Page 216 of Scorched Earth

“She told me the truth.” Teriana kept her pace measured as she walked the long length of the room. “Told me about how your parents switched you and your brother, making him heir while you went to Lescendor.”

His hand stilled for a moment, then Marcus continued writing. “She’s not in favor of this campaign, so she likely told you with the hope that you’d scream it across Celendrial and sabotage me. Which means she must be desperate, because that information is only valuable when Cassius decides it will be valuable, and Cordelia is intelligent enough to recognize that.”

“I’m sure she does.” Teriana’s fingers turned numb. “Which is why she had a different motive.”

“Do tell.”

“She told me so that I’d understand why you did the things you did. Why you do the things you do.”

“The answer to both is that I follow orders.”

Swallowing hard, Teriana rose the three steps of the dais and walked the length of the table. Extracting Cordelia’s letter from her pocket, she set it on the table next to him.

“You’ve done your duty,” he said, still writing. “Feel free to leave.”

Teriana sat on one of the stools and rested her elbows on the table, the shivers wracking her body making the glass of wine at his elbow shake. “Read it.”

He sighed but set aside his pen and picked the letter up, scanning the lines. She’d read it on her journey back west. Cordelia had explained the direness of the situation in Celendor, Cassius’s abuses of power as dictator, and her fervent wish that Marcus consider returning to remove him from power.

As soon as he finished reading, Marcus held the pages to a candle, then tossed them in a silver bowl to burn. “We are at war, so his dictatorship is not unlawful. If Cordelia dislikes Cassius’s politics so much, she should have her husband run for consul once this war is won, and through him, she can give me orders. Until then, I’m afraid I have to decline her suggestion that I commit treason.”

Teriana was no fool and had no expectation that Marcus would immediately agree to Cordelia’s request, but she had expected to see a reaction. Disgust over what Cassius was doing to Celendor, his abuses of its people, and his increasingly violent tyranny. But it was as Servius had warned. Like talking to a block of ice.

“She believes the only reason you won’t do it is because you know that if you take Cassius down, he’ll take your family down with him.”

“The Thirty-Seventh is my family, and I will not turn them into traitors for the sake of blood.” He picked his pen back up. “Why did Cordelia choose to send this message with you? Because I assure you, she’s rich and influential enough to have gotten this message past Cassius’s censors with little trouble.” He started writing. “Is it because she thought you might have sway?”

“Yes.”

He stopped writing and, for the first time since she’d walked into the room, looked up at her. Her heart skittered as she stared into not the blue-grey eyes she knew so well, but twin voids that seemed portals to the underworld itself. “Do you think you have sway, Teriana?”

Her heart was racing so fast it hurt, her pulse roaring in her ears as she whispered, “No.”

Marcus belonged to the Corrupter now. Perhaps he always had.

A tear slid down her cheek because if she’d stayed, could she have prevented this? Could she have kept the Seventh God from digging his claws into Marcus? Panic rose in Teriana’s chest as she was drawn into the voids staring at her. This was her fault.

I failed!she silently screamed.I walked away. I left him. I cursed Gamdesh.

Then the sound of waves and the scent of sea washed over her, her mother’s voice whispering,It’s not your responsibility to make him do the right thing, daughter, and it never has been.

Teriana blinked and was once again staring into the voids that were his eyes, although she no longer felt like she was falling.

“I think you should go,” Marcus said. “It is my understanding that your people were released, so our arrangement is concluded.”

“Not all of them.” Reaching into her pocket, she closed her fingers around the tiny ship. “Hostus murdered my mother. Stabbed her right in front me. That’s why I killed him.”

Marcus closed his eyes, and for a heartbeat, she thought some part of him still remained. Some part of him still cared. Then his lids opened, and the voids looked back. “Everyone present claims it was all shadows in the dark, so you’ll likely escape punishment for your vengeance.”

Teriana drew in a ragged breath, inhaling the scent of leather and steel and soap, the painful familiarity of it making her heart ache as their time together flashed through her mind. A thousand moments. A thousand emotions. Culminating in the memory of his voice whispering,I love you.

Had any of it been real? Or was she mourning the loss of something, of someone, who had never existed at all?

And did it matter, given where they now stood?

“I haven’t had my vengeance,” Teriana finally said, wiping away the tears that now slicked her cheeks. “We both know that Hostus doesn’t shit unless Cassius gives the order, so it’s Cassius my sights are set on, and you, Marcus, are his general.” She set the hair ornament on the table but kept her hand over it. “We’ve always been destined to stand on opposite sides of the battlefield, and that time has come.”

Lifting her hand, she watched his eyes fix on the miniature ship cast in gold and enamel andgods-damnedlove. “We’re going to war, Legatus. And I think it’s time you had a taste of what it’s like to lose.”