These Divided Shores, page 35
And he was gone, Gunnar grabbing his arm and pulling him off the edge as bullets flew.
“Adeluna!” Kari drew her back. The closest defensors were dealt with. “He’s heading for the castle—come!”
The last time Lu had seen the cobbled roads of New Deza, they had bustled with life, merchants and patrons and families, doors thrown open for inns and shops. Now the streets were as the rest of Grace Loray since Argrid’s takeover—rolled up on themselves in terror. Boards covered the delicate glass of shop windows; a sign painted with a red cow and pig hung crooked from its bracket. Above, shutters slammed and someone cried out.
The most direct route would take them through the city. Kari sprinted north, Lu at her heels, the other raiders rushing behind them.
The noises of the fighting drew closer to the castle’s courtyard with every passing breath. Vex waited, the seconds dragging through his body and stretching his resolve. When it snapped, he didn’t know what he’d do—dissolve, likely. There would be no body for the defensor with the torch to burn. He’d just disintegrate, float up into the clouds, and vanish.
Tom kept his arms behind his back, his focus on the planks under his boots. Occasionally he would look at Teo, then down again, eyes closing in something like pain. Vex hated him more—whatever internal struggle Tom was fighting, it made him way too human.
Next to Tom, Teo sobbed, facing Vex now, and that small spot of emotion was the only thing that kept Vex from begging for death.
A wail grew louder, coming up the road. Vex contorted to look over his shoulder. The raiders and defensors in the courtyard, three dozen at most, were focused on the open gate.
The attackers had made their way here after all.
Vex’s stomach sank. Lu and Ben had chosen to save him over stopping Elazar? No. They had to have something else—there was another reason—
Tom looked up. His face was mournful, sad almost— “Burn him!” he shouted.
Vex swung back to face him, mouth open.
“No!” The plea came from Teo, his face purple with agony. “I didn’t mean it—stop!”
Teo dove forward as if to leap off the platform. Tom grabbed his collar and yanked him back, slamming Teo to the wood planks.
Fury pierced Vex’s chest so brightly he thought it might explode out of him.
Teo dropped, weeping and scrambling across the platform, into the defensors at the rear of the wood.
“Do not shame your father,” Tom told him. “You have had many opportunities. Give in to your magic. Prove yourself. You can stop all of this! Stop making me do this!”
“I don’t want him!” Teo screamed. “I don’t want to be his son! Stop—Vex!”
The defensor with the lit torch approached Vex, flames extended toward the dry, eager kindling. Smoke streamed up from the torch. It smelled of death and ash and unadulterated fear.
“Teo! Teo, it’s—it’s okay—” Like hell was it okay, but god, what else could he say?
Vex slid on the loose wood, trying to kick the logs away while clawing himself up the pole. It was useless, but he fought, a frantic wail building in his chest as the defensor knelt, touched a log—and it caught.
Flames licked other logs, spreading around Vex in a hungry wreath. The wind shifted, whirling smoke into his face, and he gagged, unable to see or breathe and—
This was happening. This was what his father had gone through. A wall of smoke, a pause in which there was no sensation but sound, before . . . death.
Vex was going to burn alive, his death a means of bringing down Ben and Lu.
God. That really would be the only legacy he’d leave. Just Ben and Lu to mourn him, and mourn him for what? For the flippant jokes he’d tell, the useless way he’d follow them around?
When Rodrigu had burned, Vex had begged the monxes and defensors guarding him to stop it. “We haven’t done anything!” he’d tried to lie.
Those words filled him again now, this lie that had become his truth.
I haven’t done anything. I haven’t helped anyone. Papa, you’d be ashamed of me, wouldn’t you?
The fire found him, clawing at his boots with orange talons. Vex tugged fruitlessly against the chains holding him to the pyre. Tremors came and went in his frenzy.
He couldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die as nothing.
31
LU AND KARI reached the courtyard’s main gate along with a wave of raiders joining them from side streets in a rising wail of battle and pain.
The gate to the courtyard was open for them already, welcoming.
Before Lu passed through it, Nayeli slammed out of the crowd and into her, hooking one arm around her neck. In comfort, and to press her lips to Lu’s ear over the screaming, explosions, noise.
“Some raiders came out a little while ago,” she told her. “Thought they’d be on our side—they’re the ones we’ve been missing. But—”
“But Elazar changed them,” Lu finished.
Nayeli pulled back, no spark of the vivacious girl visible in her rage.
Together, they broke upon the courtyard. Defensors would be waiting for them, but raiders didn’t fear defensors. They feared nothing.
Except their own people, a dozen or more clustered in the castle’s yard, weapons out and ready. And Vex, tied to a burning pyre, Teo sobbing as Tom stood over them both.
Lu growled, and god, how she hated her father. Around her, the attacking raiders got no chance to rejoice that they had found the last of their missing people—the bodies packed in the courtyard turned on them, pistols firing and swords flashing and chaos descending as the attackers became the attacked. They hesitated—how could they attack their own people, friends, family?—and that hesitation cost lives in startled screams.
There was a scream from behind, the clash of battle, and Ben and Gunnar slid just inside the main gate, next to Lu. Gunnar immediately raced off toward Vex.
“Elazar’s forces followed us,” Ben told her, dirt smeared across his face. “But here—”
“We’ll be surrounded,” Lu finished. Dread settled in her as Nayeli screamed.
The scream became a name, pulsating with relief and agony. “Cansu!” Nayeli tore forward. “CANSU!”
Lu lost sight of her as people shifted. But Cansu whipped her head toward Nayeli’s cry, her face that same vacant, disconnected sheet that everyone else wore.
Tom had used Menesia to turn all these people into Elazar’s soldiers. Into defensors. He had forced them to surrender in the cruelest sense.
Nayeli stumbled out in front of Cansu. A space opened around them, the fighters giving them berth as other raiders struggled to reason with friends who beat at them.
Cansu ripped a sword out of her belt and swung at Nayeli, making her falter. Nayeli drew her own weapon and caught Cansu’s blow, shouting at her, “This isn’t you! Stop! Cansu—listen to me, stop!”
Everyone around them screamed the same thing. Stop, this isn’t you, stop, stop—
“The Bright Mint!” Lu shouted, her voice breaking. “Try—give them the Bright Mint!”
How? Manic as they were, these people wouldn’t willingly take it. And if Lu got to Vex and Teo, where would she take them? Out through this bloodbath of friends fighting friends?
Lu’s eyes went to the platform. A cloud of smoke dissipated into the black night sky, and she couldn’t see Vex now, but she saw bursts of flame—Gunnar.
Lu turned back to Ben. He nodded at her and together they bolted for the platform, Kari just behind.
All at once, the pain vanished. The flames, the orange and yellow fingers of light through the smoke—they were snuffed out. Was Vex dead? Had he passed out?
Grunting followed. A sharp yelp. Then a face burst through the smoke, a furious Mecht glare with blue eyes snapping from Vex to the chains.
“Gunnar!” Vex gasped. “BEN!”
“He is here” was all Gunnar said.
Vex shrank back as Gunnar grabbed the chains. A ball of fire surrounded his hand, singeing Vex’s arm, and he cried out as Gunnar melted through the links. The chains dropped to the ground and Gunnar immediately spun away, sending blasts of fire at oncoming attackers.
With the smoke clearing, Vex could see the fight now. The courtyard was a mess of bodies and weapons and clashing raiders, defensors, everyone. More people spilled in through the gate, chasing others or running from pursuers, the yard swelling with bloodlust.
Vex stumbled forward and dropped to his knees, hacking for fresh air. Kindling scattered around him, charred and blackened, and Vex had a brief, terrifying realization that he must look like that, too. Soot covered and singed.
Shaking, he shoved to his feet. “Lu!” Where the hell had Gunnar gone? “Ben—”
Vex turned. He’d expected Tom to be cowering in a knot of soldiers—but he still stood at the front of the platform.
Only now, he had a naked pistol in his hand, the barrel pressed into Teo’s neck.
Ben ran.
In his darkest nightmares, the ones that made him relive Rodrigu and Paxben’s burning, he’d tried to run. But he’d been stuck in place, straining to get to their pyres as monxes with hollow black eyes swung lit torches toward their kindling. He could never make it, and many nights, Ben had woken himself up screaming for them.
Running now, dodging fighting enemies, pausing to evade blows—it felt like that. Moving but not moving, going but making no progress.
Gunnar had gotten Vex off the pyre. Ben pressed on, tasting salt on his lips, humidity and heat and the building storm of the courtyard making everything hot and unstable.
He slammed out of the fighting and into the side of the platform. There—Tomás Andreu still stood at the front, a gun now to Teo’s head. Where was Vex? Gunnar? It didn’t matter—
Ben braced his hands on the wood and got one knee onto it before something metal pressed the knot of his hair into his neck.
“Ben,” Jakes said, “give me the vial.”
Hands lifted more in caution than surrender, Ben eased off the platform and turned.
He had never seen Jakes so undone. His wide, dark eyes were entirely bloodshot, their color making the tears in them blend with the blotched redness of his face. He panted, each breath grating, and he seemed to be using physical effort to hold his eyes on Ben—and not look at Teo, just back on the platform, with a gun to his head.
Jakes cocked his pistol and refocused it on Ben’s chest. “I saw you reveal it to Elazar. Give the vial to me.”
“Jakes—”
“We both know you aren’t going to take it. He’ll get it, and he already took the one—he’s unstoppable now!”
A wave of fire shot from Ben’s left. Jakes cried out and stumbled back, and it took all of Ben’s fortitude to reach through the flames, grab Gunnar’s arm, and yank him aside.
“Where’s Vex?” Ben asked.
Gunnar blinked, his eyes darting back to Jakes. “Let me kill him. Let me—”
“Where’s my cousin?”
Gunnar nodded over his shoulder.
Ben whipped to the front of the platform, the area cut off by the fighting crowd. More defensors and raiders alike poured through the front gate, Elazar’s numbers adding in with Rosalia’s, Nate’s, Nayeli’s—this area would be a graveyard in minutes.
In front of the platform, the area before the pyre, Vex stood, looking up at Tom and Teo. Back in the fray, Ben spotted Kari and Lu, fighting to get to Vex.
“Get to Teo,” Ben told Gunnar.
“Ben!” Jakes screamed. It ripped each sound to pieces.
Ben spun around to see Jakes aiming the pistol again, his arm shaking, tears pouring down his cheeks. Gunnar lunged, and Jakes faltered back, pinning the gun on him instead.
“Don’t make me do this, Ben,” Jakes pleaded. “If everyone had magic, if everyone had power, we wouldn’t need to fight. My family wanted the world free. They wanted an end to these senseless struggles. They wanted—”
“What do you want?” Ben heard himself ask. The pistol aimed at Gunnar tapped an unknown well of calm, and Ben willed it to pour out of him.
An echoing trumpet cut across the yard. The fighting paused, but paused like someone ducking to avoid a stray bullet—it instantly picked up again, frenzied and bloody.
Through the gate, arms lifted, Elazar marched into the battle.
Ben heaved. His father didn’t fight. His father let others die for him. This wasn’t his—
Elazar walked up to a group of enemies and swung his lifted hands into them. Bodies flew through the air, tossed like barrels onto a ship. Elazar, his face glistening with righteous purpose, carved through the horde. Arms flew, his body twisted, strength and speed and—
Croxy. Pious God above. Lu had put Croxy, the rage-inducing plant, into her permanent magic tonic. And that was what had chosen to stick in Elazar—the plant that would give him not only formidable strength but unstoppable will and force.
Jakes saw it, too. “Ben—give it to me!” He shook the gun. “Don’t make me kill the Mecht—give me the vial!”
Kari took the brunt of the assault, batting aside swords and yanking Lu out of the path of bullets.
Vex was before the platform. Caved forward, hacking and covered in soot, but alive, and Lu shot through an opening between a defensor and raider engaged in combat. The Incris in her body sent her flying, and in a breath, she flung herself at Vex.
He turned, caught her, air leaving him in a cry of alarm and grief.
“Lu—” Vex was pushing her away. “Lu—Teo.”
She spun, shoving Vex behind her.
Teo’s eyes were pinched shut, his whole face wrinkled in terror. Tom held the gun to his neck, his expression drawn and mangled and distraught.
He had brought Teo here, amidst the guns and the people dying on swords and the friends slaughtering each other, just as he had forced him into the sanctuary slaughter. As though a child had any place here—
But Teo wasn’t a child anymore, Lu realized with a heartbreaking cry. He was a soldier, as she had been, a weapon Tom had stripped of all innocence.
Defensors made a ring around her and Vex, blocking the battle from the platform. Kari was outside the ring, fighting to get in, her face livid at the sight of Tom and his gun.
Lu had two pistols at her thighs, pouches of explosive and dangerous plants in her pockets. Could the Incris move her faster than bullets?
“Adeluna,” Tom said. He didn’t lower his gun from Teo, but his face softened as he looked down at her. “You will understand. It shouldn’t have come to this, but—”
Tom cocked the gun. Teo sobbed, trying to stay immobile, his eyes pinched shut.
The world dissolved.
Lu held her hands out, aching and empty and more scared than she’d ever been in her life. “Stop,” she tried. “Just let him go.”
Tears welled in Tom’s eyes. Tears. “Teo, you have to give in,” Tom told him. He shook the gun against Teo’s skin. “I know you have magic. You have to have magic in you. Too much is at stake. I’ve given everything, I’ve done everything—please, Pious God, please let him have magic. Don’t make me do this, Teo. Prove yourself.”
Tom looked back at Lu and smiled through his tears. “Everything’s falling apart, isn’t it? My king forbade me to affect you while you were working on his potion, but I’ll make you better after this, I promise. You won’t remember it. I can fix us again, I’ll fix everything—”
Again. The Menesia he had used on her.
Air knotted in Lu’s throat. Vex said something to her, reassurances, but she saw only Teo, who managed to open his eyes.
When he saw her, every tight muscle released in sorrow. “Lu, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Teo, it’s all right,” she told him. “Teo—look at me—it’ll be—”
Tom shook his head, a violent lurch. “No! Teo—you have to do this. You have to be a good boy, you have to be strong. You don’t understand what I did to protect you. Try, Teo. Try to use magic.”
“He doesn’t have magic,” Lu said. Her voice shook. “It’s over, Tom. Let him go. Elazar already took the vial I made, anyway. You don’t need Teo anymore.”
“I didn’t intend to sacrifice you,” Tom blubbered. “I never intended to sacrifice either of you. You were meant to give Ibarra information in the safe house, not resist him to the point of torture. But when you did, when I saw the lengths the Pious God went to with the tools offered up to him . . . I couldn’t stomach my children being used like that. I’ve sacrificed everything else. I have been loyal in every other way. I was wrong to keep him secret, wasn’t I? I was wrong, Pious God forgive me—”
Lu had guessed, days ago, that Tom had given her Menesia to make her forget his involvement with Bianca and Annalisa, and to cover up Teo’s role in Elazar’s plans. Rage overwhelmed her now. She had never been more of a weapon than she was in that moment, and she would have charged the platform if not for Vex’s hands on her arm.
“Who is he?” Lu demanded.
She knew, though. She knew in the way Tom sobbed and begged Teo to try, he didn’t want to kill him, but he couldn’t fail the Eminence King, and people must believe that he was Elazar’s son. They would believe if the Pious God blessed Teo with powers.
But Teo wasn’t Elazar’s son. He was Tom’s.
A trumpet. There was a pause in the fighting, a gulp of breath, and Lu dared glance back.
Elazar had joined the attack.
She didn’t let herself watch him long. Resolve tasted like iron and blood, and Lu’s eyes scrambled to find a solution—
“Give it to me!”
The voice grabbed Lu. On the side of the platform, beyond a knot of clashing defensors and raiders, Jakes stood with a pistol aimed at Gunnar. Next to him, Ben had his hands out.
Lu had nothing but a wild, wicked hope.
She curled her fingers around a brown pod and pulled the Rhodofume from her pocket.
Guns fired. Her people, raiders, Grace Lorayans, were dying. Elazar was here now, enhanced with permanent magic, and there was no way to escape this courtyard without death.
Lu breathed, and leveled, and looked at Jakes.
