Page 106 of These Divided Shores
Tom had gotten the vial of permanent magic she had left in the laboratory shack. She hadn’t expected an attack, not here. She hadn’t hidden it very well.
Elazar had both Teo and permanent magic now.
Lu buckled, falling to her hands and knees on the dirt road. Kari knelt beside her and placed a hand on her back. It did nothing to stanch the grief.
“Lu—I’m so sorry,” Vex rasped. He leaned forward, an arm’s length from her. “I’m so sorry. He was right here, and I let him goagain. If I’d been stronger—god, Lu, I’m sorry—”
Vex’s voice broke on a sob.
If Lu had worked harder on a cure for him instead of wasting time on permanent magic. If she’d stayed here instead of going after Elazar. If she had gone into the mission like Kari said instead of charging Milo and killing him.
If she’d done more or been more ortried more—
Lu shot forward and clamped her arms around Vex. He cried out in shock and relief and something like desperation—but he locked his arms around her in return, burying his face into her shoulder.
Lu had been afraid many times throughout her life. There was no name for what she felt now. Stronger than fear, more crippling than anger, she felt beyond herself, watching the monster of this loss rise and rise over her—
When its shadow darkened everything within her, Lu expected to dissolve. She expected to shove away from Vex and retreat back into that laboratory and do anything possible to make a weapon even stronger than permanent magic. She expected to claw for any defense possible.
Instead, she clung tighter to Vex.
“It isn’t your fault,” she told him. Told herself. “It isn’t your fault.”
Two days after Argridian forces surrendered in the revolution on Grace Loray, Elazar had paraded through the streets of Deza, outfitted in the emerald, daffodil yellow, and dull gray robes of Grace Neus, the Grace of altruism. Ben had trailed behind him, watching the train of Elazar’s robes brush dirt off the road.
Around them, Deza was in ruins.
No battle had ever touched Argridian soil, but the war had drained this country. They had never needed to divert funds to the military before. Money for city upkeep, maintenance, cleanliness, security—Argrid had sent every galle to Grace Loray, and what did they have to show for it?
Cobblestones were missing from the streets, gaping potholes that made for wrecked carriages and the abandonedcarcasses of horses with broken legs. Every city block had a designated place to burn diseased clothes, furniture, and bodies. Crude planks of wood barred closed storefronts. The air was rank with sweat, ash, and the sickly-sweet tartness of foul breath releasing illness into the pollution.
Elazar had turned his hands palm up to the sky. He walked and prayed, belting requests to the Pious God as he traipsed down road after road in Deza.
“Help us... forgive us... we are your servants... find us here...”
People had emerged from the ruins of this once-great city, pale, gaunt limbs slinking out of the shadows. They had terrified Ben, and he fought with every choking breath not to beg to return to the palace. Surely these bony, starved creatures weren’t the proud Argridians who had once bartered in prolific international trade. Surely those sunken eyes, those chapped lips, did not belong to citizens who had stood outside the palace, blazing with pride, chanting“Purify Grace Loray!”each time the war took a dire turn.
Elazar prayed more loudly, begging the Pious God to forgive Argrid. Argrid had desecrated Grace Loray. They had murdered hundreds of people and refused to relent until every last Argridian resource had been ripped away.
“Forgive us for failing you, Our Righteous God,” Elazar had bellowed instead. “Forgive us for losing Grace Loray. Forgive us for not fighting hard enough.”
People staggered closer to Elazar’s parade. Ben remembered the stark, sudden shift on their faces, a widening of those sunken eyes, a parting of those chapped lips.
This was the reason for their suffering. They had failed the Pious God, and he had punished them. They deserved this anguish—it made sense.
If they did better, if they fixed their failures, the Pious God would bless them.
The people lifted their hands. They wept.
“Forgive us for our failure,” Elazar shouted. “Forgive us.”
Ben realized, as he pushed to his feet in the Port Mesi-Teab sanctuary, that he had never been in a war. The fight to escape the prison had been a mad scramble for freedom with a clearly defined goal:Get out. Leave this place.And Deza after the revolution might have felt like being in a war zone, but the causes had been internal, the suffering self-inflicted.
But here. Standing on this dirt road in the sanctuary, a boot-print collage trailing in every direction, blood and ash and gunpowder painting sunbursts on the walls, people tending wounded with a distant look in their eyes, like they hadn’t woken up from a dream—it all saidinvasion.It all saidan enemy was here.It all saidwe did not choose this.
Ben took a step away from Vex and Lu, who still sat on the ground, holding each other. In a square ahead, Nayeli and a dozen other Tuncians wept, occasionally screaming to the sky.
Other people dragged blankets over bodies and knelt next to them, staring into the abyss of exhaustion and blankness. Kari talked with a few raiders, likely getting the details of what had happened, how Argrid had gotten in, who had betrayed the sanctuary.
