Page 131 of These Divided Shores
Lu had made sure every pocket was stuffed with plants, small, discreet vials and pouches. Defensors searched themfor weapons—they took a few vials of plants but didn’t find all of them—and, hand in hand, Ben and Lu walked toward the platform.
All the raiders stayed on their boats. When the fighting started, Ben and Lu would be separated from any allies until they fought their way through, unless Nayeli’s people had made it into the crowd.
Brittle hope and handfuls of magic were the only things that would keep them alive.
The silence held as Ben and Lu walked up the platform. When he stood on the wooden planks, able to see far across the crowd, unease drove into Ben’s chest. Many of these faces had masks of blankness similar to Pilkvist’s. Had they been in Argrid, Ben would have dismissed it as devotion—but had Elazar inspired that deep piety here? Or had he already given them Menesia? Were Ben and Lu too late?
Elazar moved to the front center of the platform, his body cocked slightly toward the crowd but his arms open to Ben. “Benat Gallego,” he said, voice rising. “And Adeluna Andreu. The Pious God is eager for you to return to his fold. Kneel and offer your surrender.”
Ben swallowed. He expected to kneel first, to have to pull Lu to her knees beside him, but Lu stepped ahead of him and lowered herself to the platform, back stiff and eyes on the wood.
“Benat,” Elazar prodded, his arms still spread.
Defensors rimmed the platform at Ben’s feet. They stood at the rear of the stage, by the steps, held pistols on the tide wall above—waiting on Elazar’s orders, should Ben falter.
Elazar, though, was calm and sure. Joyful, even.
“No,” Ben said.
Elazar’s arms slid down. “No?”
Ben had been reciting questions for days, things he would ask his father to get him to prove his madness before the crowd:
You say I am impure—but I came from you, so does that not also make you impure?
When did my impurity start? Everyone I caught as an Inquisitor in Argrid—you should release them, for I captured them while under the Devil’s hold, and their arrests were therefore to serve him, not the Pious God.
A dozen questions rolled through Ben’s mind. But only one came out of his mouth.
“Have you ever loved me?”
Elazar’s eyebrows shot up. The question was as unexpected for him as it was for Ben, who trembled in the wake of it, not realizing how desperately he had always wanted to ask that.
“Did you love my mother? Your parents?” Ben continued, heat rising in his chest. “Are you even capable? Am I a fool, to keep expecting something from you that you cannot give?”
For one shallow inhale, Ben saw hesitation on Elazar’sface. The corners of his mouth dipped downward, his eyes narrow, calculating.
Ben knew, if Lu had asked that question of Kari, she would have responded simply, but far more meaningfully:Yes. Yes, I love you. Of course I love you.
“You don’t, though,” Ben whispered. “You don’t love me.”
He was small again, a boy in awe of his father, the king, the Eminence. He was a child, and Ben staggered, facing the crowd.
“I trusted this man,” Ben shouted, pointing at Elazar. “I was once every version of you—eager and hopeful and so in love with King Asentzio Elazar Gallego that every word from him sounded dipped in honey. But I promise you”—here was where bullets would fly, if Elazar wanted. Here was where he would realize his son had no intention of bowing to him—“Ipromiseyou that he is a lie. Everything about him, every word he says.Lies.”
Ben faced Elazar, vibrating in a lifetime of repressed actions, unspoken words.
And Elazar stood there, watching him, an unreadable face framed by waiting defensors.
“He killed my family,” Ben said, the truth scraping up through his soul and falling out of him in a rush of breath and tears. “You—you—murdered everyone I loved and made me watch as they burned,alive.You let your monxes beat me—youbeat me until my bones snapped. I lost myself in a dozen different vices trying to escape thethings you did to me. You speak of benevolence as though you know it so well, and of mercy and love and honesty, and I believed you were those things. I don’t believe anymore.” Ben’s tongue was aflame, his soul rapturing from his body. “I don’t believe in you.”
He waited, expecting gunshots.
The crowd murmured. A handful of people gaped at him, the weight of his words shattering what hold Elazar had had on them; others stared in that glazed unawareness, hardly having moved since Ben started speaking.
“I knew,” Elazar started, and he faced the crowd, “that it was too much to hope that Benat had chosen to renounce evil. But I told you, Grace Loray—my son has returned to me. The Pious God makes a way, as long as the faithful remain true. And he has presented a way.”
The adrenaline that had wrapped around every word from Ben returned on him tenfold, panic and dread a toxic brew. Elazar would force Menesia on him, like he had on Cansu.
