Page 65 of These Divided Shores
“You don’t owe Argrid anything. You were akid, Vex, a kid who watched his father burn to death, who got dumped into a prison, who got tortured. You don’t—”
“Goddamn it, I saiddon’t!”
Vex shoved away from the doorframe. A tremor hit him,and he made it one step before he slammed backward, his spine thudding into the wall.
Edda dove to help him, but he flapped his hands at her, unable to speak. He burrowed his fists in his eye sockets and his eye patch slipped, the scar rough on his knuckles.
That scar was one more thing he hated about his body. Maybe the thing he hated most.
“I ignored all this—all I am—for six years,” Vex croaked to Edda. “I owe my father. I owe Ben. I owe Argrid. I was a kid when it all happened, but I stopped being a kidbecauseit happened. So I owe my country and my family for what I haven’t done, all this time. Don’t I?”
He looked up at Edda, hoping she had an answer. God, she had to have an answer. She knew everything. She was the most constant force in Vex’s life. His real mother had died not long after he was born, so he didn’t have any memories of her, and he figured Edda was as close as he’d ever get to... not quite a mother, but something like that.
Her face flushed pink. “I swore I’d keep you safe,” she told him. “When we got out of that mission-prison. You were like those kids my husband roped into becoming Eye of the Sun warriors—broken way too young, holding burdens no one so small should have to bear. So I made myself a promise that I’d atone for what I did to my husband by helping you.”
She chuckled and a single tear shot down her cheek. Vex couldn’t breathe.
“But I’ve done a shit job of it. I knew your past would come creeping up on you one day. And what have I done to stop it? I don’t think you owe your father. What he dragged you into was damn selfish of him, and I watched war in the Mechtlands destroy too many kids like that. You owe it to yourself to let all that go and run as far from this shit as you can, run until you’re safe. I think you should do whatever you have to do to behappy, Paxben.”
Vex froze. She’d called him that only a handful of times in the years since he declared that he wasn’t Paxben anymore. He was Devereux Bell, a new person, and she should call himVex, because god, wouldn’t that piss off his uncle?
But he’d never been new. He’d always been Paxben Artur Gallego, the rambunctious nephew of the Argridian king, the royal menace who stole sweets from the kitchens and snuck dye into the wash to stain all the monxe robes a hideous green-brown. He’d always been who he was, this broken child who now hated his body most of all because it wasalive.Because it hadn’t died that day alongside his father.
Vex had spent too long being a shadow of what he thought would be easy.
“I think I’d be happy,” Vex started, “if I atoned for my past. If I stopped running.”
Edda bowed her head. A long moment, and she met his eyes, her tears gone but redness remaining. “All right,” she said. “Where should we start?”
“You’re not gonna argue? You think I’m making the right decision?”
“There aren’t any right decisions in a war.” Edda shrugged. “Let’s see how it feels fighting for something bigger than theRapid Meanderfor a change.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Kari came down, followed by Fatemah.
Vex pushed his way out the door, making room for the group as they emerged into the sanctuary. “What do you need done? What’s the plan? I want to—”
“More Argridians trying to help,” Fatemah grumbled.
Vex drew back, confused.
Kari gave a sympathetic smile. “We will find Elazar. Once we do, the Emerdian and Grozdan syndicates will abandon their quest for permanent magic and join us in assassinating him. Until then, you could volunteer for a defensive position to expand the perimeter, or help with housing and food—”
Kari ran off a list of tasks. Edda volunteered for a defensive post, no surprise.
Vex stayed quiet. For all his certainty that he wanted to help, he wasn’t paying attention to them—his focus was on Teo, coming up the road.
Teo passed a group of disheveled, vacant-eyed kids on the doorstep of a shack, kicking a rock between his boots. He stopped to ask them something—probably to play a game. The oldest kid, no more than thirteen, straightened, his face brightening.
“Vex.”
He jolted. Edda grabbed his forearm to steady him.
“Volunteer to do something,” she pressed.
“I—” His body would be a mess in any sort of fight. He could pass out food. Arrange bedding. Easy enough, right?
Teo picked up his rock and mimed some game to the kids. The oldest had stood up, trying to get the others into it—but they were cut off by a woman who stuck her head out of the shack’s door and thrust a mangy broom in the air.
