These Divided Shores, page 29
Lu didn’t move, her arms clasped before her, her eyes on him.
“Where were you?” Vex asked, his cheeks stiff from dried tears.
The back of the crowd was only a few paces away. The darkness of midnight blurred all around, flickering lanterns casting shadows.
She shrugged. “I couldn’t—” She stopped. “I was working on another cure for you. It’s done. I can give it to you.”
Vex stared at the ground. Another cure. Would it work?
And what then? What would he do once he didn’t have Shaking Sickness as an excuse?
He looked at Lu. There was something else in her eyes, something pleading for him to let her do this. To focus on something small and easy in a world of funeral songs and war.
Vex nodded. “All right.”
Lu might not have gone to the gathering, but she had heard it. Bent over the small fire in the hut, she had listened to the wailing, the drumming, the chanting—and Vex, singing with Ben.
That hymn still saturated her heart. All of it, really, every expression of melancholy from that square had been different yet similar, and Lu hoped Nate, Pierce, and Rosalia felt the same welling of unity that she did.
But beyond that, part of Lu had heard Vex’s singing and come undone. She hadn’t known he could sound like that, his voice shaky from nerves but still strong and rich, sculpted for grand Argridian cathedrals that would rebound the noise and build it higher, louder. It was what had pulled her out of the hut instead of crouching in the darkness, each crooning word sliding hands against her back until she had found herself standing behind him in awe.
Why did you go? she asked herself now. The war may have changed. But you have not.
Lu had found Drooping Fern in the ruins of the sanctuary. She wouldn’t give Vex another tonic to induce his memories about what the Church had given him, but Drooping Fern was the counter plant to Awacia, the plant used to keep people awake. The Church had loved giving Awacia to its victims, to torture them with sleeplessness, so Lu had made a concentrated dose of Drooping Fern to counter it.
The hut Nayeli had let Lu use as a laboratory was mostly intact, aside from one bashed-in window—and the now-broken chest of drawers where Lu had stored one of the two remaining vials of permanent magic. Ben likely still had the other one; she, Rosalia, and Nate were living embodiments of the final three.
Did Elazar have the one Tom had taken? What magic had implanted itself in him? Or was he holding off on taking that potion, instead letting Tom subject Teo to more tests, trying to break magic out of his blood and bones? Was Teo locked in a sticky, cramped cell in New Deza?
That Milo was no longer a threat to Teo offered meager relief. The lack of release in knowing he was dead continued to shock Lu. For so many years, she had thought that she would be able to breathe again over his body. That at the very least, knowledge of his death would free her from the memories he had left, the scars he had inflicted, the pain he had caused.
But his death felt all too similar to the realization she had had about herself, how horrible things would happen regardless of whether she committed them. Milo was a tool, as she had been. He was, in his own way, meaningless.
The only thing that could be done was to prevent more atrocities from happening. To do that, Teo needed her to act, so she put her questions and worries in a box deep in her mind. Every twitch of pain, every flex of strength it took to keep that box shut—she would use it all when she came face-to-face with Argrid.
Lu led Vex inside the shack and closed the door, blocking out the drumbeats. Someone was singing again, faster now—everyone was strung too tight from grief. They needed to expel it, the holes in their hearts begging them to stop, just for an hour of healing.
Coals glowed in the center of the shack, the only light source, making the small room shadowed and unsteady. Lu moved to the table and picked up the vial she had made for him. She heard a soft thud and turned to see Vex slumped on his knees next to the firepit, staring into the coals, pinpricks of orange reflected in his dark eye.
“I saw the flame Gunnar lit,” Lu whispered. She couldn’t make herself talk louder. “Edda would have liked that, I think.”
Vex flicked his gaze up to her. He grinned, but it was frail. “She’d have been a sobbing mess for all of it. She hid it most of the time, but damn, that woman was the most sentimental person I’ve ever met. Thought she’d lose her mind when Teo became part of our crew—”
He stopped. His eye closed.
Lu’s heart bucked and she folded to her knees next to him, the vial in her hand.
“I don’t blame you,” she said.
Vex didn’t look at her.
“I need you to know that,” she continued. “I need you to know that everything I said to you . . . I do trust you. It wasn’t about you. It was me, and I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. I—” His face stayed impassive for one full breath before the corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile that sent a flurry of sparks into her gut. He opened his eye, finally. “I apologized. Again. To your apology. Can we . . . can we just stop apologizing to each other?”
Lu smiled too. It broke apart the darkness, a sliver of light in the strain.
Vex’s smile faded, and Lu was suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of how close she was to him. The air between them was heady with sweat and mint, the tang of plants from her own clothes and Tuncian spices that were embedded in the very fiber of this shack.
“I know most of our interactions since Port Camden have been apologizing,” Vex said. He tried for humor, but there was something tense to it, like he’d noticed how close they were, too. “Guess we’ll have to find some other way to interact. I mean, whoa, that sounded—ahem—ignore me. I should leave now.”
He took the vial from her open palm and started to stand.
“Why?” she asked.
Her question eased him back down. The orange coals caught the sheen on his face, highlighting the smooth expanse of his cheeks, the lines across his lips, the single bead of sweat sluicing down the contours of his throat as he worked a swallow.
His body was bowed toward her, knees bent. “You want me to stay?”
Lu sipped in a breath. Held it.
Why did you go to him? she asked herself again. You don’t deserve him. Milo was right.
She hadn’t told Vex yet that she had killed Milo. The confession gathered on her tongue, but she held down the mention of him, not wanting him to intrude here.
“Yes.” Lu could barely hear her own plea. “Stay.”
Vex thumbed the vial. His eye never left hers, one cheek caught between his teeth. “I don’t . . . ah. I’m really not good at—this.” He waved to encompass something unseen and warm and as close as the air brushing Lu’s skin. “Horrendous, in fact—god, you’ve met my whole history with women, so I need you to be explicitly clear about what it is you want—”
Lu started. “Rosalia.”
Vex choked. “Well, that’s . . . disappointing.”
“That’s not what I—no.” Lu shifted upright. “She called you something. What was it?”
Lu knew as soon as it left her mouth that it was the wrong thing to ask. The sweet calm took a jagged turn in the tension on Vex’s face, his body rocking back.
“No.” Lu shook her head. “I’m sorry. Don’t answer that—”
“Mezzochi.”
Lu froze.
“It’s Grozdan,” Vex continued. He tipped his head out of the firelight. “For half blind.”
Revulsion seized Lu’s throat. Rosalia had tossed that word out as though it was something humorous. Even Vex shrugged, tried to smile, but his head was still angled away. The scarred part of his face, away from the light—away from Lu.
“I didn’t know what it meant until a few weeks into our . . . whatever it was,” Vex said, forced ease gripping his voice again. “Which is why I don’t trust myself to act on anything unless you tell me, in very clear terms, what you want to get out of this. I’m marvelously bad at reading what’s real, and what’s a joke, and what I—”
His words cut off in a startled gasp when Lu grabbed the collar of his shirt. His face whipped around to meet hers, shock trading for wonder as she lifted her other hand to cup his neck, the vial forgotten on the ground beside them.
“I want—” Lu’s mouth stayed open, trying to form the clear terms that Vex asked for. But nothing followed those two words, and they became their own plea:
I want. Since that moment on the Schilly-Leto waterfall, when Vex had revealed his fear of heights. Knowing something so vulnerable about him—he could never be a threat. That depressing revelation had freed her to see him in a new, soft light. I want. Every act of bravery to protect her or Teo, even when she knew he was terrified. I want. His arms open to her in the Port Camden prison, his solidity and defiance and loyalty.
Vex was gentle and safe and she hadn’t wanted to be so close to anyone since her body had felt violated and not her own, and she hadn’t been able to endure the thought of someone else touching it when she barely felt like she had any right to it herself.
Again, she saw Teo, bound to a chair, Elazar and Tom standing over him—
Her breath fled. She was far from healed herself. She still wasn’t certain how to go about every day with memories that were always on the edge of undoing her. But something about healing Vex, inside, outside, in every way, seemed so much more possible.
“You,” Lu finished. “I want you.”
Vex gaped at her in innocent wonder as she lifted both her hands to his face. His skin was slick from humidity and exertion. Closer, the scent of him intensified, cinnamon soap and bonfire from standing near Gunnar. She slid her thumbs under the straps of his eye patch and pulled it up, off, casting it to the floor next to the vial.
She put her hands on either side of his head and pulled him down to her, pressing her lips there, and there, covering his mutilated eye with unspoken promises: that even though she was unworthy of him, of the desire that rose through her belly and heated her chest, she wanted him to have it. That even though the war was far from over, they were here.
Vex breathed against her and hooked his fingers around her wrists. She felt one small tremor in his right arm, the beat of his pulse in his fingertips.
Lu paused, lips over his scar. Had she done wrong? Maybe this had been too much—
Vex dragged his head up, up, to brush his lips against hers.
It was hesitant. Lu’s mind fogged and details came to her in waves—the softness of his lips as they parted on hers, the contrasting roughness of his tongue against the inside of her mouth, the gentle twitch of his thumb on her arm.
She returned his kiss with a surge of pressure, and a wall fell. Vex grabbed her waist and released a deep, velvety mewl that opened a space in Lu’s heart, had her reeling.
Rising drumbeats outside overlaid distant singing voices. The firepit in the hut hissed with dying coals, and as the last of the embers faded from orange to black, Lu and Vex fell to the floor, two broken things wordlessly making themselves whole.
26
VEX HAD NO idea what time it was. The sky through the cracked window was a hazy gray, so it must be early? Late? Were the funeral mourners still gathered? Their drumbeats had faded a bit ago.
Honestly, he didn’t care if the sanctuary had up and emptied.
Lu stirred against him. Vex shifted with her, curling his body tighter, closer. She settled, and the even cadence of her breathing kept him calm by extension, her arms slumped over the thick quilt they’d found in the corner. It was scratchy and stiff but better than nothing, and right then, Vex wouldn’t have moved if the blanket had been made of burrs and thorns.
He couldn’t remember Lu ever being this calm. The tension in her shoulders was gone and her brow was smooth. He tightened his arm across her waist, that shift of skin against skin spinning him back to the feel of her lips on his face, the smoothness of her bare back, and the way she’d tasted, honeyed and perfect.
Vex didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve this stillness, when out beyond these walls, the whole of the island hated them. Teo was god knew where. Kari and the raider Heads would be preparing to confront Elazar. If the confrontation was another battle, would Elazar hold Teo in the middle of it, gun to his head, demanding surrender? If it was an attempt at peace talks, Vex could see his uncle’s cruel smile. Elazar would have no peace, especially if he had Lu’s vial of permanent magic by now. Or, worse—could Teo have magic in him, like Lu had said?
Did Kari think they could defeat Elazar without giving up Lu, or this island, or both? Vex could tell her she was wrong. But who the hell was he to tell a renowned war veteran how a battle would go? And when she asked him the inevitable question—“What should we do?”—he’d just shuffle his feet and slump away.
Lu made a soft hum in her sleep.
What should we do? The question splintered in Vex’s mind. What can I do?
Vex closed his eye and buried his face in Lu’s hair. It’d fallen out of the knot she kept it in, the black curls spilling across the mat they lay on. Silky strands rubbed his face, the area usually covered by an eye patch.
He kept waiting for that gut-punching urge to put it back on, but every time he thought about it, he felt her lips on the scar.
Face buried in her curls, Vex inhaled. Sunlight. Wood smoke. Salt. The wind that comes from the sea and slams into the air trapped in the jungle trees.
A glint of rising sunlight caught something on the ground next to them. The vial of Drooping Fern Lu had made, the cure for him. The last cure for him, maybe. After it, he would be whole again. But who would be whole? Paxben Gallego or Devereux Bell?
Vex reached for the vial. Lu startled and gave him a bleary, questioning look.
“Sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you.” He grabbed the vial and tucked his hand back under the blanket, around her waist. “Go to sleep.”
Lu closed her hand over his fist and the vial of Drooping Fern. “You haven’t taken it?”
He smiled into her neck. “Haven’t had a whole lot of time since you gave it to me.”
She chuckled, the noise vibrating into his chest.
“I think I should go after Teo,” Vex said.
Lu tensed, and Vex closed his eye. “What?”
“Elazar won’t expect it,” he said, talking faster than his brain was forming a plan. “If we come at him with a whole army—or just for peace talks, but still a whole army—he wants that, he wants a fight. But one raider? One search party?”
Lu shifted to sit up. The loss of her against him flooded him with cold, and he leaned on one elbow, chill bumps prickling across his bare skin.
The prickling sensation intensified at the way the blanket tucked under her arms, exposing the notches of her spine, the places his fingers had fit so perfectly last night.
A long moment of her dark eyes flashing through his. “All right. I’ll come with you.”
“I won’t let you surrender for Teo’s release,” Vex told her. He didn’t care if he sounded harsh. “It’ll come to that, if you’re there. Elazar will have your father and Ibarra, and I can’t—”
His voice broke. He linked his fingers around her creased elbow, running his thumb against the soft skin on the back of her arm.
I can’t lose you again.
Lu was silent a long while. Then, softly, “I killed Milo.”
“What?”
She looked away from him. “The magic I took gave me Incris powers. They’re still in me.” Her voice dipped, but she cleared her throat. “I know you don’t agree with permanent magic. I don’t either, anymore. But I used it to kill Milo—I can help you get Teo too. I could end this whole thing, I think. Elazar and Tom. I could kill them like I did Milo.”
Her voice sounded scared, small, and Vex ached for her.
“Would killing them really end this?” he asked. “After everything that’s happened—the refugees letting Argrid into the sanctuary; that man arguing with Ben—I don’t know this war is that simple. I don’t think it’s ever been that simple.”
Lu finally looked at him again. Vex inhaled.
Another long pause, and Lu seemed to decide something with a small nod.
“If you go after Teo,” she began, “where will you start?”
Shit, he didn’t know. New Deza, maybe? But there’d likely be defensors on guard—
Wait. “That defensor. Jakes,” Vex said. “Last I saw him, he was helping raiders make repairs. He’d know the rotation of Elazar’s soldiers, maybe where Tom might’ve taken Teo.”
Ben would know all this stuff, too. But Ben needed to stay with the main group for whatever final confrontation happened with Elazar. This, a quick mission to snatch Teo back from the monsters who stole him?
This was a job for a raider. For Devereux Bell.
Lu turned away. “He might help you, actually. He’s Teo’s uncle.”
Vex huffed. Oh—wait. That moment when Lu had silenced Jakes by saying, “That boy is Bianca’s son”—that was how she’d chosen to tell him he had a nephew?
Vex grinned. He had to admit he adored how heartless she could be.
Lu shook her head, biting her cheek. “I don’t know that he is trustworthy. But . . . maybe Teo will change things for him.”
“I can do this,” he told her. “I’ll bring Budwig so I can talk to you. You’ve healed me, too, after this.” He lifted the vial, uncorked it, and sucked down the contents.
It tasted like licking the side of a riverbed.
He grimaced. “See? All healed now. You’ll be at Kari’s side, helping with magic. Not permanent magic,” he amended when she opened her mouth to argue. “But magic, still. We’ll need it. And Ben will be the bridge between Grace Loray and Argrid. This is what I can do for the war—I can get Teo back. I can remove him from the equation.”
“Remove him from the equation,” Lu echoed. She smirked. “You don’t talk like that.”
“No. You do. You’ve been a terrible influence on me, Miss Andreu. I was once so innocent. Now look at me—volunteering for a role in a war. God”—he rolled his eye skyward—“my reputation will be in shambles.”
