Page 220 of Scorched Earth

“Astara!” Adra shoved past him. “Get a blanket! Medicines! She’s injured.”

She pulled the woman into her arms, and Killian caught sight of a wound in the shifter’s thigh. It had been stitched, but the stitches had torn open and blood was leaking on the floor.

Astara sipped greedily from a cup of water Adra held to her lips, then whispered, “Revat has fallen to the Cel. Kaira is dead, and the towers of the Six have fallen.”

Killian dropped to his knees next to her. “Was a Mudamorian healer taken prisoner? A young woman named Lydia?”

“Sonia would have been with her,” Adra added. “They were in the library.”

“I don’t know.” Astara winced as a cloth was pressed to her bleeding wound. “I was captured in Emrant. Kept as their prisoner. I’m only free because… because…” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut for a long moment, and when they opened, her composure had returned. “I barely escaped with my life to bring word that we need your aid in our time of great need.”

“Would that we had soldiers and ships to send, but all we can give is hope,” Malahi said. “In Revat’s final hours of freedom, it gave us the answers we needed to destroy the blight and drive back the Seventh. Once that is done, we will unite with all our allies and destroy the Cel incursion.”

Killian bit back a retort thatnoneof this was Malahi’s decision to make, only for Seldrid to walk into his house, calmly taking in the scene as he said, “TheKairensehas been spotted sailing this way, and Lydia has been seen on decks with Captain Vane. It will take them some time to get a space in the harbor, but our queen is here. And I, for one, think this will be the moment that the tides turn in our favor.”

Relief flooded Killian with such force that he was glad he was already on his knees. “I’m going to the harbor.”

Yet as he strode to the entrance, it was to come face-to-face with his mother. Her hair was tangled and her skirts stained with mud, but it was her eyes, which were red and swollen, that stopped Killian in his tracks. “Mother?”

“I bring fell news,” she whispered. “The High Lords pushed a vote this morning to take the crown from Lydia on the belief she is either dead or imprisoned, and to crown Helene Torrington, who has agreed to wed High Lord Pitolt’s son, Rodern. Hacken opposed it, and Helene formally accused him of murdering Ria. They had a trial and a vote, and the High Lords convicted him. All our soldiers went north with you, and there was nothing to be done to stop the lords and their men. They hanged your brother in my gardens.”

It took several moments for her words to register. To make sense. For him to understand exactly what his mother had said, because it seemed impossible. Yet the tears in her eyes told him it was no fabrication.

Hacken was dead.

He’d had more conflict with his brother than not, no love lost between them, yet Killian still waited for grief to rise. Or guilt. Yet he felt nothing but numbness.

“This will be calamity.” Seldrid’s voice was shaky. “A war for the crown while enemies press in on all sides. Gods-damn Helene for doing this!”

Does this feel like victory, Killian Calorian? Does this feel like a battle won?

Killian took a breath, then another. Because as long as he was still breathing, he could fight. “The queen is sailing into the harbor now,” he said over the tumult. “And by the Six, we will do all that it takes to keep the crown on her head.”

81LYDIA

The mood during the passage back to Serlania was somber, the knowledge of how to defeat the blight doing little to compensate for the loss of Aspasiana, the presumed death of Kaira, or the fall of the mightiest city of the West.

Rather than being angry about having been trussed up and forcibly removed from Revat, Sultan Kalin was silent. Broken. Lydia couldn’t speak to what the man had been like before, but the man he was now appeared fragile and ancient. He did nothing but stare at their wake, Vane tasking two of his sailors to remain at his side lest he attempt to fling himself overboard in despair over the loss of his only child.

Sonia tried speaking to him. “Sire,” she said. “All is not lost. Your civilians are gathering on the western coast, and they will fight for you. Fight for Revat. Our soldiers will rally to them and you must lead them.”

“The Empire cannot be defeated without Kaira,” was his response. “They are as locusts upon the land.”

“You try speaking to him,” Sonia had asked Lydia. “You’re queen of Mudamora. The High Lady of House Falorn. Tell him that Mudamora will aid Gamdesh once the blight is defeated, which is sure to be soon. Give him hope.”

Except Lydia didn’t feel like a queen. Didn’t know what words she could say or what she could commit to, and she badly wished Malahi were here to advise. Malahi, who personally knew Sultan Kalin and would know exactly what to say. “The Cel are just men,” she told him. “Nothing more than well-trained soldiers, and though it will be difficult, they can be defeated.”

“Men who topple gods,” Kalin had responded. “Evil rules Gamdesh now, just as it rules Mudamora. There is no hope.”

To hope felt terrifying, yet that was what they needed to cling to the most as they ventured north to do battle against Rufina.

To war against the Corrupter.

TheKairensewas recognized on approach, space cleared for them in the overpacked harbor of Serlania. As she stood at the railing,Lydia’s eyes latched onto a familiar tall form pacing the docks and her heart skipped. “Killian.”

She’d done her best not to dwell on their separation while in Revat, but the ache of not having him at her side suddenly struck her like a battering ram to the stomach, tears welling in her eyes.

“Something has happened in our absence,” Sonia murmured, and Lydia’s gaze skipped from Killian to Agrippa and Malahi, all three of them grim faced. “And it’s nothing good.”