Page 19 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

MARCUS

Neither of them spoke, the silence stretching, and for Marcus’s part, it was because he didn’t know what to say.

Felix looked him up and down, then slowly exhaled. “Doesn’t look good for you. They’re calling for your blood.”

“That’s not their call,” Marcus answered. “It’s yours. ”

Felix’s eyes locked on his, then, in a flurry of motion, he let go of the bars and slammed his palms against them with a loud bang. Leveling a finger, he said, “Fuck you, Marcus. Don’t you dare dump this on my feet as though I created this mess. You did this. You. ”

His tongue was frozen in his mouth, his brain nothing but noise. Though Marcus knew he should say whatever it took to buy himself time for path-hunters to arrive and prove where he’d been, all that came out was, “I’m sorry.”

Felix huffed, then looked away. “Yeah, I bet you are. There’s something about having to beg for your life that makes every man sorry for the choices that got him there.”

“No,” Marcus said. “I’m sorry for what I said to you before I left to go inland. You didn’t deserve any of that from me.”

The silence stretched, the tension between them thickening enough that Marcus struggled to breathe.

Then Felix said, “What difference do you think that makes? Do you think any of them care that you said shit to me and now you’re sorry?

They’re not angry that you’re an asshole, they’re angry that you deserted.

I’d say apologize for that, except we both know that you’d be spitting into the wind. ”

Marcus bit the insides of his cheeks, not bothering with denials.

“Ashok, the man who was working with Urcon, told Teriana that it was one of my men who’d betrayed her location.

Whoever it was wanted to be rid of her, wanted things to go back to the way they were before she joined our camp, and he paid Ashok in gold to do the job.

I’d been trying to figure out who the traitor was. Teriana suspected Titus, but I—”

“Thought it was me.” All the color had drained from Felix’s face.

“You thought that I’d set up the men guarding her to die, just to get rid of Teriana?

Thought that I put the Thirty-Seventh at risk, just to have her killed?

Thought that I betrayed my best friend and commander, just because my fucking feelings were hurt? ”

All the reasons, all the justifications, that had once made perfect sense now felt like lunacy. “Yes.”

Felix leaned against the bars, his eyes on the floor, and Marcus’s chest tightened as his best friend’s jaw trembled.

“It was bad enough when I thought you were angry that I was against you and Teriana. Bad enough when I thought you’d chosen her over me.” Felix lifted his face. His eyes were red, gleaming with unshed tears. “Now I wish I could go back to thinking that, because the truth is so much worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop.” Felix scrubbed his hands over his shorn scalp. “I…”

As Marcus watched, his friend turned his back to the cell, then slid down the bars to sit on the floor, face pressed to his knees. “I hate you for this. I hate you so much.”

Not as much as Marcus hated himself.

His mouth was dry, but he said, “Teriana was gambling with the men while we were in the interior, and one of them had a newly minted gold dragon with Cassius’s likeness on it. It triggered her memory of the coins paid to Ashok by the traitor, which were the same mint.”

Felix went still. “Those weren’t in circulation when we left Celendrial.”

“No, they weren’t,” Marcus replied. “But of a surety, Cassius had access to them.”

“Titus.”

“So it would seem.” Marcus moved so that he was sitting with his back to Felix, as he had times beyond counting, though he knew it was not just steel bars that rested between them.

Every inhale brought the familiar scent of leather and soap, of sweat and steel.

“But I don’t have any proof. I… I don’t trust myself to see clearly anymore. Not about this.”

Outside the prison, the Thirty-Seventh screamed their rage. Their hurt. Marcus closed his eyes and listened, grief and guilt filling him. They’d suffered in his absence. Suffered because of the mistakes he’d made, and there was no way to undo that. No way to bring back the dead.

“Tell me what happened.”

Marcus drew in a ragged breath, composure wavering because even though Felix didn’t have to, even though he surely didn’t want to, his best friend was going to hear him out.

“We left camp so that Teriana could tell me her theory about the coins,” he said.

“But we were set upon from above by a tiger. We ran and it pursued, chasing us into one of the temples. The floor collapsed, revealing the xenthier beneath. It was dragging the rubble into it, but we couldn’t climb out because there were inlanders in company with the tiger.

People capable of changing into beast form, though I didn’t know it until later.

They were going to kill us, so we took the only chance at life and went through the stem. To Sibern.”

With the rage of the Thirty-Seventh a rising tide in the background, the story poured from Marcus’s lips.

The trek across Sibern. The passage down to Celendrial.

His encounter with Hostus, conversation with Wex at Lescendor, and fateful meeting with Cassius and the Senate.

The attempt to assassinate him at his family’s home and then his flight through the xenthier stems to beat his pursuers to Bardeen.

Very little did he leave out, only things that he’d die before revealing, and if Felix questioned any of the gaps, he did not say so.

His friend was quiet for a long time after Marcus had finished, then he said, “You could’ve disappeared. Could’ve left this life behind. Why didn’t you?”

Teriana’s voice filled his head. I love you and I want to be with you, but the only way that’s possible is if you leave this life behind. Will you do it? For me?

“She wanted you to, didn’t she?” Felix asked, seeming to see inside Marcus’s thoughts. “But you said no? You said you needed to come back?”

He could hear the hope in Felix’s voice. The need to have some of the hurt undone with the knowledge that when it had come down to it, Marcus had chosen the Thirty-Seventh over Teriana and freedom.

Lie, logic screamed at him. Tell him what he wants to hear.

Except Marcus was tired of deception. Tired of juggling a life so interwoven with lies that to pull one out would see the whole mess come falling down around him. “I didn’t get the chance to answer her, because that was when Carmo caught us, rendering the question moot.”

Silence.

“If he hadn’t come just then, what would you have said?”

Marcus closed his eyes. “I would have said yes.”

A loud bang made Marcus jump. Then another and another, the legion throwing rocks against the building as they screamed for justice. Whatever control Servius had outside was hanging on by a thread. A thread that was going to snap, whether Felix wanted it to or not.

“I should despise you for that,” Felix said quietly. “Yet finally seeing proof that you’re capable of caring, even if the care was not placed where I might have liked, makes it impossible to hate you for that choice.”

Another loud bang, then the heavy clack of sandals on stone, and Servius appeared. “It’s chaos, sir,” he said. “Gibzen’s lost his head and is riling them up. They’ll not accept anything other than blood, and they won’t wait for your judgment to take it.”

Marcus hadn’t been raised to believe in fate, for the Cel thought such things pagan nonsense.

Yet with all he had seen, he had to wonder if there was something to the idea.

Had to wonder whether he’d dodged death too many times, and some higher power had decided this would be the moment.

And that he’d pay for all he’d done tenfold.

Felix cursed, then pressed his fingers to his temples. “He’s telling the truth, Servius.”

How had he ever believed that Felix would betray him?

Felix was loyal. Not because Marcus deserved it, but because that was the sort of man his friend was.

“Felix…” Servius gave a slow shake of his head. “You know how he—”

“Lies? Manipulates?” Felix climbed to his feet. “I know better than anyone, which means that I know he’d never make up such a wild story with endless places to get caught out. He and Teriana escaped an attack by fleeing through xenthier that took them to Sibern.”

Servius sucked in a breath, then let it out slowly. “All right. But where is the proof?”

“I had new armor,” Marcus answered. “A letter from Wex. But I passed out after coming through the stem in Bardeen, and when I woke up in Titus’s camp in Galinha, it was gone. I can only assume he got rid of it.”

“So no proof.”

There was uncertainty in Servius’s gaze, but also worry that Felix’s conviction was misguided.

Worry that Marcus had manipulated old sentiment to achieve his ends.

He didn’t blame Servius for thinking that.

“No proof until the Senate sends path-hunters. Perhaps not even then, for Cassius will no doubt instruct them to go straight to Titus.”

Servius crossed his arms. “Then the writing is on the wall, Marcus. Felix believing you isn’t going to save you from the Thirty-Seventh. They believe you deserted and that all they have suffered since is your doing.”

It was his doing, even if he hadn’t intended it.

“I’m not allowing them to kill him for a crime he didn’t commit.

” Felix took the keys from Servius and unlocked the cell.

When Servius made a noise of protest, he said, “Think, Servius. Titus tried to drown him during the crossing in an attempt to secure command. It was apparently Titus who gave away Teriana’s location to Ashok, his goal to undermine Marcus’s authority.

Now he’s destroyed all proof Marcus isn’t a deserter so that the Thirty-Seventh will murder him, ensuring his authority remains uncontested. We can’t let him get away with it.”

“I don’t see how we are going to stop him.”