The Aeon's Wing sliced through the white-capped swells of the Sapphire Coast, but the salt spray felt like acid against my skin. On deck, the Unseen sailors moved with the silent efficiency of ghosts, their eyes darting to me with a mixture of reverence and deep-seated distrust. To them, I was a holy omen; to the others, I was a ticking bomb.
In the captain's cabin, the empty lead cylinder sat on a mahogany table, its hollow interior mocking our narrow escape.
"He played us," I said, my voice barely a rasp. I leaned against the bulkhead, the constant pitch of the ship doing nothing to settle the vertigo in my soul. "The girl, the fire, the 'betrayal'—it was all choreographed. Califer didn't just want the Scroll. He wanted a map to the Unseen."
Silas sat stripped to the waist while a healer pressed a glowing poultice to his shoulder. He winced, his golden eyes clouded with a dark, brooding intensity that matched the gathering storm outside. "The sanctuary at Aethelgard hasn't been breached in three centuries. It's hidden by more than just stone and trees, Lysia. It's shielded by the Old Blood."
"Califer has the Aegis Scroll, Silas," I countered, stepping into the circle of lantern light. "The very thing designed to unmake those shields. If we sail into that harbor, we aren't finding safety. We're providing the Hive with a front-row seat to the massacre."
"We have to warn them," Silas insisted, shoving the healer's hand away to stand. "If we turn back to the capital, we die in the streets. If we hesitate, Aethelgard falls while looking the wrong way. We are the only warning they have."
It was a stalemate of logic. Return to the lion's den for execution, or lead the predator to the flock. But the decision was snatched away by a frantic shout from the crow's nest.
"Vessel on the horizon! Small craft, flying the white flag!"
Silas and I sprinted to the railing. Bobbing in the wake of the great city we had just fled was a single, battered rowboat. It looked like a splinter against the vastness of the sea. As the Aeon's Wing slowed to bring the craft alongside, my heart performed a sickening slow-roll.
Slumped in the boat, his black vanguard armor scorched and rusted by seawater, was Kaelen.
"Don't shoot!" I screamed as the Unseen archers notched their arrows. "That's my brother!"
We hauled him over the side. He collapsed onto the deck, coughing up brine and blood, his hands trembling with a palsy I'd never seen. He looked like a man who had stared into the sun and found it hollow.
"Lysia," he gasped, his fingers clutching my tunic with bruising force. His eyes were wide, bloodshot with a terror that made my skin crawl. "You have to... you have to turn back."
"Kaelen, what happened? Why are you out here?"
"The Scroll..." Kaelen choked out a bitter, hollow laugh that turned into a wet cough. "It's not a weapon. Not like Califer said. I saw him open it. I saw what was inside."
He reached into his gauntlet and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of parchment—not a royal decree, but a map of the High-Valleys, marked with a single, red-inked thumbprint.
"The Aegis Scroll was never in the Dresvan vaults," Kaelen whispered, his voice cracking. "Califer already had it. He's had it for ten years. The 'Princess' was just a distraction to get you to trigger the final seal."
I felt the blood drain from my face. "What seal? I didn't touch anything."
Kaelen looked at Silas, then back at me. "The mark on your shoulder, Lysia. The one you got the night your parents died. The 'scar' from the fire."
I instinctively touched my shoulder. I had always thought it was a burn—a jagged, star-shaped brand of survival left by the rafters of my childhood home.
"It's a key," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a terrified hum. "Califer didn't follow us to find the sanctuary. He followed us because the closer you get to Aethelgard, the more the brand bleeds. It's a beacon. He's not behind us, Lysia... he's inside the ship's navigation."
As if on cue, the compass in the binnacle began to spin wildly, its needle a frantic blur. The air on deck grew heavy, vibrating with a low-frequency moan that made my teeth ache. I pulled back my collar, and my heart nearly stopped.
The scar on my shoulder wasn't white anymore. It was glowing with a sickly, rhythmic violet light, pulsing in perfect synchronization with the ship's heartbeat.
We weren't the hounds leading the hunter. I was the compass.
"He's not following us," Silas realized, his face turning ashen as he looked at the horizon behind us, where a thick, unnatural fog was beginning to swallow the sun. "He's pulling us in. And we're taking the key straight to the lock."
If we continued to the sanctuary, I would unlock the gates for the Hive. If we stayed at sea, Califer would find us by the light of my own skin.
"Kill me," I said, the words falling like stones into the sea. I looked at Silas, then at the heavy dagger at his belt. "If I'm the key, Silas... you have to break me."
Silas didn't move. The wind howled through the rigging, sounding like a chorus of the damned. "I won't," he whispered.
"You have to!" I stepped toward him, baring my throat, my shoulder burning with a heat that felt like a brand being reapplied. "Every mile we sail, I am murdering every person in that sanctuary. Use your head, Silas! I am a Reaper. I was born in blood, let me die to stop his."
"There is another way," Kaelen wheezed, struggling to his feet. He looked at the glowing mark on my shoulder, then at the horizon where the black sails of the Hive's flagship were beginning to tear through the unnatural fog. "But you won't like it."
Kaelen pointed to the lead cylinder on the table. "The cylinder isn't just a case. It's a dampener. If you can't break the key, you have to bury it in something the beacon can't penetrate."
I looked at the narrow, cold lead tube. "It's too small. I can't fit inside a scroll case, Kaelen."
"Not your body," Kaelen said, his eyes meeting mine with a devastating clarity. "The skin. The mark. It has to be removed, Lysia. Now. Before the flagship gets within range to lock the signal."
The silence that followed was broken only by the crashing of the waves. I looked at the lead cylinder, then at the sharp, silver blade in Silas's hand. To survive, I had to lose the only piece of my past I had left—the scar that had defined my life.
"Do it," I commanded, grabbing a piece of leather from the deck to bite down on.
As Silas raised the knife, his hands shaking for the first time since I'd met him, the sky turned a bruised black. The first harpoon from the Hive's ship thudded into our hull, the rope attached to it glowing with the same violet light as my shoulder.
The tether was established. The door was opening. And the only way to close it was to cut the truth out of my own flesh.