Page 43 of These Divided Shores
Ben shouted. It carried—not a word, a name. “Lu!”
Vex gaped. Why had Ben shouted that? He couldn’t mean—
A heartbeat later, a third person appeared down the hall, and the exhaustion in her gaze made him tired by extension. Vex watched her shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall. He hadn’t known a simple motion could make him so elated—
Vex’s knees hit the stones. A tremor pitched him and he caught himself on the floor, joy bursting through his body in waves he, for once, welcomed.
Lu was alive.
11
LU’S LIMBS FLAREDto readiness, legs set to run, arms set to fight. They were so close to escape. She would not let Milo—standing at the end of this hall, holding that lantern—bar their way.
“Lu.” Ben reached for her. Why wasn’t he panicking? Oh no—could he not see Milo? Was this another delusion of this hellish place, like that vision of her parents and Vex’s voice?
Ben’s fingers closed around her wrist. The bell tolled, matching the tempo of her heart.
Lu lurched back. “Let me go! He’s there, Milo—please don’t—”
People she didn’t know filled the end of the hall, holding weapons and lanterns that chased the darkness. None of them were defensors. The man—he wasn’t holding a lantern, he wasn’t sneering at her—dropped to the floor withhis hands out, his eye wide and his mouth open and the whole of his soul pooled in the look he gave her.
“Lu,” he said. And again, smiling through tears, “Lu—”
Lu’s body slackened. Ben released her, but his hands were out as though he would grab her should she run. She might, still—she gaped at the man saying her name.
“Vex?” she panted. She shook her head, and it broke her heart that she didn’t trust herself or the soft, imploring way he called to her.
“He’s here,” Ben assured her. “He’s really here.”
Her shoulders caved. And she was running. Running as she had up the prison’s halls, to escape one thing and reach another—imprisonment for freedom, terror for joy.
Vex was the reason for the warning bell. He was here.
Lu dropped to her knees before him. Vex lunged forward, scooping her up so their torsos collided and knocked the air from her lungs. The reassurance of that force made her sob, and the scent of him, sweat and ashy fire smoke and spice, sent her anxiety skittering.
She pressed closer, not close enough, wanting to claw into him and feel his heartbeat thunder alongside hers. His own passion ruptured in the way he clamped one of his hands around the back of her neck, the other digging into her hip, resolute and present, here andreal.
“We have to go!” one of the people behind Vex shouted. “We don’t have time!”
Gunnar and Ben brushed past them, and adrenalineflooded Lu again. She grabbed Vex and hauled him up, but he buckled.
Edda was in front of them, tears glossy on her cheeks. “His Shaking Sickness—”
“Damn it, Edda,I’m fine,” he snapped.
His Shaking Sickness had progressed in the time they’d been apart. Guilt rendered Lu silent. She looped Vex’s arm around her neck and helped him up the hall with the mass of people clawing for the surface.
Edda fell in step beside them and pulled a vial from her vest. “What about you?”
She offered Lu the vial. Lu frowned, heart thudding at the idea of more magic.
“Narcotium Creeper,” Edda explained. “To combat the Bright Mint in the stones.”
“Bright Mint?” Lu almost lost her footing.
“You didn’t know?” Vex eyed her. Lu swayed to see his face, to hear his voice,hisvoice. “The Emerdians cook it into the stones. It enhances the Bright Mint’s effects. It didn’t get to you?”
“Elazar gave us an antidote.” Lu nodded at Ben. That was all she could muster.
