Page 116 of Property of Scar

Whatever this is, it doesn’t fit any pattern I’ve seen before.

“Scar—” Cali’s voice is right beside me, no distance left between us, her hands gripping onto me hard enough to matter, one braced at my side, the other at my chest like she’s trying to keep me upright by force alone. I feel the pressure of it, the urgency in the way she touches me, the way her fingers tighten when she realizes what’s happening under her hands.

“Hey… hey. Stay with me, you asshole!” There’s an edge to her voice. Something raw and strained, something breaking through that she doesn’t bother to hide. Her hand presses harder against the wound, trying to stem something that isn’t bleeding the way it should, her gaze locked on my face, searching, tracking every flicker of reaction like she’s trying to measure how far I’m slipping.

“What the fuck did he do?” The question comes out tight, almost breathless, like she already knows the answer isn’t going to be something she can fix quickly.

I feel her shift closer, one knee hitting the ground beside me as she adjusts her hold, refusing to let me drop, refusing to give him that ground.

“Look at me.” Her hand comes up, catching my jaw, forcing my focus toward her whether I want to give it or not, her eyes locked onto mine with a sharp, unrelenting intensity that cuts through the fog trying to settle in.

“Stay with me, Scar.” And for a second, just a second, that’s the only thing that matters.

But this pulls at something I can’t describe. Something beneath the centuries, the control, and the years of careful framework I have built over the one thing I never let anyone touch. My healing kicks in, surging toward the wound with everything it has, and the toxin feeds on it. Every cell I send toward the damage it takes, redirects, and channels inward, and what it channels it toward is not the wound.

It is her face.

Astrid.

The way she looked at the end.

The way she thanked me.

The way I ended it.

“There it is.” Mordain chuckles softly, from somewhere that is already farther away than the room’s dimensions should allow. “That’s what I was waiting for.”

I stumble to my feet, one foot in front of the other, jaw locked so hard my back teeth ache, every muscle in my body fighting the drag of the toxin the way you fight a current, not by overpowering it, because you can’t, but by refusing, second by second, to stop moving. My hand presses flat against my side where the blade was. It is warm, and my healing is still trying, but it is useless. Every attempt pulls me a fraction deeper into the undertow.

Mordain has already moved through the door at the far end of the chamber, retreating into the deeper lab, unhurried as a man finishing a conversation at his own leisure.

I follow him.

Because the only thing in the world worse than what is happening to me right now is letting him reach whatever is waiting on the other side of that door before I do.

My side screams. My vision tilts, steadies, and tilts again. The edges of me are beginning to soften in a way I have spent centuries making sure nothing could reach, and beneath the pull of the toxin, beneath the spreading cold, beneath all of it…

Astrid thanked me.

She fought it for as long as she could.

For you.

I keep stumbling.

The door swings wide on the deeper dark beyond it, and somewhere behind me I can hear the Kings still fighting, still alive, still loud and relentless in the way that only my brothers can be, and ahead of me, Mordain is waiting, patient as a tide.

He doesn’t need to kill me.

He built something better than a kill.

He built a cage out of everything I never let go of, and he just locked the goddamn door.

And the worst part, the part that settles into my chest like the blade did, cold, certain, and deep, is that somewhere in the formation of years of guilt, some part of me doesn’t know if I’ll fight my way out of it.

As I stumble a little farther, the toxin crashing its way through my body, I drop to my knees before I can reach him. My body is giving out, unable to move. Cali is by my side, yelling something at me, but I can’t hear her. I can’t think, all I see is Mordain escaping, as everything goes black, my body goes back and hits the floor, and the only thing I see are visions of me killing Astrid.

Over and over again.