Page 117 of These Divided Shores
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. “Aftereverything 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 thathe 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.”
