Page 50 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

LYDIA

“I wish I’d fallen,” Baird groaned. “I wish I was a splatter on the rocks or crushed to pulp by blighters, because at least it would have been quick. Not this slow, miserable march toward death, like being cooked on a low-burning fire.”

“Quit complaining,” Agrippa answered. “The heat forestalled pursuit, and honestly, it’s not even that hot.”

It absolutely was that hot, and in Baird’s defense, he’d been tasked with carrying the bulk of the supplies that they’d retrieved from the underground storage room where she and Killian had hidden during the storm.

Lydia’s cheeks warmed as she thought of that moment, and she glanced at Killian, who walked to her left.

His face was concealed by a length of fabric to block the sun, but it did nothing to block her imagination.

It had been days since they’d fled the escarpment and into Anukastre, but the time had done nothing to diminish her memory of the feel of his hands on her naked skin or the feel of his lips pressed against hers.

The weight of him on top of her as he’d held her down, his muscles like steel beneath her hands.

Gloved hands.

She scowled beneath her scarf, painfully sick of wearing the sweat-soaked leather gloves day and night, but there was no helping it.

The moment she took them off, the dark side of her mark reared its head, and it wasn’t worth the risk.

Agrippa was convinced it was all in her head, reminding her ad nauseum that gloves were easily removed and therefore did not prevent her from doing anything.

In her head or not, there was no denying that they kept everyone safe.

Most especially Killian.

There was no privacy for them to pick up where they’d left off, for they were primarily traveling at night and sleeping under the cover of a single piece of canvas during the day, which meant eyes were always on them.

They’d had to content themselves with sleeping fully clothed in each other’s arms, and for her part, her mind happily supplied detailed fantasies of what would have happened if Agrippa hadn’t walked in on them.

Lydia allowed her mind to drift, vanquishing the toil of walking over endless dunes with the imagined feel of Killian’s skin against hers, nothing left between them.

You are mine. Every part of you, light and dark.

Her toes curled in her boots as she remembered his words, then Agrippa said, “Honestly, Lydia, we could charge money to watch what’s going on inside that head of yours.”

Bending to pick up a handful of sand, she threw it at him. “You’re the most obnoxious individual I’ve ever met. Do you ever shut up?”

“Silence is not a strength of mine.” He hopped over a rock in his path with no sign of the exhaustion everyone else suffered. “Especially when my words yield such amusing results.”

“You’re the only one laughing,” Killian pointed out, but Agrippa only shrugged.

“No accounting for humor.”

“And it is that hot,” she snapped at him, knowing that she was giving Agrippa exactly what he wanted by arguing but unable to stop herself. “I grew up in Celendrial, which is miserably hot, and this is worse.”

“Oh, please.” He turned so that he was walking backward and facing her and Killian.

“You lived in the cool rooms of a villa on the Hill, with servants to supply you with endless iced drinks and fan you while you drank them. Were carried about in shaded litters by sweating peregrini while you lounged on silken pillows. Were treated to cool baths with water brought in from the countryside in the aqueducts. Were allowed to sleep through the heat of the day because your only responsibility was to exist and look pretty doing it.”

“What does a legion boy know of life on the Hill?” she demanded, hating that he wasn’t wrong.

“Contrary to what you seem to think, I wasn’t born in Campus Lescendor. I was, in fact, born on the Hill and lived the first seven years of my life as a spoiled patrician brat until the law required my father to deliver me to legion training.”

She blinked. “Who is your father?”

“The late Senator Egnatius. You’re likely more familiar with my brother, Tiberius.” He frowned. “If he’s still alive, that is.”

“You can’t be Tiberius’s brother. I knew his parents before they died, and they were both Cel through and through, whereas you are—”

“Ilithyia wasn’t my mother, nor was she Tiberius’s,” Agrippa explained, and with the revelation, Lydia put another familial connection together, though she said nothing.

“My mother was a Bardenese indentured servant my father took a shine to,” Agrippa continued. “Ilithyia was barren, so she passed us off as her own, which was easier to accomplish with my brother as he favored our father’s complexion.”

“You can’t be serious.” Killian looked between them. “That matters?”

“I expect Lydia knows all too well how much it matters.”

She gave a tight nod. “I didn’t look like them, and they never let me forget it. I was unmarriageable, which was how Lucius Cassius roped my father into a betrothal, never mind that Lucius never intended to follow through.”

“Your bloodline is impeccable,” Killian said with a scoff. “Your father was king.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she and Agrippa said at the same time, though Agrippa added, “The key to Celendor controlling the East is every other nation perceiving it as stronger, richer, and more powerful. As elite and untouchable. Maintaining that illusion requires everyone to believe the same of the people: that those with Cel blood are superior. Obviously that’s total horseshit, but given none of the provinces have the strength to stand against the Senate, it’s a belief that is never challenged.

And because it’s never challenged, there is no reason for patrician Cel to believe it anything less than the truth.

They really do believe they are superior, and once I was at Lescendor, I had my ass kicked, more times than I care to count, for thinking myself better than the boys from the provinces, because in the legions, you’re supposed to forget who you were and where you came from.

We were all the same, all equal, until we proved ourselves within that framework, which is how boys rise to officer status.

“Which…” Agrippa drew in a deep breath. “… is also horseshit, because patrician boys arrive with the advantage of being well fed, educated, and raised from the tit on the exact sort of politics that sees a boy to command of a legion, which is to say the power of manipulation. That’s why there is a disproportionate number of legati who have a very patrician look to them despite the vast majority of legion ranks being made up of men from the provinces. ”

“Does your… legatus”— Killian stumbled slightly on the Cel word—“fall into those numbers?”

“Marcus?” Agrippa laughed, but there was an edge to it. “Without a doubt. I never heard him admit to anything, but if his gilded ass wasn’t born on the very top of the Hill, I’ll eat my own boot. We probably crossed paths with him as children, Lydia, we just don’t remember.”

“Domitius.”

“Pardon?”

Lydia didn’t answer, her mind’s eye filled with memory. Of Marcus’s hand on her jaw, ready to break her neck as he said, I do know you. I didn’t remember until Cassius mentioned your library. Though I remember it as your father’s library.

“He’s Senator Domitius’s son. We were neighbors.” She shook her head, pressing fingers to her temple because it had been so long ago. Almost another life. “I suppose that doesn’t much matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? Have you lost your mind?

” Agrippa shouted. “That means the eldest Domitius daughter is Marcus’s sister.

She’s married to my brother, which makes us family!

Oh gods, that information will annoy him to no end.

When we inevitably go to war against him, we should find a way to tell him. Will put him out of sorts for days.”

“If we go to war with him,” Killian said softly, “I’m going to kill him for what he’s done.”

Despite the heat, a shiver ran over her skin. Lydia rubbed at her arms, noting that Agrippa had fallen silent, humor gone.

“Here,” Malahi abruptly announced, rising from where she’d knelt a dozen paces ahead in the dry creek bed they’d been following. “There is plant life underground here, so start digging.”

Agrippa didn’t answer, only moved to where she pointed and began to dig.

This was how they’d been surviving in the barren lands that made up Anukastre.

They’d raced south, following Agrippa’s mental map from explorations that had been ordered by Rufina until they reached the creek that apparently only ran above the surface once a year, then headed east toward the southern Liratoras, where they’d eventually cross back into Mudamora.

Malahi’s gift allowed her to sense plant life surviving on water deep underground, though it often required hours of digging to reach.

Malahi dusted her hands on her trousers as she rose, saying something to Agrippa that Lydia couldn’t quite make out, though it made him smile. Then she walked over to where Lydia had seated herself on a rock.

“Agrippa says it won’t be long until we reach the mountains,” Malahi said, sitting on another rock. “He and Killian think we should be able to see them by tomorrow.”

Lydia nodded, toying with a tear in the knee of her trousers, deeply aware of Agrippa’s scrutiny and of how Baird had moved within reach.

“Do you worry what we’ll find on the far side of them?” Malahi asked, and when Lydia didn’t answer, she added, “I’m afraid we’ll find nothing but blight. Nothing but death. Afraid that we’re too late.”

“If we were too late, Rufina wouldn’t have bothered pursuing us,” Lydia said, though her dreams were filled with the same. A world of blighted earth and dead things walking. “If there wasn’t something we could do to help, we wouldn’t be worth chasing.”