Page 123 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

“I’m not protecting him, Teriana, I’m protecting you.

” Servius moved closer. “He’s different since you left, and not in a good way.

There are moments when he’s himself, but most of the time, it’s like talking to a block of ice while staring into a void that looks back at you.

Whatever you are expecting to get out of him, he won’t give it, and you’re only going to come out of the conversation feeling worse. ”

She shivered, and from the corner of her eye, the tower moved.

Gasping, Teriana whirled, colliding with Servius as the black tower loomed over her, descending like the Corrupter himself stood in the center of Revat. Reaching for her.

Then she blinked and it was upright again.

“Yeah,” Servius said, though she hadn’t asked a question.

“I’ve seen it, too. Many of the men have, though no one feels too good about admitting it.

It moved in Aracam but not like this.” He was silent for a long moment, holding her arm though she didn’t think it was for her benefit.

“Started right after the other ones fell.”

Teriana made the sign of the Six on her chest, then shoved her hand in her pockets, knuckles brushing the hair ornament. “I need to talk to him, Servius. Maybe it will amount to nothing, but I have to try.”

Servius sighed. “Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He led her into the palace, which appeared much as it had the last time Teriana had been inside yet felt entirely different.

The Gamdeshians were an exuberant people, none more so than the royal family, and always these halls had been filled with music and laughter and life.

Now they possessed all the life of a crypt, the air stale and the only sound their footfalls.

“How is Quintus?” she asked, hoping Servius would say that her friend had disappeared with Miki.

“Fine. Felix redeployed him to help Racker in medical, to keep guard over the narcotics. Easy work.”

Her chest tightened painfully because her friends hadn’t escaped. Yet more victims of her selfishness.

“You’ve heard what is happening in Celendor?”

“We’re a bit behind on news,” Servius said. “Takes at least a day for messengers to arrive from Emrant, and… Well, we’ve been occupied.”

“Occupied like a swarm of locusts,” she muttered. “You feel good about what you’ve done here, Servius?”

“I don’t feel good about what we’ve done anywhere, Teriana,” he snapped. “But the alternative is worse. I like being alive, and men who don’t obey get their necks stretched.”

His words triggered the memory of her conversation with Cordelia.

If Marcus does this, and Cassius reveals the truth, what will happen to him?

He’ll hang.

“Then you probably know Cassius has assumed the role of dictator,” she said.

“He no longer answers to the Senate. He no longer answers to anyone. He’s doubled enrollment at Lescendor and extended the years of mandatory service, so maybe it’s time you asked yourself whether you want to go to the grave doing things you don’t like or whether you’ll risk what years you have left to make them worth living. ”

“Nice speech,” he muttered. “But if you’re looking for a martyr, I’m not it. And yes, we know. Just as we know that you killed Hostus. We should arrest you, but in honesty, not a man in the Thirty-Seventh didn’t lift a cup in toast when we heard.”

Their conversation stalled after that, both of them walking in silence until they reached the throne room, the entrance flanked by thrice the normal number of guards Marcus preferred. Her stomach tightened at the sight of Gibzen, who’d obviously resumed his duties.

“What is she doing here?” the primus demanded.

“Playing messenger,” Servius answered. “Not that it’s your business.”

“She’s a threat.”

“That’s his decision to make.” Servius loomed over the other man. “Or should we tell him that you’re making decisions for him?”

Gibzen glared back at Servius for a long moment, then shrugged. “Fine.”

“Wait here,” Servius said to her, then cracked open one of the enormous twin doors, shutting it behind him before she could peek inside.

“If you’ve come running back to beg forgiveness, you’re wasting your time.

” Gibzen’s mouth twisted in a sneer. “Things are back to normal, and we are winning the way we should. All you’ve ever been is trouble, and he finally sees that.

He can have any girl on any continent, and you’ve already been had, Teriana. ”

She tensed at the crudeness of his words. Gibzen had always been an ass, but this… this was personal.

“Why do you hate me so much?” she asked, wishing his words didn’t hurt as much as they did.

“Because he’s ours and you tried to steal him!

” he snarled. “He’s what makes us the best, and you knew that.

Knew that if you ruined him, these shithole kingdoms might actually have a chance.

” He leaned in close, his breath reeking and rotten as he added, “But you failed, and he’s not going to fall for your tricks again. ”

He’s jealous.

The thought roared through her skull, but before she could respond, Gibzen said, “Did you get to say hello to your friend Austornic in Celendrial? How is the Fifty-First?”

“Redeployed.” The words came out from between her teeth, guilt still sour in her stomach. Though maybe it was for the best that the Fifty-First was out of Marcus’s reach.

A slow smile formed on Gibzen’s face, as if he knew something she didn’t, but then Servius appeared. “He’ll see her. Search her for weapons.”

Teriana kept her chin high as Gibzen roughly searched her, finding nothing because she’d consciously come unarmed. “Clean,” he muttered, obviously disappointed.

Clapping a hand on her shoulder, Servius gave it a squeeze, then directed her inside the gap between the doors. Teriana stepped through, every muscle in her body tensing as the door shut with a resounding boom.

The throne room was cold.

Not cold in the way of Sibern, where the air had seemed to press in. Rather as it had been around Cassius, a cold that stole the heat from her flesh, as though if she stood in this room long enough, it would turn her very heart to ice.

Every instinct in her core screamed danger , but Teriana held her ground, taking in the room.

She’d been here dozens of times in her life, and much of the décor remained, the only noticeable absence the throne that had once sat on the dais.

In its place sat a familiar folding table surrounded by flimsy campstools, the surface covered with maps and reports and ledgers.

At its head, in his usual seat, sat Marcus.

He hadn’t looked up, one elbow resting on the table, the other slightly elevated as he dipped the pen he held in a pot of ink before resuming writing on the page before him.

Everything about him looked the same.

Yet everything about him was different.

“Bold of you to be here given it’s rumored you killed Hostus.”

Teriana twitched, then forced herself to walk toward the table. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“I’ve received no orders to do so.” He dipped his pen in the ink. “Servius says you have a message from Cordelia.”

“I do. I spoke with her when I was in Celendrial arranging the release of my people.”

Marcus didn’t answer, just kept writing. He wore only a tunic, and near the neck she could see the white of bandages. What happened to him?

“She told me the truth.” Teriana kept her pace measured as she walked the long length of the room. “Told me about how your parents switched you and your brother, making him heir while you went to Lescendor.”

His hand stilled for a moment, then Marcus continued writing.

“She’s not in favor of this campaign, so she likely told you with the hope that you’d scream it across Celendrial and sabotage me.

Which means she must be desperate, because that information is only valuable when Cassius decides it will be valuable, and Cordelia is intelligent enough to recognize that. ”

“I’m sure she does.” Teriana’s fingers turned numb. “Which is why she had a different motive.”

“Do tell.”

“She told me so that I’d understand why you did the things you did. Why you do the things you do.”

“The answer to both is that I follow orders.”

Swallowing hard, Teriana rose the three steps of the dais and walked the length of the table. Extracting Cordelia’s letter from her pocket, she set it on the table next to him.

“You’ve done your duty,” he said, still writing. “Feel free to leave.”

Teriana sat on one of the stools and rested her elbows on the table, the shivers wracking her body making the glass of wine at his elbow shake. “Read it.”

He sighed but set aside his pen and picked the letter up, scanning the lines.

She’d read it on her journey back west. Cordelia had explained the direness of the situation in Celendor, Cassius’s abuses of power as dictator, and her fervent wish that Marcus consider returning to remove him from power.

As soon as he finished reading, Marcus held the pages to a candle, then tossed them in a silver bowl to burn.

“We are at war, so his dictatorship is not unlawful. If Cordelia dislikes Cassius’s politics so much, she should have her husband run for consul once this war is won, and through him, she can give me orders.

Until then, I’m afraid I have to decline her suggestion that I commit treason. ”

Teriana was no fool and had no expectation that Marcus would immediately agree to Cordelia’s request, but she had expected to see a reaction.

Disgust over what Cassius was doing to Celendor, his abuses of its people, and his increasingly violent tyranny.

But it was as Servius had warned. Like talking to a block of ice.

“She believes the only reason you won’t do it is because you know that if you take Cassius down, he’ll take your family down with him.”

“The Thirty-Seventh is my family, and I will not turn them into traitors for the sake of blood.” He picked his pen back up.

“Why did Cordelia choose to send this message with you? Because I assure you, she’s rich and influential enough to have gotten this message past Cassius’s censors with little trouble.

” He started writing. “Is it because she thought you might have sway?”

“Yes.”

He stopped writing and, for the first time since she’d walked into the room, looked up at her. Her heart skittered as she stared into not the blue-grey eyes she knew so well, but twin voids that seemed portals to the underworld itself. “Do you think you have sway, Teriana?”

Her heart was racing so fast it hurt, her pulse roaring in her ears as she whispered, “No.”

Marcus belonged to the Corrupter now. Perhaps he always had.

A tear slid down her cheek because if she’d stayed, could she have prevented this? Could she have kept the Seventh God from digging his claws into Marcus? Panic rose in Teriana’s chest as she was drawn into the voids staring at her. This was her fault.

I failed! she silently screamed. I walked away. I left him. I cursed Gamdesh.

Then the sound of waves and the scent of sea washed over her, her mother’s voice whispering, It’s not your responsibility to make him do the right thing, daughter, and it never has been.

Teriana blinked and was once again staring into the voids that were his eyes, although she no longer felt like she was falling.

“I think you should go,” Marcus said. “It is my understanding that your people were released, so our arrangement is concluded.”

“Not all of them.” Reaching into her pocket, she closed her fingers around the tiny ship. “Hostus murdered my mother. Stabbed her right in front me. That’s why I killed him.”

Marcus closed his eyes, and for a heartbeat, she thought some part of him still remained. Some part of him still cared. Then his lids opened, and the voids looked back. “Everyone present claims it was all shadows in the dark, so you’ll likely escape punishment for your vengeance.”

Teriana drew in a ragged breath, inhaling the scent of leather and steel and soap, the painful familiarity of it making her heart ache as their time together flashed through her mind. A thousand moments. A thousand emotions. Culminating in the memory of his voice whispering, I love you.

Had any of it been real? Or was she mourning the loss of something, of someone, who had never existed at all?

And did it matter, given where they now stood?

“I haven’t had my vengeance,” Teriana finally said, wiping away the tears that now slicked her cheeks.

“We both know that Hostus doesn’t shit unless Cassius gives the order, so it’s Cassius my sights are set on, and you, Marcus, are his general.

” She set the hair ornament on the table but kept her hand over it.

“We’ve always been destined to stand on opposite sides of the battlefield, and that time has come. ”

Lifting her hand, she watched his eyes fix on the miniature ship cast in gold and enamel and gods-damned love. “We’re going to war, Legatus. And I think it’s time you had a taste of what it’s like to lose.”