Page 146 of These Divided Shores
Defensors lowered their weapons. Elazar’s devoted servants stared in horrified wonder.
Vex fought to stay upright, to revel in their amazement, but his body had gone too far. He pitched to the side and curled inward, a tremor contorting him into an unyielding knot of limbs and bones and a stunted cry.
Hands on his face, smoothing his hair back. “Vex—can you hear me?”
He couldn’t breathe without his lungs feeling like they’d catch fire. Even the act of closing his eye drove spirals of anguish down his bones, and he felt something crack in his leg, another, tremors shaking him apart from the inside.
“Heal him!” Nayeli, frantic. “You healed him once—heal him again!”
“I didn’t heal him! That’s why—oh god, he shouldn’t have taken it—”
Vex bit down on his tongue and pried his eye open. He knew he was fading, fading fast—he scrambled through the delirium with one last, feeble grasp at the sights around him.
Lu, his head on her lap, tendrils of her hair flurrying around her face. Nayeli, over her, lips moving as she said something, or prayed maybe.
And Ben, standing halfway between Vex and Elazar—who was motionless on the ground, a sword sticking out of his chest, his eyes gaping up at the star-filled sky in a permanent look of surprise.
Ben’s gaze followed Vex’s. His lips parted. “He’s dead,” Ben said, an echo down a long tunnel as he took a staggering step back.
Lu and Nayeli whipped to him. Vex heard the wordsdead, Elazar.
Ben slid to the ground, on his knees.
Irmán, Vex wanted to say.Irmán, he can’t hurt us anymore.
There was no strength left. Vex had reached the end of his possibility, drawn thin over pyres and magic and memories.
He closed his eye. He was so tired.
33
BEN SAT INthe castle’s courtroom, a long space filled with wooden pews framed by marble columns. The vaulted ceiling towered up around a brilliant chandelier, and it was that glittering diamond light that Ben watched as a defensor knelt on the tiled floor.
“All Argridian forces are converging on New Deza,” the defensor said in clear Grace Lorayan. “They sent me ahead to ensure you perceive no ill will from their arrival. They are coming peacefully to surrender to the new—”
The defensor paused.
Ben swallowed, still unable to look at the man due to the exhaustion and disbelief that muddled his brain. Or maybe it was that the battle had been only three days ago, and his soul hadn’t had time to untangle itself.
Once news spread of Elazar’s defeat and a Grace Lorayan base had been established in the castle, reports had trickledin of battles in other ports, other villages. Here twenty Grace Lorayans were dead by their own relatives, recently released from Elazar’s prison; there, defensors had killed a dozen people. A stack of parchment sat on a desk in the rear of the courtroom, listing the lives lost from Elazar’s failed attempt at slaughtering everyone on Grace Loray.
No one had had the fortitude to total the numbers yet.
But Elazar’s death and the decimation of his forces in New Deza had sent a message to all his remaining defensors: Argrid had lost. Elazar’s plan had failed.
The Pious God Incarnate had been killed.
What that meant for those who followed Elazar willingly, who believed in the righteousness of the Church, Ben didn’t yet know. But this defensor, who had come as a messenger, had bowed his surrender into a castle crowded with raiders, defensors, and wounded, many struggling through the ebbing fogs of Menesia as they waited for Lu and others to prepare doses of Bright Mint to counteract the magic. It felt as though they were still on a battlefield, not reveling in victory and preparing steps into the future.
They had, in fact, won. But it felt as though they had just barely survived.
Ben sat on the steps of the dais, in front of the pews that had been turned into cots, listening to people moan and beg for water, food, more healing plants.
“They are coming peacefully,” the defensor repeated, “to surrender to our new king-in-waiting.”
“They will discard all weapons outside the castle grounds,” Kari said. She had positioned herself on the dais behind Ben. How she was still able to stand after everything was beyond him. But she towered over the defensor, with Pierce, Nate, and Rosalia briefly leaving their people to stand with her.
A few other people joined them, too—councilmembers, Ben had heard someone say. Slowly, Grace Loray’s government was coming back together. Or together in a new way.
