Page 110 of These Divided Shores
Rosalia ground her jaw. “Exactly what I said. The Grozdan syndicate is leaving. You can keep fighting this war on your own—we’re done.”
“You don’t get to ignore this,” Nayeli countered. Where’d she come from? But she stepped up beside Vex, hands on her hips, tears streaking trails down her cheeks. He teetered.
She’d lost Edda, too. And Fatemah. And Cansu was still gone.
God, how was Nayeli still standing?
“And who’re you to be talking?” Pierce snapped, adjusting his weight on Nate.
Nayeli rounded on him. “The Tuncian Head is still missing. The acting Head is dead. I’ve taken her place, until Cansu returns.”
She spoke without hesitation or regret or pain. She was the Tuncian Head now.
Pierce scoffed and ran his free hand down his face. “I don’t much care, honestly. Shoot me, but I agree with Rosalia. We’ve lost too damn much. Only a dozen of the raiders we left here are still—” He swallowed hard. When he started again, he spoke to the dirt. “The Emerdian syndicate is going back to Port Camden, and we’re gonna figure out how to retake our city ourselves—like we should’ve done to begin with. This was all a waste, thinking we could unify, thinking we’d have strong enough weapons. She”—he pointed across the group at Lu. Vex straightened by instinct, angling closer to her—“already changed her mind. Damn pride getting in the way. If she doesn’t make more permanent magic, we don’t have a hope or prayer to any god of winning this war.”
Kari looked at Lu with the same shock Vex knew was on his own face.
Lu had changed her mind about making permanent magic? But she’d still taken a vial of it, and Rosalia and Nate had,too, from what Vex’d heard. This was a start, though.
He got as close to a smile as he could. Lu returned it, her face relaxing.
“You won’t keep working on permanent magic?”
The broken words came from the side of the road. Tattered uniform rolled to his elbows, Jakes held a rag in one hand, fear racing through his eyes.
Lu looked as though she might say something, but tears welled in her eyes, and she dropped her gaze to the road.
“You can’t stop!” Jakes’s expression was, remarkably, just as brittle as his voice. “Now more than ever—youhaveto be stronger than Elazar. His defensors took one of your vials! He’ll come again, but undefeatable now.”
“And death will come too.” Lu cut her arm around the disaster of the sanctuary. “I won’t foster more of this.”
“You could save everyone,” Jakes snapped. Vex eyed the raider Heads, Kari, Ben—would they lock Jakes up again? But Rosalia, Nate, and Pierce all held, maybe feeling their same grievances in this defensor. “You could stop Elazar. That boy his commander took at Fort Chastity? You could save him. You’re being selfish.”
Kari swung in front of Jakes, her hand lifted. “Don’t youdarepresume to—”
“That boy”—Lu spoke over her mother, her glare on Jakes dark—“that boyis Bianca’s son.”
Five simple words.That boy is Bianca’s son.
Lu didn’t know why she told Jakes now. She wanted to silence him; she wanted him to realize what this war truly cost.
But each word dragged forward one of Lu’s memories and connected it with another, cobbling together a picture out of realizations, hunches, and fears.
Tom had gotten Lu’s vial of permanent magic—but he wouldn’t have known about it. Getting that vial would have been a surprise in addition to his true purpose here. WhyhadTom come to the sanctuary, not gone to Port Fausta with Elazar and Milo?
Tom had brought Teo with him. To a battle.
“He wanted something out of Teo too,”Vex had said.
Tom had made defensors grab Teo in Fort Chastity. Not Vex or Ben or Edda.Teo.
Tom had intercepted Bianca and Annalisa for Elazar. Bianca, who had died of Shaking Sickness. Bianca, who had given birth to Teowhile she had Shaking Sickness.
“In the Port Camden prison.” Lu looked at Gunnar, who seemed startled to have her attention on him. His wonder turned to confusion from the stunted, secret words that she had never intended to repeat for the danger in them: “Pregnant women. You said Eye of the Sun was given topregnant women.”
Lu pressed a hand into her chest, unable to breathe.
Teo was a product of Elazar’s experiments.
