Page 34 of Scorched Earth

“Titus.”

“So it would seem.” Marcus moved so that he was sitting with his back to Felix, as he had times beyond counting, though he knew it was not just steel bars that rested between them. Every inhale brought the familiar scent of leather and soap, of sweat and steel. “But I don’t have any proof. I… I don’t trust myself to see clearly anymore. Not about this.”

Outside the prison, the Thirty-Seventh screamed their rage. Their hurt. Marcus closed his eyes and listened, grief and guilt filling him. They’d suffered in his absence. Suffered because of the mistakes he’d made, and there was no way to undo that. No way to bring back the dead.

“Tell me what happened.”

Marcus drew in a ragged breath, composure wavering because even though Felix didn’t have to, even though he surely didn’t want to, his best friend was going to hear him out. “We left camp so that Teriana could tell me her theory about the coins,” he said. “But we were set upon from above by a tiger. We ran and it pursued, chasing us into one of the temples. The floor collapsed, revealing the xenthier beneath. It was dragging the rubble into it, but we couldn’t climb out because there were inlanders in company with the tiger. People capable of changing into beast form, though I didn’t know it until later. They were going to kill us, so we took the only chance at life and went through the stem. To Sibern.”

With the rage of the Thirty-Seventh a rising tide in the background, the story poured from Marcus’s lips. The trek across Sibern. The passage down to Celendrial. His encounter with Hostus, conversation with Wex at Lescendor, and fateful meeting with Cassiusand the Senate. The attempt to assassinate him at his family’s home and then his flight through the xenthier stems to beat his pursuers to Bardeen. Very little did he leave out, only things that he’d die before revealing, and if Felix questioned any of the gaps, he did not say so.

His friend was quiet for a long time after Marcus had finished, then he said, “You could’ve disappeared. Could’ve left this life behind. Why didn’t you?”

Teriana’s voice filled his head.I love you and I want to be with you, but the only way that’s possible is if you leave this life behind. Will you do it? For me?

“She wanted you to, didn’t she?” Felix asked, seeming to see inside Marcus’s thoughts. “But you said no? You said you needed to come back?”

He could hear the hope in Felix’s voice. The need to have some of the hurt undone with the knowledge that when it had come down to it, Marcus had chosen the Thirty-Seventh over Teriana and freedom.

Lie,logic screamed at him.Tell him what he wants to hear.

Except Marcus was tired of deception. Tired of juggling a life so interwoven with lies that to pull one out would see the whole mess come falling down around him. “I didn’t get the chance to answer her, because that was when Carmo caught us, rendering the question moot.”

Silence.

“If he hadn’t come just then, what would you have said?”

Marcus closed his eyes. “I would have said yes.”

A loud bang made Marcus jump. Then another and another, the legion throwing rocks against the building as they screamed for justice. Whatever control Servius had outside was hanging on by a thread. A thread that was going to snap, whether Felix wanted it to or not.

“I should despise you for that,” Felix said quietly. “Yet finally seeing proof that you’re capable of caring, even if the care was not placed where I might have liked, makes it impossible to hate you for that choice.”

Another loud bang, then the heavy clack of sandals on stone, and Servius appeared. “It’s chaos, sir,” he said. “Gibzen’s lost his head and is riling them up. They’ll not accept anything other than blood, and they won’t wait for your judgment to take it.”

Marcus hadn’t been raised to believe in fate, for the Cel thought such things pagan nonsense. Yet with all he had seen, he had to wonder if there was something to the idea. Had to wonder whether he’d dodged death too many times, and some higher power had decidedthis would be the moment. And that he’d pay for all he’d done tenfold.

Felix cursed, then pressed his fingers to his temples. “He’s telling the truth, Servius.”

How had he ever believed that Felix would betray him?

Felix was loyal. Not because Marcus deserved it, but because that was the sort of man his friend was.

“Felix…” Servius gave a slow shake of his head. “You know how he—”

“Lies? Manipulates?” Felix climbed to his feet. “I know better than anyone, which means that I know he’d never make up such a wild story with endless places to get caught out. He and Teriana escaped an attack by fleeing through xenthier that took them to Sibern.”

Servius sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “All right. But where is the proof?”

“I had new armor,” Marcus answered. “A letter from Wex. But I passed out after coming through the stem in Bardeen, and when I woke up in Titus’s camp in Galinha, it was gone. I can only assume he got rid of it.”

“So no proof.”

There was uncertainty in Servius’s gaze, but also worry that Felix’s conviction was misguided. Worry that Marcus had manipulated old sentiment to achieve his ends. He didn’t blame Servius for thinking that. “No proof until the Senate sends path-hunters. Perhaps not even then, for Cassius will no doubt instruct them to go straight to Titus.”

Servius crossed his arms. “Then the writing is on the wall, Marcus. Felix believing you isn’t going to save you from the Thirty-Seventh. They believe you deserted and that all they have suffered since is your doing.”

Itwashis doing, even if he hadn’t intended it.