Page 81 of These Divided Shores
Teo was gone. He was a prisoner of Elazar—of Milo. As she had once been, not much older than him, tied to a chair in a safe house.
Her mission to Fort Chastity had sent slivered cracks through her drive to end this war, letting in the faintest rays of reconsidering other paths. Now, those cracks smoothed over, an unbreakable varnish of fury and dread.
Tom and Elazar had wanted her to return to them, tomake permanent magic for them. They were so certain of her weaknesses and thought they could play her by kidnapping Teo.
No more hesitation. No more weighing morality.
She would obliterate them.
Ben was tired. He was sore, beaten and bruised and aching. Behind him, waves of Gunnar’s heat raged, the same that had drenched their boat in sweat and stifling breath.
He was furious that Ben had brought Jakes.
Ben was furious that all this had happened, every moment, and that he had to stand here, listening to Kari try to soothe Fatemah, only to have Fatemah whip on him with an unrepentant barrage of hatred.
Jakes made a moan of coming to. Fatemah’s eyes dropped to him.
“You brought a defensor here,” she stated. Her hatred sharpened, found its mark.
The crowd of refugees gasped. The raiders bellowed in shock and objection.
“As a prisoner,” Ben stated. “He knows my father’s plans. He has—”
“The Argridian prince left with two of my raiders”—Fatemah licked her lips, her teary eyes leaping back up to his—“and returned without them—and with a defensor instead.”
Fingers gripped Ben’s wrist at the same moment he feltthe intensity of what he had done. He glanced to the side, saw Gunnar, backing him up, even with their disagreement.
He had no time to think further. Fatemah waved a hand, and one of her raiders slid a sword out of a holster on his back. Ben had seen similar weapons during his few visits to Tuncay—a brutal, jagged blade that weighed as much as some full-grown men.
Other raiders reacted. Emerdians armed themselves; the group of Grozdans, behind Rosalia, did the same. The refugees screamed.
Ben held up his hands. “I don’t want to fight—”
Fatemah ignored him. “We gave you liberties—but we owe you nothing. Even those of Argridian descent here owe younothing.You are deposed, exiled, worthless in—”
“Fatemah, stop!”
Vex staggered forward. Behind him, Edda rocked in the torchlight; Lu, her arms folded, glowered from the shadows. Ben’s heart squeezed with sorrow on her behalf, for Teo—but Vex’s fury raged bright and high.
Ben couldn’t remember ever seeing Paxben upset. Not like this, shoulders hunched and eye bent and lips pulled back in dire focus through the blotchy redness on his face.
He looked like Rodrigu.
“I won’t let you talk to him like that,” Vex told Fatemah.
Fatemah laughed in furious amusement. “Youwon’t let me?”
Vex went rigid. He looked at Ben, the rage on his face flickering away to worry.
Ben wavered. Gunnar’s hand went to the small of his back, holding him still.
“What is going on, Devereux?” Fatemah asked, her tone a threat. “Why do you, an unaligned Grace Lorayan raider, defend the Crown Prince of Argrid?”
Vex closed his eye as if unable to watch the coming storm. “He’s my cousin,” he whispered, three small words that sucked in all the surrounding noise until there was only that admission.
Fatemah was the first to recover. “You are the nephew of Elazar?”
“Fatemah.” Vex shivered but faced her. “Fatemah, you know me. You’ve known me for years. You haven’t always liked me, I admit, butyou know me—”
