Page 96 of Scorched Earth (Dark Shores #4)

MARCUS

“She’ll never forgive you,” Bait spat. “Though I don’t suppose a Cel dog like you cares. You were just using her anyway.”

Marcus barely heard him. His eyes were fixed on the door Teriana had slammed shut behind her, a dull whining noise filling his ears.

She was gone.

I know who you were, but what I care about is who you are now , her voice whispered from his memory. The conversation he’d known in his heart was too good to be true.

You are suggesting that you want to stay?

Yes.

With me? Despite who I am? What I am? All that I’ve done?

If you want me.

He’d allowed himself to be convinced because he’d wanted to be convinced. Had wanted her absolution despite being too much of a coward to tell her the truth. But the truth always came out, one way or another, and now Teriana knew.

Knew that there were some actions that were unforgivable.

Go after her, his heart screamed. Tell her the whole truth. Tell her about Cassius’s blackmail. Tell her that if you hadn’t done it, Cassius would have revealed your parents’ crimes. That you had to do it to protect them.

But Marcus didn’t move. All those justifications would mean little in the face of what he’d done, and in his desperate attempt to justify himself, he’d be risking the very family he’d murdered an innocent girl to protect. It was better if she thought the worst of him.

A familiar tightness squeezed around his chest, his heart rate escalating, every breath an effort.

Good, his conscience whispered. Maybe this time it will be the end of you. A fitting punishment for how badly you hurt her.

“But the joke’s on you.”

Bait was still speaking, and Marcus turned his head to stare at the boy, knowing he’d missed much of what had been said. “How so?” he asked, though he was long past caring what insults the boy might hurl at him.

“Because Lydia’s still alive.”

If only that were possible. Teriana would still never forgive him, but at least she’d not bear the grief of Lydia’s death.

“Lydia’s favored by the gods, and she escaped through a xenthier stem to Mudaire,” Bait said with a vicious smirk. “She’s marked by the Six. A healer, and a powerful one at that!”

Over the faint wheeze of his breath, Marcus heard rushing water. Blinked and saw Lydia’s panicked face right as she was bodily wrenched from his grasp. Not into an underground stream that never surfaced, but into a stream that surfaced on the far side of the world.

“Too bad you botched the job, or she’d never have lived to tell me what you’d done.” Bait reached out to shove Marcus. “If you were half as good at killing as everyone says, you might have gotten away with it.”

Since the moment Cordelia had revealed to Marcus the truth of Teriana’s friendship with Lydia, he’d been plagued by visions of that fateful moment in the Celendrial baths.

Visions that worsened with every passing day, the events shifting, portraying him as a gleeful murderer who delighted in holding Lydia under the water.

That had relished that last explosion of bubbles and the spark fading from her green eyes.

But as the room turned abruptly cold, the truth played in his mind’s eye.

Of the moment he’d changed his mind.

The current surged, slamming into him with incredible force.

He caught himself against the edge of the drain, but Lydia fell backward, his grip on her wrist the only thing keeping the water from sucking her down the tunnel.

She reached, fingers grasping, but he was losing his grip on her.

“Hold on!” he screamed at her, his voice drowned out by the raging water.

He pulled, trying to drag her out of the current, her nails clawing down his arm as she tried to grab hold.

Every muscle in his body screamed, but he kept his grip.

Would get her out, and then face the consequences.

Then the water ripped her from his grasp, and Lydia disappeared into blackness.

He hadn’t been able to do it. Hadn’t been able to kill her, and his morality had cost him Teriana. His vision cleared, revealing Bait’s face, mouth moving in silent insults that Marcus couldn’t hear above his own wheezing breath, each gasp sending a cloud of mist into the freezing air.

Why was it so cold?

Every time he tried to do the right thing, it cost him. Every time he let his morals get the better of him, he suffered. Every time he tried to resist who he really was, the world punished him for it.

Perhaps it’s time you stop resisting, the voice said. Perhaps it’s time you accept who you are meant to be.

He was so cold. So painfully cold.

Put an end to the pain. An end to the suffering, the voice said. Claim your destiny, and all the pleasure of victory will be yours.

Marcus drew in a ragged breath, and said, “Yes.”

Bait’s sneering face snapped back into focus before him, the room no longer cold and breathing no longer a challenge.

The boy frowned in confusion, and Marcus smiled at him. “In battle, Bait, I have found that nothing ever goes quite as one might have planned, but in those deviations, opportunities arise.” Bait’s eyes widened, and Marcus felt a stab of pleasure as the boy realized he’d erred.

As he realized that in his desire to tear Marcus’s world apart, to make him suffer, to make him weep for all that he’d lost, he’d opened up a path for Marcus to do the same to him.

Slinging an arm around Bait’s shoulders, he steered the boy toward the door. “So you say that Lydia discovered a genesis downstream from the baths in Celendrial? And that it took her to Mudamora? Safely, I presume, given she was well enough to tell the tale?”

“I…”

A sideways glance allowed him to watch Bait’s throat move as he swallowed hard, and Marcus patted him on the shoulder. “When one’s mission is conquering the world, it is always such a pleasure when the other side hands one the keys to their back door.”

Opening the door, Marcus found Felix on the other side reaching for the handle. His second’s eyes widened at the sight of Bait. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but Teriana just—”

“Make sure she boards the Quincense ,” Marcus interrupted. “And make sure he does as well.”

He shoved Bait out into the corridor and closed the door.