Page 75 of These Divided Shores
Her heart didn’t beat. Her mind didn’t spin. She was blood and rage and she hadn’t come here to destroy Tom’s plants or stop his progress on permanent magic. She had come here to stophim, to feel something, to steal herself back from him.
Tom stopped. His face rippled with understanding, followed by agony. “You’ve remembered, then,” he whispered.
Lu’s pistol bobbed. Remembered? Remembered what?
“Lu?” Rosalia said. “This him?”
“I begged the king, for all my years of loyal service, not to put you in that cell, Lulu-bean,” Tom said. “It was why you woke up in that room with me. And if you had listened, you would still be unaware of your memories.”
“Memories?” Lu re-aimed, refocused. “You’re stalling.”
She swept the room, seeing no other defensors, hearing no raised alarms. But the explosions she had set off must have alerted someone.
Tom took another step closer. His agony cracked into uncertainty, eyes narrowing. “It was why I didn’t visit youin the prison. I thought you would need time to reconcile your new memories. The Bright Mint in the prison. The defensors gave you small doses of Narcotium Creeper to counter it, but I feared—” He stopped when the confusion didn’t leave Lu’s face.
Bright Mint was in the Port Camden prison’s walls. A green, bushy plant used to enhance mental clarity—countered by Narcotium Creeper, a plant that caused delirium. It was not unsurprising that the plant used to enhance thought could cause insanity in high doses—and that the plant known for causing hallucinations would balance it out. It was poetic, almost.
Lu’s mind raced. Bright Mint could be countered by Narcotium Creeper, as Tom had said. But Bright Mint also had connections to another mind-altering plant: Menesia.
Argridians had given Menesia—the memory-erasing plant—to the Mecht raiders in the Port Camden prison’s laboratory. But anyone who forgot things using Menesia could undo the magic with Bright Mint.
Lu’s world went to shadows, back to light. “You thought I remembered something,” she rasped. “You’ve given me Menesia.”
Tom wheezed in relief. “The Narcotium Creeper was enough to keep the prison’s Bright Mint from undoing the Menesia? Thank the Pious God. Lulu-bean, he watches out for you—”
“What did you think I had remembered? Did you do it to Kari, too? Did you—”
“Lu.” Nayeli’s hand closed over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this. We can destroy these crates and leave.”
“No!” Tom was just as insistent. “You don’t understand what the Pious God has helped me do—because ofyou, sweetheart! The Bright Mint, in the bricks. Thinking of you in that cell, with that magic—it made me ill. But I also realized—Bright Mint, inEmerdian bricks, enhancing the effects.The Mechts, using Eye of the Sun. And Tuncians—their spices. The people on this island have been combining their individual heritages with Grace Loray’s magic and getting spectacular results.”
Tom had realized the connection as Lu had. She had given him the idea about Tuncian spices. This was her fault.
Her gun was at her side. When had she lowered it?
“And Menesia.” Tom smiled. “Pious God—it was in front of us all along.Menesia.But only the naturally permanent plants last, love, and I know you are close to makingeveryplant permanent. The two of us can do it together! Stay here. Workwithme—”
“Menesia?” What had he discovered about Menesia? Lu lifted her pistol again, but her hand shook. Deeper and deeper the secrets ran; deeper and deeper thelies.“Stop,stop—”
Tom raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “Lulu-bean,please stay with me. Don’t—” His voice caught on sorrow. “There is another piece at play that I can still stop if you stay here. You won’t want me to use it, and I canstopit, but you have to decide now!”
Another piece? What was he talking about?
“To hell with this!” Rosalia bellowed, and shot Tom.
Lu’s body jolted with the gunshot. Tom spun backward in a spray of blood, then righted, his hand to his shoulder and his face contorted in shock and pain.
“Use the Variegated Holly!” Rosalia screamed. “Now—let’sgo!”
Nayeli moved, lighting matches and throwing the explosive plant at the crates. Lu heard it, then—shouting. Distant, thundering footsteps, cries of alarm and fear.
The crowd above. Whatever Elazar had organized—it had turned.
Vex, Edda, Ben, Gunnar—they were all in it.
Lu clawed to the top of herself. A glimpse of light, a single breath, and she focused—
Tom had vanished.
