1KILLIAN
Night was coming, and with it, the monsters.
Killian’s shoulders burned, every muscle of his body shuddering from exhaustion. His clothes were drenched with sweat from rowing all through the day on a lake that seemed as vast as an ocean, albeit as smooth as glass.
He needed to find cover.
With darkness, and no fog to conceal the tiny boat, it was only a matter of time until the deimos found them and all the wrath of Rufina’s army descended. A fate Killian was desperate to avoid, but one the corrupted in the boat with him reached toward.
Lydia was barely recognizable. Each passing hour since they’d escaped, the rage and hunger in her eyes had grown. Black windows to the underworld that he couldn’t bear to look into, because this was not Lydia.
This was not the girl he was in love with.
Except that it is, a voice whispered from the depths of his soul. That she contained that part of herself doesn’t make it any less her.
Gods, but he hated that dark truth. Needed to silence it, except to do so meant silencing himself.
If she contained it once, she can contain it again. She’s strong.
A sentiment he prayed was true despite much proof to the contrary. Three times she’d broken free of her bonds. His clothes were a shredded mess from all the strips he’d torn off to secure her incredible strength and to gag her to keep her from crying out for Rufina’s aid. In the space of hours, she’d gone from desperate to kill to the queen of Derin to seeing Rufina as her savior.
All because of the hunger that consumed every part of her.
He wanted to blindfold her. Wanted to hide from that malevolent gaze that set off every instinct in his soul, demanding that he fight. Demanding that he kill.
“I’m heading to shore.” He eyed the shadowed coast. “We need to find some form of cover for the night.” Against his will, Killian’s gaze flicked to Lydia’s face.
She was watching him, tangled dark hair clinging to her face.
Gone was the maddened, frenzied creature, and he almost wished for it to return, because now the dark pits staring at him were full of calculation. Cunning. She was waiting for a moment of weakness, waiting for an opportune time to strike, which removing her from the boat would surely give her.
“I’m not giving up on you,” he said. “You can fight back against the Corrupter. I’m going to help you.”
Killian waited for some sign that the goodness in her was still there. A gleam of hope that he could cling to. Instead, a feral smile curved up around her gag, Lydia’s teeth gleaming red from where fabric cut into her mouth.
Kill her.
Killian jerked his gaze back to the dark coast, sucking in a mouthful of air. Just row, he told himself. Your focus needs to be on evading the deimos.
The sun burned lower and lower behind him, illuminating what he first thought was a mangrove swamp but then realized was a dead forest. Trees of every sort jutted out of the murky water, their branches skeletal and barren of life but for the putrid fungus growing on their rotting bark. Finding a gap wide enough for the boat, Killian rowed beneath the dead canopy just as the sun’s glow faded below the horizon.
He paused in his rowing to catch his breath as the boat drifted deeper.
The moment night fell, the fungus on the trees came alive, glowing a deep green that provided just enough light to see by. The density of the tree trunks forced him to draw in one of the oars and use the other as a paddle, slowly weaving deeper into the dead forest and, he hoped, closer to land. The smell grew sulfurous and strange, and in the shadows of the trees, small shadows crawled, though they froze the moment his eyes fell upon them.
Then the water stirred.
Killian stopped paddling as a large form swam toward them, then under. It struck the hull of the boat, rocking it violently, and he held his breath, waiting for it to attack.
But the creature only moved on, reptilian tail drifting side to side as it continued down the path from which they had come. Lydia shifted her weight, and Killian tensed, but she made no move to test her bonds.
Not yet, at any rate.
He didn’t know if pressing onward was the right thing to do, for everything about this forest was wrong. Everything felt touched by the Corrupter. He was certain that daylight would reveal the same black veins as stretched across Mudamora. Veins that stole the life of everything they touched. The product of tenders—those chosen by Yara to have power over the earth—whose marks had been tainted by the underworld.
The thought brought Malahi to mind. She was perhaps the last uncorrupted tender on the continent, which meant the last person capable of reversing the tide.
If she still lived, that was.
He’d found unexpected allies in Agrippa, the defected general of Rufina’s armies, and Baird, a giant marked by Gespurn, but while they might have succeeded in their mad scheme to get the Queen of Mudamora out of Helatha, the half of Rufina’s army not pursuing Killian would be on their heels. Agrippa was resourceful, but there was only so much one man could do against all the tools Rufina had at her disposal.
It is what it is, he told himself. There is nothing you can do to help them right now. Focus on staying alive.
Yet he felt paralyzed with indecision, the weight of Lydia’s gaze making him want to scream. Making him want to lash out, because where were the Six? Why had they abandoned their marked so easily? Not just the marked, but the whole of Mudamora.
A shriek sounded overhead, and Lydia stiffened. Killian threw himself on top of her, pressing his gloved hand against her mouth to silence the scream that would summon the deimos patrolling the skies.
Because in denying Lydia the chance to steal life to ease the hunger burning inside of her, Killian had become her enemy. And the enemy of her enemy was her friend.
Her body jerked back and forth beneath him, and Killian prayed the cloth he’d wrapped around her hands stayed in place.
She’d gotten her hands on him once. Had stolen life from him in the few seconds before he wrenched away, and the memory of the sensation made his skin crawl.
“Shhh,” he whispered even as he felt her face press against him, trying to bite him around the gag. “They’ll move on soon enough.”
She only struggled harder. Made desperate mewling sounds.
“Stop.” He pressed his face into her matted hair. “I need you to fight this. Need you to come back to me.”
As the thud of the deimos’s wings faded, he let go of her. Lydia’s voice was garbled but clear enough for him to understand as she said, “I hate you.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said it, but each time was a twist of the knife embedded in his gut. It was the hunger that drove the words, not her heart, but if she didn’t master the darkness in her, how long would it be until the hunger consumed her entirely? Killian didn’t acknowledge the vitriol, only retrieved the floating paddle and carried on deeper into the forest.
The trees grew denser, although equally dead and rotten, forcing him to backtrack and find different routes inland. Making him question whether there was a route to solid ground or whether he’d be forced to head back to the lake with the dawn. Or worse, get stuck and be forced to wade through the fouled water containing who knew what sort of creatures.
Though none more dangerous than the one he’d have to carry in his arms.
“Shit,” he growled. “Shit, shit!”
Lydia only chuckled around her gag, the sound making his stomach turn. Killian opened his mouth to tell her to be quiet when a light ahead caught his eye.
Not the eerie green glow of more fungus, but the yellow flicker of lamplight.
How had Rufina’s men found them? How had they moved so quickly?
Then a voice reached his ears.
Not the sharp bark of hunting soldiers, but the soft, wordless song of a woman.
Killian hesitated a heartbeat, then paddled closer, a large hillock appearing through the trees. There was a small cabin atop it, the glowing windows flung open so that the occupant’s song could spill forth.
Lydia tensed, seeming to dislike the voice. Yet there was something about it that drew Killian nearer. Jumping out, he hauled the small vessel out of the water and then hesitated. He didn’t want to face the unknown with her trussed over his shoulder, but neither did he trust that she wouldn’t find some way to escape in his absence.
Cursing under his breath, Killian checked that the fabric he’d wrapped around her hands was secure. Then he lifted Lydia into his arms, gritting his teeth as she thrashed. “Be still.”
He ignored her scowl as he carried her up the spongy slope to the cabin. The smell of woodsmoke overpowered the sulfur of the dead forest, and the grass beneath his feet was lush and alive. An island of life in a swamp of death. Killian fought the urge to walk faster.
The cabin was small and made of roughly hewn logs, but lace-trimmed pink curtains hung in the window, and the voice … Something about it soothed his battered soul. Flipping Lydia over his shoulder, Killian reached out to knock on the door, only for it to open, revealing an old woman with a long grey braid over one shoulder. The weight of her presence was something he’d only felt once before in his life, when he’d received his mark as a child.
Killian fought the urge to fall to his knees.
The stooped old woman smiled at him. “Come inside, dear ones. I’ve been waiting for you.”
2TERIANA
“Where is Marcus?”
All three men stared at her. Well, two men plus a boy, because for all Austornic was legatus of the Fifty-First legion, he was thirteen years old. That he was skinny as a rake and his forehead only came up to Teriana’s chin didn’t help his cause when it came to treating him seriously.
Commandant Wex cleared his throat. “Gone.”
Teriana drew in a steadying breath that did next to nothing to calm her nerves. She’d slept not a wink since Marcus had shattered her heart and abandoned her in Senator Valerius’s villa last night, all her hours dedicated to piecing together exactly what had happened from the bits of information she’d gleaned from Austornic’s men, who were just as keen to gossip as the Thirty-Seventh.
Central to what she’d learned was that Legatus Hostus of the Twenty-Ninth had been tasked with hunting Marcus down.
Marcus had told her dark things about Hostus. Austornic’s men had told her worse. The legatus of the Twenty-Ninth was not only a sadist, but apparently also a cannibal, and more than a few of his men had adopted his proclivities. Each time she blinked, Teriana saw Hostus’s green eyes. Felt his hands on her as he’d restrained her, his breath hot. The line his knife had scored down her neck was still sore. There will be a reckoning for this.
“Be more specific,” she said between her teeth.
Neither answered. Which was so gods-damned typical. There were dozens of players in this political mess of power games, all with agendas she couldn’t begin to keep straight, but despite the fact that Teriana was at the heart of it all, everyone wanted to keep her in the dark. For her own gods-damned good.
To keep her safe.
The only thing they had told her was that blame for everything fell at the feet of Lucius Cassius. The proconsul of Celendor aimed to rule all of Reath and did not care whether he had to blackmail, murder, or subjugate everyone he crossed paths with to do it. Cassius had tried to have Marcus and his family murdered, but Marcus had killed the assassins. One, apparently, by caving in his skull with a marble statue—the description of which Teriana could have done without. All of which had been quietly cleaned up by his mother and sister while his father argued Marcus’s case in the Senate, because apparently Cassius was trying to claim Marcus’s unsanctioned departure was treason and deserving of execution.
And it was not yet midmorning.
Teriana’s scowl grew, but beneath her anger, panic loomed. “At least tell me if he’s safe.”
“Domitius convinced the Senate that while Marcus’s choice to depart against orders was impulsive and deserving of reprimand, that it is not treason,” Valerius finally said. “A stern letter will be drafted. The precise language is currently under debate.”
A stern letter.
Teriana tucked a loose lock of hair back into the wrappings holding it off her face, already sick of the bureaucracy. Knowing that was all she’d get from Valerius, she shifted her glare to Wex. Marcus’s mentor was unreadable, but she suspected the man who ran the legion school of Lescendor had a soldier’s opinion of politicians. What’s more, she knew he had a soft spot for his library mouse. “Does that mean Hostus will stand down?”
Wex exhaled slowly, then said, “No. With Hostus’s men dead by Marcus’s own hand, the Twenty-Ninth will be on the hunt with vengeance in their hearts. There was bad blood between them before and this will only have made things worse.”
“But as long as Marcus makes it to the stem here”—Teriana held up her roughly sketched map showing the xenthier stem that led from Celendor to Bardeen—“before Hostus’s men, then there is no catching him. They won’t pursue him through the Bardeen stem to Arinoquia. Correct?”
Wex’s eyes flicked to Austornic, who shifted uncomfortably because the location of the stems was supposed to be a secret.
“Marcus showed me a master document with all the mapped and unmapped stems across the East. Your men only confirmed what I already knew.” Not entirely true, because while Marcus had shown her the map, it had only been for a moment. But the pretense had been enough to loosen the lips of Austornic’s primus on the matter.
“Teriana,” Austornic said gently, “sharing that particular map is considered—”
She gave him a flat stare, and he broke off.
Wex circled the library, occasionally taking sips from the glass of cucumber water in his hand. “This is a good lesson for you, Austornic. You’re used to functioning within the confines of Lescendor, where everyone plays by the rules. Not so in the real world, where the rules are broken for any number of reasons. Where the players on the board are not pieces of marble but human beings with their own goals, ambitions, and”—he glanced at Teriana—“lusts motivating their moves.”
She scratched her chin with her middle finger, but rather than taking insult, Wex gave her a sad smile. “Hostus might well hold the distinction of being the cruelest legatus in active service. That said, he’s no fool. He was trained to have contingencies in play, which means that he’d be prepared for Marcus to escape. Prepared for him to head to Bardeen. Which is why Marcus”—he tapped her map—“didn’t take this route.”
The palms of her hands turned cold. “But it’s the fastest route to Bardeen.”
“No,” Austornic said. “It’s just the most direct.”
“Madness.” Valerius shook his head even as Austornic walked to the map of the Empire framed on the library wall, running a hand over his shorn dark hair as he considered it.
“Why madness?” Their reaction made her stomach roil with tension. “You think he’ll make a mistake? That Hostus will catch him?”
Visions of Marcus being dragged before the Twenty-Ninth’s legatus filled her mind’s eye, and it was all Teriana could do to keep from vomiting as her imagination supplied all the awful things Hostus would do to him.
“There are options.” Austornic’s eyes moved over the unlabeled map as though it bore every xenthier stem that the Empire had ever found, which, in his mind’s eye, it obviously did. “But I can’t find a path with less than eight jumps.”
“Impossible.” Valerius ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. “The strain is too great for anyone to bear. He’ll die if he tries.”
Die?
“It’s been done,” Wex replied. “It’s not impossible, else I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
What had been done?
“The rule of three.” Austornic’s voice rose above the other two. “Never more than three jumps in a row.”
“What are you talking about!” Her words came out in a shout.
All three exchanged looks, but it was Austornic who answered. “Traveling through xenthier takes a physical toll. I’m sure you are familiar with the sensation of dizziness and disorientation, yes?” When she nodded, he continued, “There is endless speculation in the collegium as to the mechanics of xenthier, theories about the impact on the body from extreme acceleration and deceleration that I won’t bore you with, because you only care about the consequences.”
“Thank you for sparing me.”
“Each time you travel is like taking a minor knock on the head. Something easily recovered from. But if one travels through paths in quick succession, each knock on the head compounds on the next. Like being hit over and over, with obvious results. The rule is no more than three jumps in the space of a week to avoid lasting harm. What Marcus is doing is akin to a battering ram to the skull.”
“Does he know that?” She pressed her fingers to her own skull, feeling phantom pain within it. “Never mind. Of course he knows.”
“It’s possible he came up with a path with fewer jumps that allowed him to reach Hydrilla before the Twenty-Ninth,” Wex said. “There are hundreds and hundreds of paths across the Empire, and puzzles always were his strength. It’s equally possible that he determined it couldn’t be done and has gone to ground somewhere in the Empire.”
Except Marcus didn’t believe in the word couldn’t when it pertained to him, which meant he’d have done it, risks and all. “But you said others survived many consecutive jumps?”
But before any of them could answer, a servant appeared at the door with a tray bearing a folded note. Valerius crossed the room, snatching up the scrap of paper, his already grim expression darkening further as he lifted his eyes to meet Teriana’s. “Cassius has agreed to meet with you.”
3MARCUS
“What’s wrong with him? Why is he getting worse?”
Titus’s voice cut through the haze, but Marcus kept his eyes squeezed shut. The fog thickening his thoughts refused to clear, made worse by a throbbing ache in his skull that made Marcus want to curl in on himself. Made him want to hide from light and sound, because they made the pain so much worse.
He had only vague memories of what had occurred since he’d woken in Titus’s camp without his armor, the letter Wex had given him, or any of the other proof that he’d been in Celendrial. He’d faded in and out of consciousness, but the same dream repeated, of Titus leaning over him and whispering, I might not be able to stop the Thirty-Seventh from having their revenge on you. They’re angry, Marcus. And they’re not the same legion as when you left. Every time he regained consciousness, his first thought was, What has happened to them?
He hadn’t been moved from the floor of Titus’s tent, and he vaguely heard the sounds of legionnaires breaking camp, the air smelling of wet ash as they doused cook fires. Marcus’s name was mentioned often, but not half as often as another word.
Deserter.
“It has to be a head injury, sir. From when he was beaten.”
“You said his skull wasn’t cracked!”
“It’s not, but he’s got a black eye, so we know he was hit. Head injuries can be unpredictable like that.”
“No,” Marcus tried to say, but it only came out as unintelligible noise.
“Fix him!” Titus snarled. “You’re a fucking surgeon—do something!”
“There’s nothing to be done, Titus! Not even Racker could fix what’s wrong with him. He’s a dead man, sure and true.”
A dead man.
The weight of that pierced through the haze, the burden of failure making Marcus want to scream.
“Shit!” Titus raged. “Shit shit shit! If he dies, the Thirty-Seventh will blame us!”
“Why? They’d have killed him anyway.”
“Because it’s different!” Titus’s voice was like knives in Marcus’s brain. “They need to be the ones to kill him. It has to be them. Don’t you see?”
Merciful silence.
“How you choose to manage the complexities of this situation is up to you,” the surgeon eventually replied. “But he’s not going to survive the journey to Aracam. By your leave, I’ve other patients to see to who I can actually treat.”
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