Page 139 of These Divided Shores
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 tosurrender 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 eyessnapping 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. Buthe’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.”
