Page 292 of Scorched Earth
Which perhaps it was.
A scream tore from her lips as she was tossed sideways, her spectacles cracking, but Lydia crawled back to Malahi.
That was when she saw it.
The sickly radiance of the tenders was fading, the vines withering and slackening as it consumed itself.
The sphere began to sink into the ground.
Blight pooled around Lydia’s knees, and through the vines, she saw the great river of death was pouring up the slope and into the pit the creature had dug for itself. It flowed into the thing that had once been human tenders, its strange plant-like flesh crisscrossed with inky veins as Malahi reversed its power. As she drew death into it, slowly killing it from the inside out.
Except it was not only the creature that was dying.
Malahi’s skin was ashen, and the shoots embedded in her skin turned black, the flow of blight, of death, rising into her arm. Withering her as surely as it had the monster she sought to destroy.
Without thought, Lydia placed a hand on Malahi’s shoulder and pushed life into her. Yet the glow didn’t just suffuse the other woman, but the entire creature. Malahi and the creature were connected.
They were one.
As understanding of what was happening settled upon her like a lead weight, a vine unraveled from the withered mass and weakly shoved Lydia away.
She’s sacrificing herself.
Hot tears rolled down Lydia’s cheeks as her friend turned grey, her veins turned black, and her pulse slowed. All around them, the tangle of vines was doing the same. Dying as Malahi drew more and more death into it.
“Malahi?” Agrippa shouted, and Lydia choked on a sob because she didn’t want him to watch this happen.
“She’s got control of it,” Lydia called through the collapsing sphere. “She’s winning!”
“Is she all right?”
Lie,logic told her, but Lydia couldn’t bring herself to do so, and her silence must have told Agrippa all he needed to know.
The dying plant mass shook as he leapt into the pit of withered vines, fighting to reach his wife, and Lydia flinched as he shouted, “Malahi, no!”
Agrippa flung himself at Malahi and tried to rip the midnight shoots free from Malahi’s flesh. “Lydia, help her!”
“I can’t.” Sobs shook her body. “There’s no other way to defeat it. If I put life into her, it will go into them. They’re too connected.”
“Please!”
When she didn’t move, he lifted his blade so that it rested against Lydia’s throat. “Help her.”
“Agrippa.” Malahi’s voice was soft as breath but loud as thunder as she said, “Let me go.”
He didn’t move his weapon. “I can’t.” Tears slicked his face. “I swore I’d protect you until the end.”
“And this is that end.” Malahi’s skin was withering like a dying vine, but her amber eyes were still bright. Still human. “You kept me safe so that I could do this, but now it is done. I love…”
Her voice trailed off as the throbbing heart of the plant stuttered, then went silent. The light faded from her eyes, and Malahi Rowenes slumped into Agrippa’s arms.
Agrippa screamed her name, and the sound compounded Lydia’s own grief and shattered her heart. Yet as she looked out through the pit to where the river of blight had once been, it was to find an empty trench carved into the land. No longer a wound but a scar. A scar that would eventually heal.
Malahi had done it.
Had saved Mudamora from the blight, but the cost… The cost would haunt Lydia for the rest of her days.
Because she feared she wasn’t done paying.
