.

And we were told to thank the blade that split us.

A gutter dripped somewhere above us. The alley smelled of wet stone and cook-fire grease. I stepped over a dead rat without looking down.

That was the wound beneath everything. The fracture that split us into light and dark, blessed and cursed—and the city that built its laws around the scar.

That was what the Sorting did—lined children up bare-chested in the Square of Names and read their futures off their skin.

Luminar marks got temple assignments, trades, futures.

Shadowmarks got the Veil Mines. No appeal.

No return. Just a one-way walk into the dark, and a city that learned not to flinch while it watched.

The street opened up ahead—wider, busier, the last of the market stalls being dragged inside for the night. A tailor yanked a bolt of dyed cloth off a rack, her eyes darting toward the bell tower. Counting the time she had left. Everyone was counting now.