Page 171 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)
LYDIA
The blighters continued to pour into the valley to encircle the pit, but then they parted like a tide. A figure appeared, walking through the gap her minions had formed.
Rufina stepped out of the horde to stop a few paces from Lydia. She was covered in blood, but the sight of her didn’t fill Lydia with fear. It drowned her in grief, because if Rufina was here, if Rufina was still standing…
“He’s dead.” The Queen of Derin answered the unasked question. “Or near enough to it that the distinction hardly matters.”
A tear rolled down Lydia’s cheek, her cracked spectacles fogging in the cold air as she let out a sob, the ache in her heart more than she could bear. A pain she’d never recover from, but she’d be damned before she dishonored Killian by giving up. Squaring her shoulders, Lydia stepped up to Rufina.
The Queen of Derin laughed, but Lydia barely noticed, her eyes all for the filaments of black spidering out from the other woman. She tried to focus on them, but rather than something tangible, the threads were the absence of anything.
They were death.
Lydia’s heart began to throb faster as true understanding of what she’d done when she’d saved Finn and all the others.
She’d drawn the death out of them as surely as Malahi had drawn it out of the land.
And just as the corrupted tenders had been the heart of the blight, so too was Rufina the heart of the death that had stolen so many lives.
Death connected her to them, allowed her to use them as her puppets, and that link needed to be severed.
Except while the corrupted tenders hadn’t fought back, Rufina most certainly would.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Kitaryia,” Rufina crooned. “Accept what you are and join me.”
“Why do you want that?” Lydia asked, stepping closer, drawing the excess of life left by the destroyed tenders into herself. “Why not just kill me and be done with it?”
Rufina cocked her head, thinking. “Your death isn’t a victory, whereas tearing you away from the Six very much is.
You make them stronger, and I want them weak.
I want them to fade into nothingness and be forgotten.
Most especially Hegeria. I want her last thoughts to be regret for what she did to me. ”
Such a hollow victory. Part of Lydia pitied this woman who’d allowed bitterness and envy to consume her, to drive her to commit horror for such petty satisfaction as vengeance, because at the end of it, Lydia suspected Rufina’s heart would be empty. No happiness. No joy. All of this for nothing.
“What’s in it for me?” Lydia asked, adjusting her spectacles even as she pressed closer, pulling in more life still.
Slowly, so Rufina wouldn’t notice. “Why would I want immortality at the side of the woman who murdered my parents? Who killed the love of my life? Paint me a picture of a future that makes me willing to let all of this go.”
“You’ll be strong,” Rufina answered. “No one will ever be able to hurt you again. No more grief. No more sorrow. No more pain.”
“What if I don’t want that?”
They were face-to-face now, Lydia just enough taller that Rufina had to look up at her, rings of fire illuminating the dark pits of eyes that flared with confusion. As if this creature who’d sacrificed all of her humanity could not begin to understand how Lydia would reject such a prize.
“Without sorrow, what is happiness?” Lydia asked, so flush with excess life that her heart fluttered. “Because I think it is much like light holding little meaning without darkness.”
“Death it is, then?”
Lydia smiled. “Death indeed.”
With a strength fueled by countless lives, Lydia struck, her fist lashing out with blinding speed and smashing through Rufina’s rib cage.
Her fingers closed around the woman’s heart.
The Queen of Derin screamed, a horrifying howl of pain and fear that cut off abruptly as Lydia squeezed and whispered, “I wouldn’t move if I were you. ”
“Do it, then,” Rufina retorted. “Send me to my dark master’s embrace, I care not.
Mudamora is a ruin of death, and the living will turn from the Six who abandoned them to such a fate.
From my master’s side, I will watch the Six diminish and laugh as you realize this moment was no victory, only one last gasp before defeat. ”
“The fight isn’t yet over,” Lydia said, then tightened her grip.
Just as she had with Finn, Lydia pulled the death into herself, then pushed it out into the world, the sense of touching thousands, tens of thousands, stealing sight from her eyes and leaving only blackness.
And because the world demanded balance, the life that had been stolen from all those souls pushed its way into her to fill the void, flowing through the endless thousands of channels that Rufina had created and filling those souls anew. Brightness filled the darkness.
Rufina screamed as she realized what was happening, clawing at Lydia’s arms. At her face. So desperate to hold on to all that she’d achieved that she didn’t care that Lydia held her heart in her hand.
Lydia felt the balance right itself almost like a click in her head, and with a gasp, she let go of Rufina’s heart, the last rush of life heal ing the wound in the woman’s chest as her fingers pulled out into the cold.
“What have you done?” Rufina whispered, staring at Lydia with pale grey eyes, her face older. No longer Rufina, no longer the Queen of Derin, no longer corrupted.
All that remained was Cyntha.
All around, was a chaos of screams and tears. Some of the blighters were once again themselves—though not all, for some lay still in the snow, their souls having chosen to go onward rather than to return. And the one face she wanted to see most was painfully absent. Beyond her power to save.
The grief of that nearly brought Lydia to her knees.
“What have you done?” Cyntha screamed again. “All the Six have ever done is take from you, but you fight for them still. They rise on the back of your victory. They stand on your shoulders even when their weight is too great to bear. Don’t you see that?”
“You cannot take what is freely given,” Lydia answered. “Much like your freedom. Go where you will, Cyntha. The Corrupter no longer has his claws in you, so your future is what you make of it.”
Turning away, Lydia took several steps, staring out over the barren landscape that seemed a mirror of her heart. Because victory felt so cold without him at her side.
Then her skin prickled, instinct warning her.
Whirling, she saw Cyntha lunge toward her, sword in hand—
Only for her head to topple from her neck, removed by a familiar sword.
Killian staggered as though the blow had taken the last of his strength, tripping over Cyntha’s fallen corpse to collapse into Lydia’s arms. Behind him were Lena and Gwen, both women splattered with gore but very much alive.
“You’re alive,” Lydia sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder even as she vanquished wounds that would have been the death of anyone other than him. “Oh gods, you’re alive.”
Killian wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”
“You are always with me,” Lydia whispered, then kissed him fiercely. “No matter where we are, you are in my heart.”
“You did it.” His eyes searched hers. “You saved them.”
“ We saved them.”
Their foreheads pressed together, the silence right for there was no need for words in this moment.
A moment they’d been fighting for all their lives, even if they didn’t know it.
A moment that they’d both lost hope of ever achieving, only to rediscover it again in each other’s strength. In each other’s love.
But at such a great cost.
“Malahi,” she started to say, then fell silent as a noise from behind caught her attention. Killian retrieved his sword, but then a familiar hand reached over the edge, and Malahi appeared. Lena rushed forward to help her up, then leaned down to pull Agrippa over the edge.
“How is this possible?” Lydia tightened her grip on Killian’s hand. “How…”
“You saved her,” Agrippa said. “I’m sorry for doubting you, Lydia.”
Understanding rose in her chest how this had come to pass. Malahi had her life taken by the blight in the same way as the blighters had, but if she’d come back to the living, then—“What of the other tenders?”
“They came back to life as well,” Agrippa said. “But I watched those bastards choose this path. They were corrupted in their souls, and if we left them alive, they’d have done this all over again. So I gave them a natural death with my blade. Mudamora is safe from the likes of them.”
A ruthless act, but it was not lost on Lydia that sometimes ruthlessness was required. And deserved.
As Agrippa helped Malahi to her feet, she looked around at the sea of the living before turning her focus to Lydia. “You believed when everyone else had lost hope.” Malahi’s voice was choked. “You never stopped trying to help our people. Never gave up. You were the queen Mudamora needed.”
Lydia shook her head. “Perhaps I was. But the moment when Mudamora needed someone like me is over. You were destined to rule, my friend. In spirit, in bravery, and, when we can gather enough of the high families to make it so, in law.”
Malahi’s eyes widened. “But—”
“It’s not my path,” Lydia said. “It’s yours.
” She gestured to the stunned masses of surviving Mudamorians trying to come to terms with what they’d endured and said, “Our people need you now, more than ever. You are the one they know as their queen—they will not question you, especially once they learn what you have accomplished. Go to them and give them hope.”
Malahi didn’t move for a long moment, her amber eyes searching Lydia’s. “It is a privilege to call you friend, Lydia, and it is my hope to call you so for the rest of my life.”
Letting go of Killian with one arm, Lydia grasped Malahi’s hand. “We will rebuild Mudamora together. I swear it.”
With Agrippa shadowing her, Mudamora’s rightful queen walked toward her people. Despite her scars, many of them recognized Malahi’s face and called out her name, for she had always been beloved.
Malahi paused only to pick up Rufina’s head, then she stepped up onto a rock and shouted, “Our enemy is dead, her hold on you vanquished, and by the grace of the Six and the bravery of their marked, you have been given back your lives! Yet not without great cost.” She dropped Rufina’s head into the snow.
“The scars left by what you have witnessed while your bodies were controlled by the enemy will be with you all of your lives, your souls scarred as surely as the blight has scarred the land.”
Her gaze went briefly to Agrippa before returning to those looking on.
“But I was once told that scars are not a symbol of weakness but of strength, and to wear them proudly as an act of defiance against those who put them there. The Corrupter tried to bring you low and yet you still stand. Every day you stand strong and faithful to each other is a day that you spit in the face of the god who tried to destroy all we held dear.”
Malahi lifted her chin, sunlight breaking through the clouds to illuminate her scarred and beautiful face.
“We walk a hard road. A road in which we grieve for the fallen even as we piece back together a life for the living. But I swear on the Six that I will walk alongside you. That I will give all that I am, body and soul, to raise Mudamora and its people up high.”
Stepping off the rock, Malahi pressed her hand deep into the snow, and from its depths, verdant grass exploded through the grey.
She lifted her head and fixed her gaze east into Mudamora, and as she did, six rays of light lanced through the clouds to illuminate her face.
As the onlookers gasped, green exploded down the slope toward Mudamora, creating a highway of life that would lead them where they needed to go.
Though in Killian’s arms, she was already where she wanted to be.
“I’d ask if you’re sure you want to give the crown up, but I know you are,” Killian said quietly. “Your heart has always demanded you walk among the people, not before them. Rule would never have made you happy.”
As always, he knew her better than anyone, and Lydia smiled. “Nor you.”
Killian gave a rueful laugh. “Definitely not.”
It was their destiny to serve the people, Lydia knew that in the deepest part of her heart, but it would not be with crowns on their heads.
It would be with their marks, using the strength gifted to them by the gods to protect the people.
The rightness of that settled on her soul, along with the certainty that her future was entwined with Killian’s, a path they’d walk together, to whatever end.
“I love you,” she said to him. “I want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you. And”—she gave him a little smile—“every night.”
Killian grinned, an expression she hadn’t seen in so long that the sight of it nearly brought her to tears. “Long nights behind us,” he said. “But I think longer nights ahead.”
He kissed her then, and Lydia melted into him. She’d fought long and hard for so many reasons, but for herself, this moment was the greatest victory of all.