Page 225 of Scorched Earth

Killian lifted his head, relief filling him at the sight of Lydia, alive, Finn’s body clutched against her.

His still body.

“Please,” she wept. “Please come back to us.”

Killian crawled on his hands and knees, ignoring the slice of glass on his palms, and took Finn from her.

“I’m so sorry.” Tears ran down his cheeks to splatter on Finn’s face. “I’m so sorry I abandoned you. That I didn’t listen. But I swear on the Six, it was never because I didn’t care. I failed you, and I’m sorry.”

“The Corrupter lied.” Lydia slammed her fists against the floor. “It was a lie, all a lie. Finn’s gone, they’re all gone, and there is nothing I can do to save them.Nothing.” The impact of her fists cracked the tiles. “What good is all this power if I cannot save those I love most?”

Killian’s eyes went back to Finn’s face, which was so still despite being flushed with the life that Lydia had put into him. Life that was worthless without the soul that made FinnFinn.

Killian knew war. Had seen so many die, yet losing Finn had cut a piece out of him that would never heal. A piece that felt far too much like hope.

There was no sound in the room but Sonia’s weeping. Lydia’s ragged breathing. His own heart throbbing in his chest. As though the whole world stood still, watching this moment.

As though the Six were watching as well.

Then Finn sucked in a deep breath, his back arching and eyes snapping open. A flash of fear made Killian’s skin crawl, because if the Corrupter had taken Finn back again then Killian would have to take him down.

And he didn’t think he could do it. Didn’t think that his heart would survive turning his weapon on Finn.

Yet Killian still reached for his sword. Only for Lydia’s fingers to close over his wrist. “He’s alive.”

Not possible.

Bringing back the dead was not a power of this world. It was a power of a god.

Lydia was no longer bound by mortal rules.

Finn’s eyes met his. “Killian?”

“We’ve got you, Finn.” His words tripped over themselves. “We got you back. It’s okay.”

The boy burst into tears, and Killian pulled him against his chest. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” Finn could barely get his words out between sobs. “I could see everything. Hear everything. Butitcontrolled everything, and it tells everything toher.”

“Her? You mean the Corrupter?”

“Rufina! She is twice touched by the Seventh God, and they are connected. She wields his power. Wields the death in the blight.” Finn sucked in a ragged breath. “SheknowsMalahi and Lydia can fix the blight together, Killian. She knows you all plan to go to Deadground. She knows everything I saw andeverythingyou told me.”

Killian’s hands turned to ice, his mind pouring over everything he’d told Finn. Worse still, everything that the boy would have overheard without anyone paying him any mind. The answer was damning.

“All the eyes of evil are focused on us,” Finn whispered. “And they are coming.”

83TERIANA

For all that the harbor had been packed, Serlania itself was worse, the streets of the largest city in Mudamora full to the brim. Soldiers patrolled to keep order, and Teriana, Yedda, and Polin passed long lines of people waiting to be provided with food, their faces pinched with hunger.

On the lips of everyone was the progress of the blight, which had consumed the northern two thirds of the kingdom. Dareena Falorn apparently commanded the front lines, but Serlania, overflowing asit was, had become the last bastion of the living in Mudamora in the fight against Rufina’s army of the dead.

Blighters,the people called them, a term Bait had made Teriana familiar with during their journey. He’d told her how those who accidentally ingested or touched the blight became sick, eventually dying only to animate under the will of the Corrupter. He told her that these walking dead possessed all the knowledge and memories of the people they’d once been, but they were no longerthem.Just puppets that the Seventh God used to manipulate and harm the living, recognizable only to Hegeria’s marked, who were now few and far between.

When Teriana had told her crew about the changes in Marcus’s behavior and how his eyes had looked like voids, they’d questioned whether he might have been somehow infected with the blight, but every part of Teriana resisted the idea that Marcus had been reduced to an animated corpse. “I could see him breathing,” she’d told them. “See the pulse in his throat.”

“The blighters are the same,” Bait had quietly told her, for he was the only person to have seen one. “It’s what makes them so dangerous, Teriana. They look alive. But it’s not them anymore.”