Page 53 of Scorched Earth

You’ll figure it out,he told himself.This is what you do. This is what you are best at. This is who you are.

Just get some sleep!

His panic refused to listen, refused to grant him respite, and with an exhale of frustration, Marcus sat up and set his feet on the floor.

You don’t need it.

Yet the vial was suddenly in his hand, though he didn’t remember crossing the room. The glass was etched with a familiar symbol, the liquid within holding the power to drive away both pain and consciousness with a few drops.

Marcus warred with himself, but it was a short battle. With shaking hands, he opened it and measured three drops onto his tongue, then tucked the bottle where it wouldn’t be immediately found, between the mattress and the cot.

The light above blurred, his vision splitting into two, then three. He lay back down and pulled the blanket over his legs as blackness poured into the room, filling his eyes, and dragging him down, down, down until the world fell away.

20TERIANA

“I don’t know what you see in him.” Quintus held open the flap to a tent so Teriana could duck inside. “Other than looks, I suppose. He’s got no sense of humor, he’s an asshole, he has the emotional range of a bowl of overcooked porridge, and he didn’t even bother to ask when your birthday was. That he’s in the running for the prettiest man in the legions really does not make up for all that.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” In truth, Teriana had no idea when Marcus’s birthday was, either. She stared at the interior of the tent, which contained nothing but a single bedroll atop a wooden platform to keep the occupant out of the mud. Though it appeared Quintus had tracked in plenty, tidiness not one of his competencies.

“Because you know I’m right.” His eyes narrowed. “Please don’t tell me it’s because he’s that good in bed? Is that it? I mean, you never really know someone until—”

“Quintus.” She rounded on him to tell him to drop it, only to suck in a deep breath when she found her friend staring at the smears of blood on his shaking hands, his golden skin blanched. “Are you all right?”

“Fine.”

He was most definitelynotfine, and a wave of guilt flooded Teriana as she realized the extent of her self-involvement. Catching hold of his hands, she pulled him down onto the bedroll, then grabbed a waterskin and rag. She scrubbed away Ashok’s blood, Quintus’s hands shaking beneath her grip. “He’s dead,” she said quietly. “You killed that monster, and he can do no more harm.”

“What more harm could he do? He already destroyed my life.”

Quintus hid his grief over his separation from Miki so well that there were times that she forgot how much he was hurting. How hopeless he felt at ever being reunited with the one he loved, for every odd was against it.

“Your life isn’t destroyed.” She put more water on the rag, then set to work cleaning the dried mist of crimson on his right arm. “The end is in sight, and just because Marcus is being an ass to me does not mean he’s forgotten the deal he made with you.” Her throat tightened, and she swallowed. “Six months and this will be over. You’ll get Miki, join up with me and theQuincense, then we’ll all drink rum on a white sand beach.”

How long until all those beaches are stained red in the war you started?her conscience whispered.How long until there is nowhere left on Reath that knows peace?

“I’ve dreamed about killing Ashok every moment since he threw Miki against that tree.” Quintus studied his hands. “I’ve imagined a thousand ways of killing him. Imagined using all the training the Empire forced upon me to make him suffer. Imagined how I would feel watching the light go out of his eyes, and how it would change everything. Now he’s dead, and it has changed nothing.”

Her hands stilled, her tongue frozen, because what could she say? What comfort was there to give when vengeance was hollow?

“I think it’s because while Ashok might have been the one to hurt Miki, he wasn’t the true villain,” Quintus said softly. “It was one of ours who betrayed us. One of ours who considered getting rid of you worth the lives of his brothers.”

Teriana went still, every instinct in her body screamingdanger, something she’d never felt around Quintus before despite knowing he was a killer. And that he was very good at it.

“You knew it was someone in the legions who betrayed our location, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Ashok told me while I was prisoner that it was one of Marcus’s men who gave him our location. The traitor paid him in Cel gold to get rid of me, going on about how I’d been nothing but trouble. That Marcus was making a fool of himself chasing after me. How everything would go back to normal once I was dead. Ashok didn’t identify who it was. Said you all look alike, but that the individual idolized Marcus.” Seeing his lips part to speak, she added, “Obviously it sounded like Felix, and that’s who Marcus was convinced it was, which is why he was such a prick to him. Except I thought it was Tituspretendingto be Felix and that he was trying to discredit Marcus using me.” She blurted out the rest of the explanation. “But you heard Titus while he was dying. He said the gold had gone to one of the Thirty-Seventh to spy on me.”

“Yeah,” Quintus said, voice cold. “I heard. Fascinating as it all is, that’s not the explanation I’m looking for. I want you to explain why you kept this from me. And it better not be that Marcus told you to keep your mouth shut, because we both know you don’t take orders from him.”

Teriana ran her tongue over her lips, heart pounding. “Because you’d have killed Felix. Or Titus. Maybe both.”

Quintus’s blue eyes were frosty as a Sibernese morning. “No, I would not have, because I know neither of them is stupid enough to have done something like this. Both Felix and Titus are top military strategists, and whoever betrayed us clearly didn’t think about the fallout of his actions. Which Marcus, of all people, should have considered, but when it comes to this, I don’t think he can see the forest through the trees.”

Said that way, it made perfect sense. Made Teriana feel like an idiot for leaping to conclusions, even if Marcus had been leaping right beside her. Drawing in a slow breath to calm her heart, she said, “I’m sorry I kept it from you. I should’ve told you, but I was so focusedon how it impacted Marcus and me that I never considered how it impacted you.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then sighed. “Yeah, all right.” Reaching for his bag, he dug around and extracted a bottle, taking a long mouthful before passing it to her. “Here.”

The rum burned down her throat, and Teriana closed her eyes, the tension fading from her shoulders.