Page 91 of These Divided Shores
Vex shot up from the floor and launched himself at the cell bars. “Lu—talk to me. Lu—”
“It’s too late,” Jakes said. His eyes were on Ben. “She did it. She took it herself.”
Ben wheezed. “Permanent magic?”
Jakes nodded, smiling.
The breath left Ben’s chest. Jakes washappythat Lu had created permanent magic? And that Lu had taken it herself?
“Did you—” Vex started to ask, but gulped down the question. “Lu. Are you all right?”
Lu’s eyes lifted to Vex, but she didn’t respond. She turned to Ben. “Elazar is almost to Port Fausta. We’re leaving to meet him there, scout his gathering, and attack. We’ll get Teo. We’ll get Cansu. We’ll free everyone. And I—”
She moved closer to where Ben stood against his bars and reached through to press her hand to his chest. He felt something against her palm—a vial. Permanent magic?
“You remember what we did in the prison,” she pushed on, the words causing her pain. “You have to make cures for Vex. You have to keep going.”
Ben took the vial from her. Was it not permanent magic? By the earnest way she looked at him, it was clear she didn’t want the others to know she was giving this to him.
“There’s one more. In the shack,” she told him. She hesitated. “Jakes. Can he be trusted?”
Ben’s response was instant. “No.”
Lu turned, moving fast—faster than should have been possible—out of the hall.
Vex jerked after her. “Lu!”
Nayeli remained. “Edda’s staying here to help guard the sanctuary.” She didn’t acknowledge anyone other than Vex. “We’ll come back. I’ll bring Lu back.”
She left.
Tonight. The raiders would leave to attack Elazar tonight.
No—it couldn’t be that simple. They couldn’t destroy him in one easy battle.
But Lu had permanent magic. That could change... everything.
Ben knew his realization was clear on his face when Jakes bowed his head. “King Benat Elazar Asentzio Gallego,” he said, all mockery gone.
The world rocked, one violent shift. When his father died, Ben would take the title-name of Elazar. It was tainted now. Desecrated.
Ben turned away, blood rushing to his head, his grip tightening on the vial of Lu’s magic. He shoved it into his pocket. Had she meant for him to drink it? Or had she given it to him because she knew hewouldn’tdrink it?
“The walls are wood,” Gunnar noted. He birthed a flame in his palm. “I can burn our way through—”
“Don’t. Please.”
The flame went out. “This is your fight,” Gunnar said, as though Ben might not know. “You do not deserve to be in here while your country wars out there.”
“I need these people to trust me.” Ben cleared his throat, trying to be resolute, but he couldn’t hear his own conviction over the screaming in his mind. “If I can’t get the people of Grace Loray to trust me, how can I ever win over Argrid? I have the same problem there that I do here—this isn’t a war of weapons, it’s a war of hearts. Even if my father is overthrown tonight, he will still win this war, because he was so effective at playing this game and has planted belief so thoroughly. I don’t even know where to start.”
Jakes looked at him. “You lie,” he said in Argridian. “It’s the only way to survive. I thought you knew that—you lied for years, too.”
“What happened to you?” Ben twisted, facing Jakes for the first time, an anxious quiver vibrating him head to toe. “You’re a defensor of the Church. Your piety was what kept me going most days, trying to be worthy of you. What are you doing? Tell me the truth. You owe me that.”
Exhaustion left purple bruises around Jakes’s eyes. “I don’t owe you anything. Your unreliability has been—”
Ben barked a laugh. “Myunreliability?”
