Page 295 of Scorched Earth

“Wesaved them.”

Their foreheads pressed together, the silence right for there was no need for words in this moment. A moment they’d been fightingfor all their lives, even if they didn’t know it. A moment that they’d both lost hope of ever achieving, only to rediscover it again in each other’s strength. In each other’s love.

But at such a great cost.

“Malahi,” she started to say, then fell silent as a noise from behind caught her attention. Killian retrieved his sword, but then a familiar hand reached over the edge, and Malahi appeared. Lena rushed forward to help her up, then leaned down to pull Agrippa over the edge.

“How is this possible?” Lydia tightened her grip on Killian’s hand. “How…”

“You saved her,” Agrippa said. “I’m sorry for doubting you, Lydia.”

Understanding rose in her chest how this had come to pass. Malahi had her life taken by the blight in the same way as the blighters had, but if she’d come back to the living, then—“What of the other tenders?”

“They came back to life as well,” Agrippa said. “But I watched those bastards choose this path. They were corrupted in their souls, and if we left them alive, they’d have done this all over again. So I gave them anaturaldeath with my blade. Mudamora is safe from the likes of them.”

A ruthless act, but it was not lost on Lydia that sometimes ruthlessness was required. And deserved.

As Agrippa helped Malahi to her feet, she looked around at the sea of the living before turning her focus to Lydia. “You believed when everyone else had lost hope.” Malahi’s voice was choked. “You never stopped trying to help our people. Never gave up. You were the queen Mudamora needed.”

Lydia shook her head. “Perhaps I was. But the moment when Mudamora needed someone like me is over. You were destined to rule, my friend. In spirit, in bravery, and, when we can gather enough of the high families to make it so, in law.”

Malahi’s eyes widened. “But—”

“It’s not my path,” Lydia said. “It’s yours.” She gestured to the stunned masses of surviving Mudamorians trying to come to terms with what they’d endured and said, “Our people need you now, more than ever. You are the one they know as their queen—they will not question you, especially once they learn what you have accomplished. Go to them and give them hope.”

Malahi didn’t move for a long moment, her amber eyes searching Lydia’s. “It is a privilege to call you friend, Lydia, and it is my hope to call you so for the rest of my life.”

Letting go of Killian with one arm, Lydia grasped Malahi’s hand. “We will rebuild Mudamora together. I swear it.”

With Agrippa shadowing her, Mudamora’s rightful queen walked toward her people. Despite her scars, many of them recognized Malahi’s face and called out her name, for she had always been beloved.

Malahi paused only to pick up Rufina’s head, then she stepped up onto a rock and shouted, “Our enemy is dead, her hold on you vanquished, and by the grace of the Six and the bravery of their marked, you have been given back your lives! Yet not without great cost.” She dropped Rufina’s head into the snow. “The scars left by what you have witnessed while your bodies were controlled by the enemy will be with you all of your lives, your souls scarred as surely as the blight has scarred the land.”

Her gaze went briefly to Agrippa before returning to those looking on. “But I was once told that scars are not a symbol of weakness but of strength, and to wear them proudly as an act of defiance against those who put them there. The Corrupter tried to bring you low and yet you still stand. Every day you stand strong and faithful to each other is a day that you spit in the face of the god who tried to destroy all we held dear.”

Malahi lifted her chin, sunlight breaking through the clouds to illuminate her scarred and beautiful face. “We walk a hard road. A road in which we grieve for the fallen even as we piece back together a life for the living. But I swear on the Six that I will walk alongside you. That I will give all that I am, body and soul, to raise Mudamora and its people up high.”

Stepping off the rock, Malahi pressed her hand deep into the snow, and from its depths, verdant grass exploded through the grey. She lifted her head and fixed her gaze east into Mudamora, and as she did, six rays of light lanced through the clouds to illuminate her face. As the onlookers gasped, green exploded down the slope toward Mudamora, creating a highway of life that would lead them where they needed to go.

Though in Killian’s arms, she was already where she wanted to be.

“I’d ask if you’re sure you want to give the crown up, but I know you are,” Killian said quietly. “Your heart has always demanded you walk among the people, not before them. Rule would never have made you happy.”

As always, he knew her better than anyone, and Lydia smiled. “Nor you.”

Killian gave a rueful laugh. “Definitely not.”

It was their destiny to serve the people, Lydia knew that in the deepest part of her heart, but it would not be with crowns on their heads. It would be with their marks, using the strength gifted to them by the gods to protect the people. The rightness of that settled on her soul, along with the certainty that her future was entwined with Killian’s, a path they’d walk together, to whatever end.

“I love you,” she said to him. “I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you. And”—she gave him a little smile—“every night.”

Killian grinned, an expression she hadn’t seen in so long that the sight of it nearly brought her to tears. “Long nights behind us,” he said. “But I think longer nights ahead.”

He kissed her then, and Lydia melted into him. She’d fought long and hard for so many reasons, but for herself, this moment was the greatest victory of all.

116MARCUS

It was incredibly quiet, much as it had been since they’d abandoned southern Mudamora and journeyed through one of the many xenthier paths Rufina had mapped to a location just south of Mudaire. Silent partially because nothing lived in the barren land surrounding the city, but mostly because the weight of losing the Fifty-First still hung heavy over every one of the legions.