Page 1 of Scorched Earth

1KILLIAN

Night was coming, and with it, the monsters.

Killian’s shoulders burned, every muscle of his body shuddering from exhaustion. His clothes were drenched with sweat from rowing all through the day on a lake that seemed as vast as an ocean, albeit as smooth as glass.

He needed to find cover.

With darkness, and no fog to conceal the tiny boat, it was only a matter of time until the deimos found them and all the wrath of Rufina’s army descended. A fate Killian was desperate to avoid, but one the corrupted in the boat with him reached toward.

Lydia was barely recognizable. Each passing hour since they’d escaped, the rage and hunger in her eyes had grown. Black windows to the underworld that he couldn’t bear to look into, because this was not Lydia.

This was not the girl he was in love with.

Except that it is,a voice whispered from the depths of his soul.That she contained that part of herself doesn’t make it any less her.

Gods, but he hated that dark truth. Needed to silence it, except to do so meant silencing himself.

If she contained it once, she can contain it again. She’s strong.

A sentiment he prayed was true despite much proof to the contrary. Three times she’d broken free of her bonds. His clothes were a shredded mess from all the strips he’d torn off to secure her incredible strength and to gag her to keep her from crying out for Rufina’s aid. In the space of hours, she’d gone from desperate to kill to the queen of Derin to seeing Rufina as her savior.

All because of the hunger that consumed every part of her.

He wanted to blindfold her. Wanted to hide from that malevolent gaze that set off every instinct in his soul, demanding that he fight. Demanding that he kill.

“I’m heading to shore.” He eyed the shadowed coast. “We needto find some form of cover for the night.” Against his will, Killian’s gaze flicked to Lydia’s face.

She was watching him, tangled dark hair clinging to her face.

Gone was the maddened, frenzied creature, and he almost wished for it to return, because now the dark pits staring at him were full of calculation. Cunning. She was waiting for a moment of weakness, waiting for an opportune time to strike, which removing her from the boat would surely give her.

“I’m not giving up on you,” he said. “You can fight back against the Corrupter. I’m going to help you.”

Killian waited for some sign that the goodness in her was still there. A gleam of hope that he could cling to. Instead, a feral smile curved up around her gag, Lydia’s teeth gleaming red from where fabric cut into her mouth.

Kill her.

Killian jerked his gaze back to the dark coast, sucking in a mouthful of air.Just row, he told himself.Your focus needs to be on evading the deimos.

The sun burned lower and lower behind him, illuminating what he first thought was a mangrove swamp but then realized was a dead forest. Trees of every sort jutted out of the murky water, their branches skeletal and barren of life but for the putrid fungus growing on their rotting bark. Finding a gap wide enough for the boat, Killian rowed beneath the dead canopy just as the sun’s glow faded below the horizon.

He paused in his rowing to catch his breath as the boat drifted deeper.

The moment night fell, the fungus on the trees came alive, glowing a deep green that provided just enough light to see by. The density of the tree trunks forced him to draw in one of the oars and use the other as a paddle, slowly weaving deeper into the dead forest and, he hoped, closer to land. The smell grew sulfurous and strange, and in the shadows of the trees, small shadows crawled, though they froze the moment his eyes fell upon them.

Then the water stirred.

Killian stopped paddling as a large form swam toward them, then under. It struck the hull of the boat, rocking it violently, and he held his breath, waiting for it to attack.

But the creature only moved on, reptilian tail drifting side to side as it continued down the path from which they had come. Lydia shifted her weight, and Killian tensed, but she made no move to test her bonds.

Not yet, at any rate.

He didn’t know if pressing onward was the right thing to do, for everything about this forest waswrong.Everything felt touched by the Corrupter. He was certain that daylight would reveal the same black veins as stretched across Mudamora. Veins that stole the life of everything they touched. The product of tenders—those chosen by Yara to have power over the earth—whose marks had been tainted by the underworld.

The thought brought Malahi to mind. She was perhaps the last uncorrupted tender on the continent, which meant the last person capable of reversing the tide.

If she still lived, that was.