Page 32 of Scorched Earth

“He didn’t come back,” Servius snapped. “Titus’s men caught him.”

Quintus went still. “Teriana?”

Her name was a knife to the gut, tearing down the walls Marcus had built up around the emotions he felt for her. And the lies he’d told to her.

“Wasn’t with him,” Servius snapped.

“Is she alive?”

“She’s in Celendrial,” Marcus answered, because he could see that Quintus cared, and rewarding that was worth Servius slamming him sideways against the bars like Marcus was no more than a ragdoll.

“I said, be silent!”

Stars filled Marcus’s vision, everything spinning, but he heard Quintus say, “Celendrial? Shit. How?” before he was hauled out of earshot.

Servius unlocked the cell at the far end, then threw Marcus inside. He stumbled over his own feet and fell to his knees, nearly colliding with the shit bucket before he caught his balance. The bars slammed shut behind him, and Servius crossed his arms as he moved to stand in front of the cell opposite.

From down the hallway, Quintus shouted, “I told you that she wouldn’t abandon her ship! I told you that something happened to them!”

“Quintus, shut up or I will cut out your tongue and shove it down your throat!” Servius roared, his voice reverberating through the stone structure.

Marcus winced at the noise. His head throbbed, exhaustion weighing him down, for adrenaline was not enough to overcome the hunger and deprivation Titus had inflicted upon him. Still, he risked asking, “What has Quintus done to deserve being locked up?”

“What hasn’t he done would be a shorter list.” Servius gave a sharp shake of his head, then leveled a finger at Marcus. “I told you to be quiet.”

Easing to his feet, Marcus sat on the cot and watched his friend stew, knowing that Servius hated the silence and would feel compelled to break it. The muscles beneath Servius’s brown skin flexed, his jaw working back and forth, brow creased with a scowl. Sure enough, only a few moments passed before his friend crossed the corridor and gripped the bars. “Do you have any idea of what your desertion did to the Thirty-Seventh? Do you have any idea what a mess things have been since you went running off into the sunset with Teriana?”

“I didn’t—”

“Be quiet!” Servius rattled the bars, face darkening with anger. “I’m doing the talking!”

Silence stretched, then Servius spun away, turning in a circle before gripping the bars again. “We’ve lost one hundred twenty-four of the Thirty-Seventh since you’ve been gone.”

Marcus’s skin turned to ice, his stomach hollowing. “How?” he asked, though what he really wanted to know waswho.Whose names were now struck from the ranks of the Thirty-Seventh with the worddeceasedwritten next to them.

“Titus ordered us to press into the interior. There are things in there. Creatures and… and we don’t know what. We find men slaughtered if we find them at all.” Servius let out a ragged breath, shaking his head. “It hasn’t gone well under Titus’s command, butwithout the Senate’s approval, Felix is only acting legatus. What could we do?”

Rise up.

The thought screamed its way into his head, instantly to be dismissed, for following the chain of command was so instinctive to his men that they did it as naturally as breathing. Marcus’s hands fisted because without his protection, everything he’d feared would happen to his legion had come to pass. “Why the interior? It was never the target.”

Servius spread his arms wide. “What else? Xenthier. We all knew you dragged your heels in the search for reasons of your own, but Titus raced after every rumor like a rat terrier. He wants the glory of conquest, and that’s not happening with only two legions. Not against a target like Gamdesh. We needed a route back to secure more resources.”

“There is a genesis in the abandoned city,” Marcus replied. “But the terminus is in the middle of Sibern. Don’t send anyone.”

“You don’t give orders. Not anymore.”

Servius’s voice was frosty, but Marcus didn’t miss the way his friend’s jaw had tightened. They’d found the stem in the collapsed temple.

“Whomever you sent is likely in the belly of Sibernese wolves. Or frozen, given that it’s the depths of winter.”

Curiosity flickered in Servius’s brown eyes, but all he said was, “Good thing Titus doesn’t trust us, then. Sent two of his own.” Servius seemed to be gathering his thoughts, trying to determine truth from fallacy. “You… you’re saying you have been in the East?”

Marcus didn’t answer.

With a few pieces of information, the seed was now sown, curiosity a far more powerful creature than the full story itself. He could see the questions forming in Servius’s eyes, each of them undermining the truth that the Thirty-Seventh had come to believe about his desertion.

Except, in the end, it didn’t matter what Servius thought. The decision of whether Marcus lived or died was in Felix’s hands. “How has Felix held up?”