Page 24 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

TERIANA

“Officers only.” The legionnaires on guard crossed a pair of spears in front of her as Marcus, Felix, and Nic pressed into the building without a backward glance, Titus following.

Breathe, Teriana told herself. In and out. Nice and slow.

The admonition only seemed to make the overwhelming anxiety she’d felt since coming through the xenthier a thousand times worse. The adrenaline that had kept her going through the rapid march was fading and taking her strength with it. With a thump, she sat down in the middle of the steps.

“You look like you need a drink,” a familiar voice said, and she looked up to find Quintus approaching. Her friend wore his usual tunic and sandals, his blond hair long enough that he risked discipline, but it was his grey eyes that caught her attention, for they lacked their usual spark.

“Who let you out?” one of the guards demanded.

“I let myself out,” Quintus answered. “Seemed a bit unnecessary for me to remain locked up given that it’s been proven I was right all along.”

Quintus flopped down on the stones next to her, then handed over a bottle of what smelled like rum. Teriana gulped down several mouthfuls, and whether it was the rush of alcohol or Quintus’s presence, she didn’t know, but emotion rushed over her like a burst dam.

Snatching up a small rock, she hurled it at one of the legionnaires on guard behind her, his eyes widening as it bounced off his breastplate. “I hope you feel awful!” she shrieked at him and his equally surprised fellow. “I hope you feel like assholes!”

Spinning on her heels, she balled her hands into fists as she faced down those of the Thirty-Seventh watching on.

“You’re all fucking morons! ” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Did you honestly believe he’d leave you?

That he’d desert his family? Do you have any idea what he went through to get back to you? ”

No one answered, their eyes on the mud.

“I hope you feel sick!” Picking up a handful of muddy pebbles, she hurled them at the onlookers. “I hope you can’t sleep tonight or the next night or the next, because you’re drowning in guilt over what you almost did!”

“Easy, Teriana.” Quintus wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “They know they were wrong, but the worst didn’t happen. He’s fine.”

“No, he’s not.” She rubbed her temples. “Quintus, he went through eight xenthier paths in a row.”

“That’s not possible. He’d be dead.”

“But that’s what he did.” In a voice too low for anyone but her friend to hear, she explained what had happened in Celendor.

“Shit.” Quintus rested his elbows on his knees.

“I have no idea how he’s standing, much less talking.

The collegium have done studies, paid desperate men and women to do exactly what you’re describing, and after five jumps, most of them were so addled in the head they couldn’t form a sentence.

A handful survived but most were dead within the week. ”

Marcus looked deeply unwell, but there was no denying that he was both standing and coherent.

“He has to have figured out another route,” Quintus said. “He’s bloody good at puzzles, so it makes sense. There is no other way he could be alive, Teriana.”

Just then, Titus exploded out the fortress doors. Ignoring both of them, he leapt down the steps, face murderous as he headed into camp.

“Looks like someone got news he didn’t like,” Quintus murmured. “I’ll bet—”

He cut off as Felix appeared, expression grim.

“Follow him,” he said to Quintus.

Her friend cleared his throat. “I’m not leaving Teriana unguarded, sir.”

“She’s with me.” Felix motioned for Teriana to follow him back inside. He was silent as he led her through the fortress into a room with a narrow cot and shut the doors behind them. “Sit.” He gestured to the small table with two stools next to it.

They took seats on opposite sides, Felix resting his elbows on the maps strewn across the table’s surface, eyes fixed on the places they detailed. Dark shadows marked the golden skin beneath his blue eyes, his jaw muscles tight with tension, cheeks uncharacteristically marked with stubble.

“In case you need to hear it from me, Marcus didn’t desert,” she said quietly.

“I know he didn’t. He told me everything that happened, including that it was Titus who conspired to have you kidnapped. Titus’s days are numbered, although I don’t think he quite realizes it yet.”

A mix of bewilderment and anger filled her chest. “If you knew, then why were you about to execute him, Felix? If you knew he was innocent, why were you going to allow the Thirty-Seventh to kill him?”

“Because he told me to.” Felix lifted his face.

“We looked, Teriana. Hunted and searched, but… with the way Marcus had been acting and with his relationship with you something known by the entire legion, everything pointed to desertion.” His throat moved as he swallowed.

“Even I came to believe it because there was no proof otherwise. The anger we all felt…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“When Titus got his hands on him, he knew that the Thirty-Seventh would not see straight when Marcus was dragged into camp. Knew that we’d lift up stones and fists, and if the truth later came out, he’d be able to hold up his hands in innocence, for we’d be the guilty ones.

It nearly went exactly as he planned, because the Thirty-Seventh went mad when Marcus was brought into camp.

There was no reasoning with them, and instead of allowing me to secret him out of the camp, he ordered me to allow him to take the fall.

To not interfere, because he wanted me to take control away from Titus, which wouldn’t be possible if I was complicit in his escape. I—”

His voice cracked, and without thinking, Teriana reached out and took hold of one of his hands.

From the first moment they’d met, she and Felix had been at odds because of Marcus, yet they were also united by the burden that came with loving him.

She knew better than anyone the toll these past hours, these past months , must have taken on him.

“Cassius’s control of the Empire is absolute, Felix.

He’s well on his way to creating a dictatorship hidden behind a puppet senate, and Titus is his most powerful tool in the West. You need to secure leadership of these three legions, because once more paths are secured, Cassius will unite forces with Titus and will wield as much power as he does across the Endless Seas.

The only way to temper him is to remove Titus from control and limit Cassius’s influence. ”

Felix’s eyes narrowed, and he pulled his hand out of her grip. “Is that your play, Teriana? To use us against the Empire?”

“That’s a bigger ambition than what I can lay claim to,” she answered.

“My goal is to free my people from Cassius’s prisons.

To free my ship and crew from you. There’s only one way to achieve that goal, and that is to give Cassius what he wants: safe routes to and from the Empire that will allow him to exercise control.

Bardeen is in the middle of an uprising, and the middle of Sibern is obviously no better.

Cassius used the risks of both locations to deny my people liberty.

I need to find paths so secure that even he can’t dispute that I’ve fulfilled my deal. ”

“You do understand that with secure paths he can send another ten legions? Fifty thousand trained men, all supplied by the breadbaskets of the East.”

“I know.”

“You’ll sacrifice the autonomy of the West for the sake of six hundred Maarin?”

“Five hundred,” she corrected. “Cassius released one hundred of them onto a ship as a token of goodwill. But to answer your question: Yes. The remaining five hundred are in Celendrial’s prison under Hostus’s care. So I’ll do what I have to.”

Felix’s jaw tightened at the mention of Hostus, but his voice was cool as he asked, “Goodwill for what ? What did you give him?”

“I have a good idea where to find terminuses for paths coming from the Empire,” she said.

“I promised Cassius to give the information to whoever was in command, Marcus or otherwise.” Drawing a map in front of her, Teriana stabbed a finger down on a dot along the coast of Gamdesh.

“There’s a tomb of sorts in the middle of Emrant, entirely walled in with no entrance.

Has been there since recorded memory. But rumor has it that annually, voices speaking a gibberish language can be heard shrieking from inside.

The Gamdeshians believe they are voices coming from the underworld.

My guess is that if you crack open the stone walls containing it, you’re going to find the bodies of a lot of Empire path-hunters. ”

Felix’s golden skin blanched ever so slightly as he imagined the horror of that sort of death, then he said, “Why didn’t you bring this up before?”

Because I was unwilling to betray Gamdesh. “Because you were never going to be able to move against Gamdesh with only two legions.”

“And your solution was to bring us the greenest legion in the Empire’s arsenal? The Fifty-First are children. They need two years more training before they see real combat.”

She shrugged. “If you’re trying to make a power play, you don’t bring in people who outrank you. Plus, if I didn’t bring them, Cassius was going to give them to Hostus to finish their training, which means they are grateful to be here, and that is to your advantage.”

Felix was quiet, then he said, “All well and good, Teriana. But answer me this: why did Marcus leave you in Celendrial?”

A question she’d asked herself a thousand times over. “What reason did he give you?”

He regarded her in silence, refusing to bite, so it was her who caved first.

“He said it was because he loved me.” The words sounded as though they were dragged over sandpaper as they exited her lips.

“But that it needed to be over between us. That it had been a mistake. That we were enemies, and that one day I would come to remember that, and I’d hate him. That he didn’t want to see it happen.”

“He’s undoubtedly right. Yet here you are.”

“Here I am,” she agreed, feeling impossibly hollow and alone.

“Why? Why didn’t you remain in Celendrial with Valerius? You could have provided the information to the Fifty-First and accomplished the same result. Is it because you won’t accept that it’s over between you? Did you chase him across the world to try to get him back?”

Her face burned hot with humiliation. “No! I… It’s…

” Teriana bit down on her stammering because the truth was so very complicated.

“In exchange for the freedom of one hundred of my people, I had to commit to a deadline for finding the paths. Six months for success, or Cassius will start executing the rest. This is my responsibility to see through. That’s why I’m here. ”

When she’d said those words in the heat of the moment the night Marcus had fled Celendrial, they’d felt just and powerful. Yet saying them now, Teriana felt childish. Foolish. Because what exactly would she contribute other than information she could have written in a letter?

But rather than mocking her, Felix only scrubbed his hands over his head. “Six months?”

She nodded, his reaction confirming Hostus’s opinion on the aggressive deadline. That it might well be impossible to make.

Panic rushed into her like a rising tide, and Teriana drew in a steadying breath, only to nearly jump out of her skin as a fist pounded on the door.

“What?” Felix demanded, and a heartbeat later, it flung open to reveal Quintus’s panicked face.

“We have a problem.”