Chapter 17
AMARIA
The summons came at dusk.
A runner—barely more than a child, all pointy elbows and wary eyes—found me in the training ring and delivered Kaelen's message with the practiced neutrality of someone who'd learned not to ask questions. Private chamber. Now.
I went.
The corridor leading to Kaelen's quarters cut deeper into the rock than I'd ventured before. The air grew colder with each step, damper, the torches spaced further apart until I was navigating more by memory than sight. Because of course the leader who wanted blind loyalty held court in the dark.
The chamber itself was smaller than I'd expected. Rougher. There was just a single desk carved from the rock wall, a chair that looked about as comfortable as sitting on a blade, and Kaelen.
He looked up as I entered. Those pale eyes swept over me once, clinical, missing nothing—the lift of my chin, the way I braced myself against the doorframe before stepping fully inside. Calculating what I was worth and what I'd cost.
"Amaria. Your success in the first mission was exemplary. A testament to your potential."
I waited. The compliment sat between us like a baited trap.
"You've proven you can retrieve what we need," he continued, leaning back in his chair. "Now it's time to prove you can do what's necessary to keep it."
He slid a captured image across the desk. It was stuttering and worn, the image faded but clear enough. A male's face stared up at me. Hard eyes. A scar bisecting his left eyebrow like he'd earned it and wanted you to know.
"Jorath," Kaelen said. "Former Crownforged. Specialized in hunting Shadowmarked."
The words hit like ice water down my spine.
"Hunting them," I repeated.
"Children, mostly. The Crown always preferred to catch them young—easier to capture before they come into their power.
" Kaelen's tone stayed even, clinical. "Jorath was one of their best. Tracked Shadowmarked families through the outer districts for almost a decade.
Dozens of children dragged to the Veil Mines because of him. Dozens more dead in the taking."
I thought of the salves I used to smuggle. Securing the tiny buttons on their tunic, all the way to the chin in the sweltering heat to hide the marks before Enforcers could see. The mothers who'd clutched my hands and whispered thank you like I'd given them something more precious than coin.
Children. He'd hunted children.
"What happened to him?"
"He aged out. Lost his edge." Kaelen shrugged—a small, dismissive motion. "The Crown has no use for dull blades. Now he guards the Shadow Key in the Watcher's Keep. Retirement, of a sort. A loyal dog given a bone to gnaw in his final years."
I looked at it. At the cold stare of a male who'd spent a decade dragging children into the dark.
"Kill him," Kaelen said, "and you're not just retrieving the second key for the codex. You're delivering justice for every child he ever took. Every family he ever destroyed." He leaned forward, pale eyes bright. "This isn't murder, Amaria. It's reckoning."
The word sat heavy in the air between us.
"And if I refuse?"
"Then someone else retrieves the key. Someone less... conflicted," he said. "And you prove what the doubters have been whispering since you arrived—that the dual-marked savior is just a frightened girl who can't stomach the cost of her own potential."
The words landed exactly where he'd aimed them. My hands curled into fists at my sides.
He saw it. Of course he saw it.
"The Watcher's Keep," he said, sliding a folded map across the desk. "Deep Undercity. The key is in the central vault. Jorath guards the only entrance." He stood, smoothing his coat with exacting movements. "You leave at midnight. I suggest you make peace with your decision before then."
He walked past me toward the door, pausing just long enough to add:
"We've all had to kill what we loved to become what we needed to be, Amaria. Consider this your welcome to freedom."
Then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving me alone with a captured image and a mission that felt like a gift.
A child-hunter. My thumb traced the edge of the image. That stare. That scar like a badge he'd earned breaking families apart.
Perfect.
I'd spent years cleaning up after males like him. Sneaking through back alleys with contraband salves. Holding my breath while Enforcer patrols passed inches from the children I'd hidden. Watching mothers' faces crumble when I told them their sons, their daughters, were already gone.
And this monster—had been the one filling those cages. Decade after decade. Child after child.
Now he was mine.
I shoved the image into my pocket and walked out of that chamber with my pulse steady and my purpose clear.
Kaelen wanted proof I could do what was necessary?
Fine.
I'd bring him proof.
Midnight found me scaling the stronghold's western exit, fingers finding holds in stone I'd memorized days ago.
The city opened to me like a held breath finally released.
I dropped into a crouch on the rooftop's edge, letting the brisk air fill my lungs—clean, and free of forge smoke and too many bodies pressed into too little space. My vision still wavered if I moved too fast. The Veil was bleeding, and my body knew it.
I launched myself into the air.
Rooftop to rooftop. Drainpipe to ledge to the crumbling spine of an abandoned temple. The city's bones knew my weight, and I knew theirs.
Cedar sap coated my gloves as I vaulted a gap, its scent biting and green underneath the ash. Moonlight cut through the gaps between buildings—not a threat out here, but a tool. An old friend.
I felt him before I saw him.
A subtle wrongness in the shadows three rooftops back. A shimmer that didn't quite belong—Maxx's glamour, good but not perfect. Sloppy enough that I was meant to notice. Kaelen's insurance policy, sent to make sure his weapon fired true and didn't grow a conscience mid-swing. Let him watch.
I moved faster, letting the familiar rhythm of the city carry me deeper into the Undercity's festering veins. With every rooftop I cleared, every shadow I slipped through, I let myself think about what waited at the end.
Jorath.
I pictured the face from the image, those hard eyes, that scar bisecting his brow like a badge of honor.
I superimposed it over another face—a boy I'd found once in the Eastern Quarter, maybe seven years old, his Shadowmark still fresh and raw on his chest. He'd been hiding in a drainage pipe, shaking so hard his teeth chattered.
His mother was already gone. Taken. And the Enforcers were still circling, patient as wolves.
That's what Jorath did, I reminded myself. That's who he was. A hunter who'd spent years dragging children into the dark. Filling the Veil Mines with small, terrified ghosts who'd never see sunlight again.
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 be clean. 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 was praying.
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 not that.
"Please," he wheezed against the pressure of my arm. "Just—give it to her. The book. Please. She needs to know I—"
"Give it to her?"
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.