Page 59 of These Divided Shores
Ben’s face paled, his lips in a thin line as Pierce shot off the desk.
“Waaaita goddamn second,” he said, and pointed at Ben. “Argrid is currently ransacking our island. We’ve named this place our stronghold—fine. But the Crown Prince is listening in on everything we say.”
Ben had considered not going to the meeting and instead hiding while Grace Loray fought for Grace Loray. But whatever the raider Heads, Kari, and the rest of them decided, it would affect Ben’s country, too.
All eyes swung toward him.
“Kill him,” Rosalia suggested. Ben winced. “Elazar should suffer the consequences if he’s dumb enough to use his own son as a spy. There’s no glory in that.”
“Stop!”
The group turned to Lu. Ben’s soul cramped in sympathy. They had barely arrived here after having fled PortCamden for their lives. If he was exhausted, she had to be fighting for consciousness with each breath.
“I watched his father torture him,” Lu continued. “I saw firsthand the cruelty Elazar showed his own son. Ben turned on his father and refused to be part of Elazar’s madness.”
“We’re supposed to believe the prince had a miraculous change of conscience?” Pierce scoffed. “He’s still an Argridian leader. We can forgive him for the acts committed when he was a wee princeling, but what about in recent years? He stood by while Argrid did a lot of awful shit. Why now, sweetness?” Pierce threw the question at Ben. “Why’d you turn on your fathernow?”
Fatemah, Pierce, and Rosalia waited. Nate lounged back in his chair, his eyes shooting up to Ben with a similar hatred.
A headache drove into Ben’s neck. What Pierce accused him of was true. He had watched burnings in Deza, overseen debt and disease grip his country—and whiled away hours drinking and tangled in bed with Jakes to avoid confronting the impossible task of changing Argrid. Why had it taken him so long to wake up?
Because Ben hadn’t been part of it before, not directly. But when Elazar had tasked him with working in magic, Ben had become complicit in hurting people. Elazar hadn’t pushed him too far until he’d threatened to put blood on Ben’s hands, not just Argrid’s soil.
Disgusting, Ben thought. He had never realized what hisbreaking point had been.
A brush of heat. Ben tipped his head to see Gunnar beside him, silent support.
“Elazar asked too much of him. Of us both,” Lu answered for him. “He asked us to make permanent magic for him.”
The bottom of Ben’s stomach dropped out.
Rosalia, Nate, Pierce, and Fatemah spun on Lu.
“Permanentmagic?” Pierce echoed. “You want to expand on that, love?”
The tension in Lu’s shoulders eased. A gasp tumbled from Ben’s lips.
Permanent magic had not been a factor to the raiders in this war until now.
“It’s what Elazar wants,” Lu said. “He wants to weaponize magic by making it permanent. Powersage, for endless strength; Cleanse Root, for healing; Incris, for speed—all of them. That’s why he’s taken so many people. To experiment on them. That’s what this war is about—Elazar wants ultimate, unstoppable power.”
Silence gripped the room. Pierce was the first to speak, his eyes narrowed.
“And he thinks you—and the princeling—can give him that?”
“None of the people we saved mentioned anything about Elazar’s people experimenting on them,” Kari interrupted, eyes on her daughter. “We would have seen or heard something—”
Rosalia whistled, ignoring her. “Shame and hell, with permanent magic, we’d get our people back and never have to worry about an enemy again.”
“Permanent magic is not Elazar’s ultimate plan,” Kari tried. “That ishowhe will enact his ultimate plan. What will he use it for? Does he mean to purge all the raiders, as he has said? We need answers to these questions before we form our next steps.”
“A purifying light,” Ben said.“Elazar kept talking about a light bathing Grace Loray, starting in the outer ports and culminating in New Deza. Blessings to those who obey and punishment to anyone who fights. We thought the light might have been Elazar giving permanent magic to his most loyal defensors, but the fact that he is still moving forward with his plans without having permanent magic—he has something else in the works. Some of his priests announced it on our way in, and dozens of his defensors were at Fort Chastity. I think my father knows we retreated to Port Mesi-Teab, and whatever he has planned will happen here first.”
“Whatever Elazar’s gonna do doesn’t matter now, does it?” Pierce surveyed Lu. Vex snarled, looking liable to murder him. “Not if we have a weapon like permanent magic. Can you really make it?”
Kari surged forward. “No. She can’t.”
Pierce gave Kari a sardonic look. “I’d like to hear for myself, Madam Councilmember.”
