Page 64 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

Lydia’s eyes snapped open and she lifted Agrippa’s arm. The only evidence there’d been a wound was the sticky blood drying on his skin. “I did it!”

Agrippa whooped and clapped his hands, but Ceenah appeared unimpressed.

“Of course you did. A child could do as much. You may go, you obnoxious creature.” She waved her hand at Agrippa.

Agrippa went to stand with Malahi, taking a long drink from a waterskin. Lydia was about to ask him for a sip of water when, quick as a viper, Ceenah caught hold of Lydia’s forearm. Anukastre’s queen ripped life out of her and spilled it out into the empty air.

It was like having her insides yanked out, and Lydia’s panic surged. Killian took a step toward them, blade up, but Ceenah raised a hand to him even as she snapped at Lydia, “Take it back.”

Lydia lunged at the cloud, drawing it back into herself, and then retreated warily from the woman.

“You need to master the panic you feel when you are in a deficit.” Ceenah circled her. “There is no need to panic because what you require to remedy your problem is all around you. Again.”

Though every instinct told her not to allow it, Lydia held out her arm. Sickness twisted her stomach as the woman took even more, casting it out above the sands.

“Wait.”

Sweat beaded on Lydia’s brow as she watched the life drift away, her hands trembling in fear that it would dissipate. Disappear. That she’d be left without, and she was terrified of what she might do if that happened.

“Now satisfy the need.”

Lydia chased after the drifting mist, gathering it back into herself until she was whole.

“Good. That is enough. We will rest until the sun begins to descend.” Turning on her heel, the Queen of Anukastre walked back to camp.

Killian watched Ceenah go with narrowed eyes, then approached Lydia. “Are you all right?”

“I think so.” She snatched up her clothes, abruptly aware that she wore only the thinnest of fabric. “We should get some rest while we can.”

“Not yet, Lord Calorian,” Xadrian said. “I have thought about your words and we will spar now.”

Killian sighed, but despite the prince’s bluster, he murmured to her, “You aren’t the only one with work to do on this journey,” then followed Xadrian into the dunes.

For days, they traveled west over endless sand dunes, and during the height of the merciless sun, Ceenah would continue her lessons.

Though it had to be the purest form of misery, Agrippa never argued about being used as Ceenah’s victim, suffering endless cuts so that Lydia could practice healing him using the life in their surroundings until she could do it without thinking.

She moved on to Baird and Xadrian, and though the temptation was worse with someone who was marked, their wounds closed beneath her hand.

Her friends weren’t the only ones who suffered. Lydia also had to endure Ceenah draining more and more life from her, forced to sit for longer and longer stretches before reclaiming it. If Lydia cracked and took her life back before the queen ordered it, Ceenah made her do it again.

There was no denying that her control was growing in leaps and bounds with every test, but it still came as a shock when Ceenah held out her own arm. “It is time for a true test. Take life from me and put it out into the world.”

Lydia sensed Xadrian and Killian tense behind her, and no part of her could blame them.

Already her hands trembled, both her body and her mind remembering what it felt like to take from the living.

The rush of strength and pleasure that was like nothing else in this world, and every part of her wanted it.

“Just a bit,” Ceenah warned. “Do not overwhelm yourself with more.”

“What if I can’t stop?”

“My son will kill you.” Ceenah studied her for a long moment, expressionless, then she grinned. “If you get the better of me, girl, then I deserve my fate.”

Which didn’t mean that Xadrian wouldn’t kill her. Or try to. Lydia glanced over her shoulder at Killian, who was staring at the sand, his jaw tight. What are you thinking? she silently wondered. What will you do if this goes wrong?

There was no mistaking what Agrippa was thinking, for though his eyes were fixed on the sand in the same blank way as Killian’s, he held a bow he’d borrowed from one of the Anuk warriors, an arrow loosely nocked.

Malahi stood next to him, the only person besides Ceenah who seemed willing to meet Lydia’s gaze, though her amber eyes were unreadable.

“Maybe I should wait another day. We can practice you taking life from me. Take more. Take—”

“We are very nearly to the coast,” Ceenah interrupted. “At which time our lessons will come to an end.”

“Maybe I’ll never be ready.” Lydia pulled off her spectacles, wiping sweat from her face before donning them again. “Maybe I’m not one who can cross the line and come back. Maybe it’s better that I forbid myself from taking.”

“It is nothing to me whether you do or do not,” Ceenah replied. “Yet ask yourself whether you’ll be able to live with that limitation, or whether days, weeks, months from now you’ll find yourself reaching across the line.”

Lydia couldn’t live with it. Knew in her heart that this would loom over her, not only as something she’d failed to accomplish but as a razor-sharp knife that always had the potential to fall on those she cared about most. If she couldn’t master her mark, both the light and dark sides of it, she’d always be a threat.

Malahi approached, and then led Lydia a short distance away. “What are you thinking?” her friend asked her. “What is it that you worry is going to happen?”

“I think I’ll lose control and come back to myself surrounded by corpses.”

Malahi chewed on her bottom lip, then turned to face down Ceenah. “Lydia is not ready. Not yet.”

The words were a punch to the gut because they were true. Lydia’s shoulders slumped as Malahi walked back over to Agrippa, passing Killian as she did. The relief in his eyes was palpable, and somehow, that made Lydia feel worse.

Then Ceenah lunged after Malahi.

Lydia’s lips parted to scream a warning, but Agrippa was already moving. Except it wasn’t Malahi that Anukastre’s queen attacked.

It was Killian.

Her knife slashed down across Killian’s exposed forearm, the blade going nearly down to the bone. He hissed in pain, jerking away even as he clapped his other hand around the wound, arterial blood spurting between his fingers.

“Heal him, Lydia,” Ceenah commanded. “It’s long past due.”

Lydia tripped over her own feet, nearly falling in her rush to get to Killian’s side. “No,” she pleaded as she took in the severity of the wound, blood already pooling on the ground. “Ceenah, help him. Please!”

The Queen of Anukastre didn’t move.

“You cannot seriously be refusing to help him?” Lydia screamed, her heart rising to her throat as Killian swayed on his feet.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’ll die if she doesn’t help you,” Ceenah said. “If you wish to buy yourself time, I suggest sitting.”

Killian thudded to the ground, hand still gripping the bleeding wound. “Just get a lamp burning. Cauterize it.”

“This is madness.” Lydia reached for him, then jerked back, the sight of his life flowing out between his fingers making the voice deep inside her scream take it !

“It’s madness to believe you can’t help him!” Xadrian shouted in her face, his weapon in hand. Then he spun away. “Mother, heal him! Don’t let her weakness be the death of him!”

“Lydia is not weak.” Ceenah crossed her arms. “The trouble is that her adversary is herself.”

Killian only met Lydia’s gaze, expression steady. As though he had no doubt in his mind that she’d do what needed to be done.

Reaching out, she pulled his hand away from the injury. The wound extended up to his elbow, blood pulsing out with each beat of his heart. The life he’d lost hung around him like a cloud.

Behind her, Xadrian begged his mother to help and Malahi sobbed, but Lydia pushed away their voices, slowly placing her palm on the wound.

Take it.

“No,” she growled at the voice, clenching her teeth against the compulsion within her, which grew worse with each second that passed. Like being deep underwater and desperately needing to breathe.

Take it.

“I won’t.” Her eyes skipped to Killian’s face. His lids were closed, face drained of color. “I will not lose him.”

Because she loved him. Needed him in a way that was so much greater than all the things the voice promised if she allowed her darker half to consume her. What was strength without him? What was pleasure? What was power?

Nothing, was the answer.

The glow of Killian’s life drifted around them, and lifting her other hand, Lydia touched the swirling mist.

And she pulled.

The life that Killian had lost flowed into Lydia at her call, but it didn’t stop there. From all around, it surged toward her, like clouds on a racing wind, flooding her like a breath of air.

“Lydia, hurry!” Malahi screamed. “Don’t let him die!”

All around her was the chaos of her friends threatening Ceenah and the Anuk drawing blades, but Lydia tuned them out as she drew in more power.

Keep it! It’s yours!

“No,” she told the voice, then she exhaled and poured every drop into Killian.

The wound knit beneath her hand just as his heart began to stutter.

Her own heart caught with the certainty that she’d been too late, but then Killian’s eyes met hers. “You won the battle.”

Lydia didn’t trust herself to speak as she looked down at their interlocked fingers and all that they promised before meeting his gaze again.

Killian gave her a lopsided grin. “If almost dying was all it took, I’d have fallen on my own sword a long time ago.”

“You’re mad.” Tears rushed down her cheeks, but Lydia was smiling as she turned to look at Ceenah, whose eyes were wide, lips slightly parted as though Lydia had not done what she’d expected. Ignoring the woman’s expression, Lydia said, “Now I’m ready.”