Page 185 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

MARCUS

For a long moment, Marcus couldn’t answer, the weight of being back in her presence making it impossible to speak. Then he managed to get out, “It’s me.”

She was shaking. “You’re dead. I watched them hang you. I watched you die.”

“I know.” The memory of that moment was not something he’d ever forget. “You did. And I was, but…”

“Lydia.”

“Yes.” Marcus didn’t know whether to go to her or give her space, so he took a half step and then stopped.

“She and Racker. It’s a blur, but…” He scrubbed a hand over his hair, remembering light filling his eyes, the voices of his friends, and his chest an agony of broken ribs from the surgeon resuscitating him.

The fog that had made it hard to think. “That’s why it had to be the short rope. ”

“Did you know?” She looked ready to be sick.

Marcus shook his head. “I didn’t even know Lydia was in Celendrial.

She made the plan with Felix, Servius, and Racker, with aid from Valerius.

If I’d known, I—” He broke off, his vision filling with Lydia’s face as she’d leaned over him, her mark vanquishing the pain in his chest and the fog that had slowed his brain from too long without air.

“The dead cannot atone,” she’d said softly. “I’m not letting you off so easily, Marcus. This is your chance to make things right. Make it count.”

He’d been angry. Angry beyond reason, because bringing him back had felt like it had undone everything that he’d hoped his death would accomplish. In cheating death, he’d cheated justice, and part of him had wanted to stumble back out into the Forum and demand Tiberius hang him a second time.

Teriana was watching him, her eyes a pale grey he’d never seen before, as though shock had drained the color from the seas of her gaze.

“Lydia didn’t tell me you were alive,” she whispered. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“I asked her not to.” In truth, he’d begged Lydia not to. “I thought it would be better for you if you believed I was dead. Thought it would be better if you moved on with your life not knowing I was still alive. Lydia wasn’t happy, but she said the choice of what to do with my life was my own.”

“But you’re here.”

Marcus couldn’t tell how Teriana felt about that.

Her eyes, for the first time he’d known her, were entirely unreadable.

Sucking in a deep breath, he closed the distance between them, sitting on the floor before her.

“I’m tired of lies. Tired of lying to you, because it’s only ever brought us both suffering. I needed you to know I was alive.”

“Why?” Anger flooded her voice. “So I could drop you off at the nearest port so that you could go back to Celendrial and have them hang you again with your conscience clear?” She slammed her palm down on the deck, revealing the hair ornament that had been his talisman so long.

“Here it is, in case you need it again.”

She knew him too well.

And she wasn’t the only one.

Felix had sensed his intent, and his friend had rested a hand on his arm, holding him back.

“Marcus, I know you’re angry. I know you didn’t choose this and that you have no tolerance for anything being pushed on you against your will.

But please ask yourself whether you want to go back to the gallows because it’s right or because you’re afraid of the alternative.

” Felix had gripped his shoulders. “I know you’re afraid.

But since the day I met you, you’ve spit in the face of fear. Do not turn coward on me now.”

Every part of Marcus had wanted to lash out. To take back control of the situation and force things to be his way. But his friend’s words struck true. “I don’t know how to be anything other than legion.”

Felix shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you can’t learn.”

A thought somehow a thousand times more terrifying than putting the noose around his neck again, but he said, “Take the Thirty-Seventh’s mark off. If I’m going to do this, I can’t have a foot in both worlds.”

It was the most agonizing thing he’d ever endured, Racker’s scalpel cutting away the legion numbers, the pain echoing even after Lydia used her mark to make his flesh whole.

“You need to take care of them, Felix,” he said when it was done. “Tiberius has his heart in the right place, but that doesn’t mean he won’t lean on the legions when things don’t go his way. You can’t hide from the politics, not anymore.”

It was Servius who answered. His big friend clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll be all right, and anyway, you don’t get to order us about anymore. Go find the Quincense, because there are yet things you have the power to make right.”

He let the memory slip away, knowing it was the last time he’d ever see his friends.

Picking up the hair ornament, Marcus wiped away the blood dried on the sails, then reached for one of Teriana’s braids.

“I don’t want you to drop me at the nearest port.

” Unfastening the end, he unraveled the long length of her hair, then threaded the ornament onto a strand so that it would brush against her cheekbone.

“The farthest one, then?”

“Not the farthest, either.”

Teriana’s breath was rapid against his face as he began rebraiding the strands, and color returned to her eyes. First a pale blue, but the hue darkened and deepened to the richest cobalt, waves gently rolling across their infinite depths.

“You deserve better than this.” He knotted the end of the braid. “Better than me. I am a man with a terrible past and a dubious future. I have no coin, no practical skills, and no name. I would not blame you if you chose to cut your losses and toss me off the back of your ship.”

“Say I choose to keep you,” she whispered. “What do I get?”

“All of me, good and bad. I don’t know if you want me, but I’m yours.” Marcus swallowed hard. “For my part, all I want in my second chance at life is you.”

Teriana was quiet for a long moment, then she reached out to pull down the neck of the borrowed shirt he wore, revealing naked skin where the 37 had once been.

Her touch sent a shiver through him, the absence of the legion’s mark filling him with grief over what he’d lost even as it filled him with hope for what he might gain.

Then her eyes met his, and she said, “I’ll take you as you are, because you are enough. We are enough.” She pressed her forehead to his. “In this life, and in whatever comes after, I will have you.”