Page 1 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

KILLIAN

Night was coming, and with it, the monsters.

Killian’s shoulders burned, every muscle of his body shuddering from exhaustion. His clothes were drenched with sweat from rowing all through the day on a lake that seemed as vast as an ocean, albeit as smooth as glass.

He needed to find cover.

With darkness, and no fog to conceal the tiny boat, it was only a matter of time until the deimos found them and all the wrath of Rufina’s army descended. A fate Killian was desperate to avoid, but one the corrupted in the boat with him reached toward.

Lydia was barely recognizable. Each passing hour since they’d escaped, the rage and hunger in her eyes had grown. Black windows to the underworld that he couldn’t bear to look into, because this was not Lydia.

This was not the girl he was in love with.

Except that it is, a voice whispered from the depths of his soul. That she contained that part of herself doesn’t make it any less her.

Gods, but he hated that dark truth. Needed to silence it, except to do so meant silencing himself.

If she contained it once, she can contain it again. She’s strong.

A sentiment he prayed was true despite much proof to the contrary.

Three times she’d broken free of her bonds.

His clothes were a shredded mess from all the strips he’d torn off to secure her incredible strength and to gag her to keep her from crying out for Rufina’s aid.

In the space of hours, she’d gone from desperate to kill to the queen of Derin to seeing Rufina as her savior.

All because of the hunger that consumed every part of her.

He wanted to blindfold her. Wanted to hide from that malevolent gaze that set off every instinct in his soul, demanding that he fight. Demanding that he kill.

“I’m heading to shore.” He eyed the shadowed coast. “We need to find some form of cover for the night.” Against his will, Killian’s gaze flicked to Lydia’s face.

She was watching him, tangled dark hair clinging to her face.

Gone was the maddened, frenzied creature, and he almost wished for it to return, because now the dark pits staring at him were full of calculation. Cunning. She was waiting for a moment of weakness, waiting for an opportune time to strike, which removing her from the boat would surely give her.

“I’m not giving up on you,” he said. “You can fight back against the Corrupter. I’m going to help you.”

Killian waited for some sign that the goodness in her was still there. A gleam of hope that he could cling to. Instead, a feral smile curved up around her gag, Lydia’s teeth gleaming red from where fabric cut into her mouth.

Kill her.

Killian jerked his gaze back to the dark coast, sucking in a mouthful of air. Just row , he told himself. Your focus needs to be on evading the deimos.

The sun burned lower and lower behind him, illuminating what he first thought was a mangrove swamp but then realized was a dead forest. Trees of every sort jutted out of the murky water, their branches skeletal and barren of life but for the putrid fungus growing on their rotting bark.

Finding a gap wide enough for the boat, Killian rowed beneath the dead canopy just as the sun’s glow faded below the horizon.

He paused in his rowing to catch his breath as the boat drifted deeper.

The moment night fell, the fungus on the trees came alive, glowing a deep green that provided just enough light to see by.

The density of the tree trunks forced him to draw in one of the oars and use the other as a paddle, slowly weaving deeper into the dead forest and, he hoped, closer to land.

The smell grew sulfurous and strange, and in the shadows of the trees, small shadows crawled, though they froze the moment his eyes fell upon them.

Then the water stirred.

Killian stopped paddling as a large form swam toward them, then under. It struck the hull of the boat, rocking it violently, and he held his breath, waiting for it to attack.

But the creature only moved on, reptilian tail drifting side to side as it continued down the path from which they had come. Lydia shifted her weight, and Killian tensed, but she made no move to test her bonds.

Not yet, at any rate.

He didn’t know if pressing onward was the right thing to do, for everything about this forest was wrong.

Everything felt touched by the Corrupter.

He was certain that daylight would reveal the same black veins as stretched across Mudamora.

Veins that stole the life of everything they touched.

The product of tenders—those chosen by Yara to have power over the earth—whose marks had been tainted by the underworld.

The thought brought Malahi to mind. She was perhaps the last uncorrupted tender on the continent, which meant the last person capable of reversing the tide.

If she still lived, that was.

He’d found unexpected allies in Agrippa, the defected general of Rufina’s armies, and Baird, a giant marked by Gespurn, but while they might have succeeded in their mad scheme to get the Queen of Mudamora out of Helatha, the half of Rufina’s army not pursuing Killian would be on their heels.

Agrippa was resourceful, but there was only so much one man could do against all the tools Rufina had at her disposal.

It is what it is, he told himself. There is nothing you can do to help them right now. Focus on staying alive.

Yet he felt paralyzed with indecision, the weight of Lydia’s gaze making him want to scream. Making him want to lash out, because where were the Six? Why had they abandoned their marked so easily? Not just the marked, but the whole of Mudamora.

A shriek sounded overhead, and Lydia stiffened. Killian threw himself on top of her, pressing his gloved hand against her mouth to silence the scream that would summon the deimos patrolling the skies.

Because in denying Lydia the chance to steal life to ease the hunger burning inside of her, Killian had become her enemy. And the enemy of her enemy was her friend.

Her body jerked back and forth beneath him, and Killian prayed the cloth he’d wrapped around her hands stayed in place.

She’d gotten her hands on him once. Had stolen life from him in the few seconds before he wrenched away, and the memory of the sensation made his skin crawl.

“Shhh,” he whispered even as he felt her face press against him, trying to bite him around the gag. “They’ll move on soon enough.”

She only struggled harder. Made desperate mewling sounds.

“Stop.” He pressed his face into her matted hair. “I need you to fight this. Need you to come back to me.”

As the thud of the deimos’s wings faded, he let go of her. Lydia’s voice was garbled but clear enough for him to understand as she said, “I hate you.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, but each time was a twist of the knife embedded in his gut.

It was the hunger that drove the words, not her heart, but if she didn’t master the darkness in her, how long would it be until the hunger consumed her entirely?

Killian didn’t acknowledge the vitriol, only retrieved the floating paddle and carried on deeper into the forest.

The trees grew denser, although equally dead and rotten, forcing him to backtrack and find different routes inland.

Making him question whether there was a route to solid ground or whether he’d be forced to head back to the lake with the dawn.

Or worse, get stuck and be forced to wade through the fouled water containing who knew what sort of creatures.

Though none more dangerous than the one he’d have to carry in his arms.

“Shit,” he growled. “Shit, shit!”

Lydia only chuckled around her gag, the sound making his stomach turn. Killian opened his mouth to tell her to be quiet when a light ahead caught his eye.

Not the eerie green glow of more fungus, but the yellow flicker of lamplight.

How had Rufina’s men found them? How had they moved so quickly?

Then a voice reached his ears.

Not the sharp bark of hunting soldiers, but the soft, wordless song of a woman.

Killian hesitated a heartbeat, then paddled closer, a large hillock appearing through the trees. There was a small cabin atop it, the glowing windows flung open so that the occupant’s song could spill forth.

Lydia tensed, seeming to dislike the voice.

Yet there was something about it that drew Killian nearer.

Jumping out, he hauled the small vessel out of the water and then hesitated.

He didn’t want to face the unknown with her trussed over his shoulder, but neither did he trust that she wouldn’t find some way to escape in his absence.

Cursing under his breath, Killian checked that the fabric he’d wrapped around her hands was secure. Then he lifted Lydia into his arms, gritting his teeth as she thrashed. “Be still.”

He ignored her scowl as he carried her up the spongy slope to the cabin. The smell of woodsmoke overpowered the sulfur of the dead forest, and the grass beneath his feet was lush and alive. An island of life in a swamp of death. Killian fought the urge to walk faster.

The cabin was small and made of roughly hewn logs, but lace-trimmed pink curtains hung in the window, and the voice…

Something about it soothed his battered soul.

Flipping Lydia over his shoulder, Killian reached out to knock on the door, only for it to open, revealing an old woman with a long grey braid over one shoulder.

The weight of her presence was something he’d only felt once before in his life, when he’d received his mark as a child.

Killian fought the urge to fall to his knees.

The stooped old woman smiled at him. “Come inside, dear ones. I’ve been waiting for you.”