Page 95 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

“Even if he suspects there might be a risk you won’t be compliant, is keeping my people in prison really how he’d choose to manage you?” she asked. “Would he really risk riots and losing the election for such a tenuous method of control?”

“It’s not tenuous.” Marcus’s tone was clipped. “It’s proven to be incredibly effective because he knows I’ll do anything for you.”

Her chest tightened as emotion swelled within her, and Teriana waded to the end of the pool where he stood, resting her elbows on the edge.

“Cassius is extremely intelligent, Marcus. Until now, using me has cost him nothing, but all of Celendrial knows that we delivered on our promise. What we really need to worry about is what new form of leverage he’s got up his sleeve. ”

Marcus looked away, the muscles in his jaw clenching. “I don’t want you to go. Let me send someone on your behalf. It doesn’t need to be you.”

Annoyance rose in her that he didn’t understand why she had to go, why she had to liberate her people.

“I know what you’re thinking.” His voice was soft, his eyes on the ceiling as though looking at her would fracture what remained of his control.

“That you feel this is your responsibility. That you need to see it through. That you refuse to let that letter out of your sight. But”—his throat moved as he swallowed—“I’m afraid that you’ll step through that xenthier stem and I’ll never see you again.

That Cassius will hurt you if for no better reason than to hurt me. ”

It was possible. They both knew it. Yet she said, “I will come back.”

“If he hurts you,” Marcus whispered, “I will take this army back across the seas and burn him alive.”

Shock radiated through her. For the depth of his sentiment. For the gravity of the threat. But most of all because she finally realized what Cassius was so afraid of.

Standing upright, she curved a hand around the side of his face, her sodden braids clinging to her skin. “I will come back to you.” She pressed her forehead to his. “I swear on the Six, no matter what happens, I will come back to you.”

“There is no one in the world with more power to hurt me,” he said. “Yet no one I trust more.”

Then his lips were on hers, and all the emotion that had been locked up in their hearts for so many long weeks was unleashed.

He half lifted her out of the bath, and her breasts pressed against the cold steel of his armor, a gasp tearing from her lips as his hands slid down her naked back to grip her bottom, holding her against him.

“Are you sure?” she asked between kisses. “I need to know this is what you want.”

“You’re what I want.”

Teriana wrapped an arm around his neck, biting at his bottom lip even as she fumbled with buckles and straps.

Metal clanged against the floor, some of it falling into the water, but she didn’t care.

All that mattered was tearing away the last of the obstacles between them.

All that mattered was making him entirely hers.

“I need you,” he said between kisses, letting go of her long enough to pull his tunic over his head. “You are everything.”

Words she’d dreamed of him saying, and to hear them from his lips made her heart accelerate, the swell of emotion making it hard to breathe.

She tipped her head back, the sensation of his lips on her throat sending sparks through her body, tension building in her core.

It went beyond want, because in this moment, the need she had for him was like the need she had for air.

Bracing a foot against the bath, Teriana pulled him into the water.

It sloshed over the edge from their combined weight, and Marcus laughed softly against her throat as he unbuckled the vambraces on his wrists, tossing them aside with a splash.

But humor gave way to deeper sentiments as her legs wrapped around his waist. Her lips found his, their tongues in each other’s mouths, it not seeming possible to be close enough.

They’d already learned every inch of each other, but it had been so long that this felt like the first time, everything touched with a thrill of nerves that made her breathless.

That made her want more, so much more, so that when they claimed each other, it felt like the first desperate breath after being caught in the undertow.

She’d thought there was no future for them. That the end was an inevitability, and looking forward had been so very hard. But now? It felt like her whole future stretched out before her, and with every beat of her heart Teriana knew with certainty that her future was with him.

Her breath came in ragged little pants after they fell still, the echoes of pleasure that had rolled over her making words impossible, all the problems they faced having been vanquished if only for a moment.

A moment she clung to, not saying a word lest she shatter the peace and send them both hurtling back to a world full of those who’d do them harm.

It was Marcus who shifted first, pulling away slightly so that he could look in her eyes.

“I love you, Teriana.” He tucked the braid bearing the tiny ship he’d given her behind her ear.

“I know I don’t say it enough. That I don’t show it enough.

But know that there is not a moment that goes by that is not touched by you. ”

Any doubt that she was making the right decision vanished. This was where she was meant to be. He was who she was meant to be with, and together, they would defy every odd. “I love you,” Teriana said. “Now and until the end of time.”

He tangled his fingers in her braids, kissing her. Teriana allowed her mind to drift into imaginations of the future, of all that they might have, only for a familiar voice to jerk her back to reality.

“So it’s true.”

Teriana started in surprise, then looked past Marcus’s shoulder to find Bait standing next to the balcony railing, his face twisted with anger.

“You’re his gods-damned lover!”

Her skin turned to ice even as Marcus snarled, “How did you get in here?”

“One of your own soldiers told me you were with her. Brought me up here and left me in another room to wait.” Bait’s hands balled into fists. “You idiots always forget we know how to climb.”

Oh gods oh gods oh gods, was the only thought that repeated in Teriana’s head because this wasn’t how she’d wanted her crew to find out. This… this wasn’t how the situation was supposed to go.

“Everyone was saying it, Teriana,” Bait hissed as she scrambled out of the bath, feet slipping on the tile as she pulled Kaira’s dress over her head.

“Everyone up and down the continent said you were sleeping with our enemy, but I refused to believe it. I defended you. But it was the truth. You’re the Cel dog’s—”

“Insult her, and I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to you.” Marcus was out of the bath as well, though he’d gone for his knife first and undergarments second.

He stalked toward Bait, seething with fury. She shoved her way between them, hands braced on their chests. “Enough. Bait, please don’t jump to conclusions. There is so much you don’t know, and this is not how I wanted you to find out that I was—”

“Sleeping with your best friend’s murderer?”

Teriana went still, not entirely certain she’d heard Bait correctly but very certain she’d felt Marcus stiffen. “What?”

“Oh, he didn’t tell you that while he was spreading your legs?” Bait leaned into her hand. “He personally held Lydia under the water in Cassius’s fancy baths, then shoved her down the outtake drain. That’s who you’re sleeping with.”

The world spun, her knees threatening to collapse beneath her as she slowly turned her head to meet Marcus’s eyes. “Tell me this isn’t true.”

His face betrayed nothing, but his eyes were dull with misery.

“Marcus,” she whispered, sick with desperation to hear a denial. “Tell me—”

“It’s true.”

She sucked in a breath, her whole body shaking, because it couldn’t be true.

“Why? Why would you do that to her? Why would you agree to it?” Her mind filled with Lydia’s spectacled face, memories of them giggling and laughing in the Valerius library while their respective parents discussed business below.

A lifetime of friendship that bound them closer than blood. “Lydia was just a girl. She… she…”

Marcus’s lips parted, then he hesitated. Teriana clung to that hesitation, praying he’d give her an answer that would make sense. An answer that would make it not his fault. Then he said, “Because Cassius ordered me to do so.”

Her body reacted even before the words registered, her palm cracking against his cheek and her nails raking across his skin. “She is a sister to me! I love her!”

Marcus didn’t so much as flinch, only exhaled a long breath. “I know. Cordelia told me. That’s why…” He shook his head.

This was what had changed everything back in Celendrial. This was the secret he’d wanted to tell her. This was the crime she’d unwittingly absolved him of.

“I’m sorry, Teriana.”

“You’re sorry?” She stared at him, waiting for an explanation. Waiting for him to give something, anything, to explain why he’d agreed to murder an innocent girl. To murder Lydia, who’d never hurt anyone in her entire life.

But Marcus said nothing.

“You lied to me.” Tears dripped down her cheeks. “I asked you what had happened to her and you lied to my face. And have lied every day since. Allowed me to absolve you knowing full well that I’d never have done so if I’d known about this!”

He didn’t answer.

“Say something!” she shouted. “You owe me that much!”

Marcus only shook his head. “There is nothing to say.”

Which meant there was no reason that he could give. No justification. Nothing that would make this tenable or understandable. Nothing that would allow her to live with herself for having betrayed Lydia’s memory in this way. It had been an order. Nothing more.

“As always, you’re right,” she said softly. “I have come to hate you.”

And she needed to be away from this situation. Needed to escape.

Twisting away from both men, she snatched up the letter and bolted for the door. Quintus grinned at her as she jerked it open. “The Quincense is in the harbor,” he said, then saw her expression. “Teriana? What’s wrong?”

But she was already running.