When August turned his hand around, his breath hitched.
The skin, torn open only minutes earlier, was smooth. Blood still crusted his wrist, but the cut was gone. No scar. No sign it had ever been there.
Before he could make sense of it, Felix raised the gun again.
August spun on his heel and ran, flinching at the sound of the gunshot behind him.
Felix had never used a gun before, so it wasn’t surprising that the bullet missed terribly. He tossed the rifle aside as August disappeared around a building.
For a moment, curiosity held him still, his mind working to make sense of what he’d seen. The cut on August’s hand had been jagged and ugly, deep enough to need sutures. And yet, somewhere between one side of the Hollow Dark and the other, the cut had not only sealed; it had vanished entirely.
August wasn’t a healer. And even if he was, to heal a cut like that, it should’ve taken time and focus. Even Marlow, who had been teaching herself anatomy and medicine for years, would’ve needed a minute to manage what he’d done.
“Should we go after him?” Marlow asked.
Felix dragged his focus back to the matter at hand. The aeslings were meeting in the market square. August wouldn’t leave without his sister.
“I know where he’s going. We’ll meet him there.”
It didn’t matter how August had healed his hand. All that mattered was that August had just kicked out the columns ofthe life Felix had worked so hard to build, and now everything was cracking and crumbling around him. A knife in the back would’ve been a kinder betrayal.
City Watch officers had learned Felix’s secret, and two had lived to call for his arrest. His execution.
Life as he knew it was over. There was no way forward from here.
After Elise’s death and the loss of his leg, it had taken years of anger and picking fights for Felix to understand that none of it would make a difference. He’d changed tactics then. Though he detested having to appease those responsible for every one of his problems, he adapted and endured. It was a necessary step. A means to an end.
He drew in the night air, thick with smoke, and closed his eyes. The memories he had forced down all broke loose.
A lavish home. The cold wall pressed into his back. The old woman’s husband’s breath at his ear, voice low and lethal, reminding Felix he was not family, vowing to end him if he ever returned.
A plush bedroom with sweeping curtains. The noble boy’s cruel smile as Felix assured himself it wouldn’t be as bad as last time. But it always was.
A crowded hall. His cheeks burning as the girl who’d played a friend in private turned on him in public, spitting insults for all to hear.
Felix could feel the burning sting of every artificial smile, the brutal weight of each begrudging bow, and the bitter aftertaste of every strained compliment.
He’d worked so damned hard, and now none of it mattered.
If there’s not a path, make one.His da’s words, recounted through his ma’s many stories.If there’s a wall in your way, tear it down.
There were walls everywhere now. August had ruinedeverything. It was almost funny, though. As angry as Felix was, he wasn’t surprised. In fact, it was a relief.
For a while there, his worldview had been completely upended. A member of the ruling class who deserved his trust? It went against everything he’d previously believed.
But August had just set the world back in place. He wasn’t a good person. Only a good actor. That made what came next significantly easier. No blurred lines, no sentimental complications.
It was time to change tactics again. To adapt to the hand he’d been dealt.
The country must rid itself of its corruption, from the crown and the nobility to the criminals paid to do their dirty work.
He would make them all pay, and he wouldnotbe merciful.
“We’ll deal with the aesling,” he told Marlow as he opened his eyes. “Then we’re going to burn the noble houses to the ground. But we need numbers.”
Destabilize the power.
Nobility. Ministry. City Watch.
