Chapter 24
AMARIA
I lay on my bedroll, one arm thrown over my face, the rough weave of the blanket scratching against my cheek. Maxx's glamour still danced behind my eyelids every time I closed them. The humiliation burned. The wanting scorched.
The drone of the Veil had been building for hours—a dissonant chord vibrating up through my spine, settling into my teeth. My marks writhed, sensing a danger I couldn't name yet.
Then the smoke found us.
I had steel in my hands before my brain even registered the threat. Not the familiar haze of our campfires—this was acrid, and laced with a foulness that made my stomach bottom out. Burning flesh. Scorched stone.
I sat up. Serenya was already awake on her bedroll, her eyes latched to mine in the dark.
"Do you—"
"Yes."
Then the screaming started.
Distant. Muffled by stone and earth. But unmistakable—high-pitched and desperate. It rose and rose and then cut off. Too abruptly.
We were on our feet before I knew I was moving, daggers in hand, shoving toward the cavern entrance with the others. The tunnels had erupted into chaos—rebels stumbling from bedrolls, half-dressed, voices overlapping in confusion and fear.
"What is it—"
"—the smoke, where's it coming from—"
"—screaming, did you hear—"
Brannick shoved past us, sword already drawn. "Move! Everyone move!"
We ran.
The tunnel to the surface felt longer than it ever had, the smoke thickening with every step, stinging my eyes, coating my lips. By the time we burst out into the night air, I was coughing so hard I could barely see.
My boot came down wrong—loss of traction on the wet stone—and I caught myself against the tunnel mouth.
Beneath me, the stampede had churned the crack where stone met soil to mud.
The little purple-blue wildflower that had been growing there—the one I'd been stepping over for weeks without letting myself think about why—was gone.
Ground into the dirt under thirty pairs of panicked boots.
I didn't stop. Couldn't. But my eyes snagged on the smear of it, and something in my chest flinched harder than it should have for a wildflower in a crack.
The smoke thinned as the last of the rebels shoved past me, and the horizon opened up.
The neighboring settlement that we passed on supply runs, with the market square and the children chasing each other between stalls—was burning.
Flames roared into the black sky, so bright they turned night into a hellish orange dawn. Buildings collapsed inward, sending up showers of sparks. And the screams—they were fading now, fewer and fewer, each silence worse than the sound that preceded it.
Then the screaming stopped, and it made the destruction more visible.
Smoke billowed thick, carrying the stench of charred flesh.
The buildings that had stood yesterday were now skeletal frames, glowing orange at their bones.
A cart lay overturned in the square, its contents—vegetables, bread, someone's livelihood—scattered and burning.
Bodies. I could see bodies now. Twisted shapes in the ash, some still smoldering, frozen in the positions they'd died in.
Running. Crawling. Reaching for something they'd never touch.
Kaelen appeared at the tunnel entrance, eyes sweeping the destruction. For once, there was no calculation in his expression. No strategy. Just grief.
"The King's men," he said quietly. "They thought that was our camp."
This happened because of us.
Then I heard it.
That sound. Low, guttural, vibrating through the air like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. The same snarl I'd heard through the cavern walls in the night—the one I'd told myself was nothing.
It wasn't nothing.
Maxx went rigid beside me. He crouched down and pointed toward the scorched earth at the settlement's edge. Prints. Massive, clawed, gouged into the ground—too large for any wolf, too deft for any wild thing. They cut a path clean through the destruction, methodical as a military march.
"Nullatheon Hounds," Maxx said quietly. "They hunt by soul-scent. Once they have your Mark, they don't stop. Ever."
The guttural howl rose again in the distance—farther now, fading—and my blood turned to ice.
Maxx's jaw tightened. "If the hounds are here, that means Black Talons did this." His voice was stripped of its usual drawl. "The King's purge unit. They don't arrest. They don't question. They just burn. Send a message to anyone thinking about harboring enemies of the Crown."
Dreadscale had materialized beside us, silent as always, his eyes reflecting the distant flames. He said nothing. There was nothing to say to change the fact that we did this.
We stood there, helpless, watching the flames eat everything that was left.
By dawn, the inferno had burned itself out.
The sun couldn't break through the haze—just a smear of lighter grey where the horizon should have been.
The ground was still warm underfoot. Hours later, and the earth hadn't let go of the heat.
Every step crunched—tile, glass, things I didn't look down to identify.
Serenya walked beside me, a strip of torn cloth tied over her nose and mouth, her eyes streaming.
The village square was unrecognizable. Blackened stone. Collapsed stalls. The air thick with ash and that sweet, wrong smell I'd never get out of my lungs.
I stopped walking.
A child's doll lay in the ash at my feet. Melted, one glass eye staring up at nothing. I crouched down without thinking—like I could fix it, like anything here could be fixed.
That's when I saw them.
Footprints. Right beside the doll, pressed deep into the ash. And they had a different tread than the Black Talons. A tread I recognized.
My Luminar flared, humming against my collarbone, confirming what my eyes were already telling me.
The Crownforged.
I knew that tread pattern. Had memorized it without meaning to—the weight distribution, the slight drag on the left heel from an old injury he never mentioned.
My knees hit the ground. My hand hovered over the nearest print.
He had been here.
I looked up, scanning the wreckage. The path of his footprints led toward the village center. Toward the worst of it. They didn't veer. Didn't hesitate. Just marched into the center of the fire.
He was here. When this happened, he was here. He did this.
The ground shifted under me. I pictured him walking through the flames. That rigid posture. That mask of control. Had he watched the buildings collapse? Heard the screaming? Had he stepped over the bodies—over the doll with its melted face—and kept walking?
My stomach lurched. I flung a hand over my mouth, swallowing hard against the bile rising from my gut.
"Amaria." Serenya's voice was hoarse. "We need to go back. We need to tell Kaelen."
She was right. I knew she was right.
But I couldn't stop staring at the footprints. At the path they carved through the ash, straight and true.
The stronghold shrank around us when we returned.
The smoke came with us — ground into our clothes, our hair, the creases of our skin.
It mixed with the stale underground air until every breath tasted like both places at once.
The torches seemed dimmer. The ceiling lower.
Voices hit the walls and came back flat, swallowed before they could carry.
Kaelen had gathered everyone in the main chamber. No fire in the brazier this time. No wine. Just grim faces and the weight of smoke still clinging to our clothes.
"We move tonight," Kaelen said without preamble.
"The Ancient Catacombs beneath the Old Capital.
It's defensible, hidden, and far enough from here that the Crown's hounds will lose the scent.
" His gaze found mine. "And the Codex vault is beneath them.
We regroup and we retrieve—two moves with one march. "
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Brannick's lip curled. Maxx leaned against the wall, arms crossed, face unreadable.
Serenya stepped forward. "There's something else." Her voice was steady, but I could see her hands trembling at her sides. "We found footprints in the ash. Crownforged boots." She paused. "Eryndor's."
The murmurs died. Silence, thick and lethal.
Kaelen's expression didn't change. He simply nodded—slow, grim, like he'd been expecting it.
“Come with me," he said.
He led us through the back tunnels, past the sleeping quarters, to the supply room. The door was already open. I knew before we stepped inside.
Empty.
The shelves ran floor to ceiling along three walls.
Bare. A few crates sat with their lids wrenched off, splinters curling from the edges.
One had been flipped—a boot print stamped into the base.
The grain dust that usually coated every surface had been disturbed into drag marks across the floor, and the air was stripped clean.
No dried herbs. No leather oil. No salted meat.
Just bare rock and the faint sourness of wood left open to damp.
A single roll of bandage cloth sat in the corner where it had fallen behind a shelf. Whoever cleaned us out hadn't bothered to grab it.
Kaelen stood in the center of it, letting us take it in.
"Same night as the fire," he said. "This wasn't coincidence."
Aaron had been in charge of inventory. Aaron, who the flames had branded traitor just last night.
Had he panicked—fast-forwarded some plan already in motion?
Did he have anything to do with burning an entire village…
just to sell supplies? Something didn’t add up.
But, math never did when it came to betrayal.
Serenya gripped my hand. I couldn't tell which of us was shaking.
"How long do we have?" Brannick asked. "The rest of our supplies. How long can we stretch what's left?"
"Days," Kaelen said. "A week if we ration severely. The catacombs have old caches—if they haven't been raided. We'll know when we arrive."
He turned to address the room, his voice carrying to the rebels who'd gathered at the doorway.