Ewan Greenwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Ewan set the dragon scale tablet on a flat stone. He knew where the keep's gate would break. Now he had to carve the mark that would break it. One wrong stroke, and the ward would throw the force back through him. That was how the man at the cathedral died. Seren knelt across from him and unrolled a worn scrap of hide covered in old marks. "The unmaking mark is not a ward," Seren said. "A ward holds. This one lets go. You carve it backward." He drew the shape in the dirt with one finger. Simple. A single curved line, then a cut across it. "The cut goes last. Miss the angle, and it becomes a rival mark. Then the ward wakes and kills you." Ewan's hands were cold. He picked up his blade. Aisling crouched beside him, one hand on her orange pendant. Her mother had died to magic. She hated the marks more than he did. "You don't have to be the one," she said. "Let it wait." "It can't wait," Ewan said. "No one else can do it." He set the blade to the tablet. His hand shook. He made the curve. It ran clean. Then he lifted the blade for the last cut, the one that would break him if he missed. He stopped. His breath came fast. "You're carving it like you hate it," Seren said quietly. "A man who hates the mark presses too hard. The angle turns. Let go of the hate for one stroke. Just the wood. Just the line." Ewan closed his eyes. He thought of the burned village, the reason he hated all of this. Then he pushed it down. He thought only of the groove in the arch. The seam. The wood under his blade. He opened his eyes and drew the cut across the curve in one slow pull. The blade stopped where it should. The mark lay finished on the scale. Nothing threw him back. Nothing burned. Seren leaned close and studied it a long moment. "That's the mark," he said. "That will unmake a gate." Aisling let out a breath she had been holding. Callum stepped in from where he'd stood guard, his shoulders loose now. He looked at the mark on the tablet, then at his brother's steady hands. "Clean joint," he said. It was the highest praise he gave. Ewan wrapped the tablet in cloth. He had done it. He had carved the thing he hated and lived. But as he tied the knot, a colder truth settled in him. The mark worked here, on a stone, with no ward fighting him. The keep's gate was different. It was warded, whole, and guarded by the riders who burned his home. He had the key now. He still had to reach the door.