Page 293 of Scorched Earth

Scrambling to her feet, Lydia began to climb out of the pit of dead vines. “Killian!” she shouted. “Killian!”

Resting her elbow on the edge, Lydia heaved herself over, rolling onto her hands and knees. “Kill—” She broke off. Because surrounding her were thousands of blighters.

All still very much under the Corrupter’s control.

114KILLIAN

Yet another earthquake shook the ground with such violence that Killian lost his footing, rolling on the steep slope before catching himself against a dead tree.

Every part of him was in agony, his flesh cut and torn in a dozen places, his skin sticky with blood, but he forced himself to his feet.

Blighters were racing up the pass to either side of where the river of blight had once been, now just a deep trench in the ground. A dozen paces away from him, Rufina was on her knees. “No!” she screamed, her eyes fixed east.

To Mudamora, which was now crisscrossed with empty trenches, the blight vanquished.

They’d done it. Malahi and Lydia had done it. Elation flooded him, but it was short-lived.

He could feel Rufina’s rage. Feel her wrath.

Her threat.

For while the blight had been drawn out of the land, it seemed it still flowed in the veins of those that it had murdered. For blighters beyond count were running this way, all headed toward Deadground.

And Lydia.

Killian climbed after Rufina, desperation burning in his chest because she would go after Lydia for revenge. Would try to hurt Lydia for her part in destroying the blight, and he didn’t know if he could stop her.

Picking up his blood-slicked sword, Killian climbed a few more steps and then fell to his knees.

“Get up,” he ordered himself. “Keep going. Keep fighting.”

The world was growing darker, snow falling thicker, and his fingers were numb from cold. From blood loss. But Killian made it to his feet and climbed.

Only to trip again, the ground rushing up to meet him.

And everything went dark.

115LYDIA

The blighters continued to pour into the valley to encircle the pit, but then they parted like a tide. A figure appeared, walking through the gap her minions had formed.

Rufina stepped out of the horde to stop a few paces from Lydia.She was covered in blood, but the sight of her didn’t fill Lydia with fear. It drowned her in grief, because if Rufina was here, if Rufina was still standing…

“He’s dead.” The Queen of Derin answered the unasked question. “Or near enough to it that the distinction hardly matters.”

A tear rolled down Lydia’s cheek, her cracked spectacles fogging in the cold air as she let out a sob, the ache in her heart more than she could bear. A pain she’d never recover from, but she’d be damned before she dishonored Killian by giving up. Squaring her shoulders, Lydia stepped up to Rufina.

The Queen of Derin laughed, but Lydia barely noticed, her eyes all for the filaments of black spidering out from the other woman. She tried to focus on them, but rather than something tangible, the threads were the absence of anything.

They were death.

Lydia’s heart began to throb faster as true understanding of what she’d done when she’d saved Finn and all the others.

She’d drawn the death out of them as surely as Malahi had drawn it out of the land. And just as the corrupted tenders had been the heart of the blight, so too was Rufina the heart of the death that had stolen so many lives. Death connected her to them, allowed her to use them as her puppets, and that link needed to be severed. Except while the corrupted tenders hadn’t fought back, Rufina most certainly would.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Kitaryia,” Rufina crooned. “Accept what you are and join me.”

“Why do you want that?” Lydia asked, stepping closer, drawing the excess of life left by the destroyed tenders into herself. “Why not just kill me and be done with it?”