Page 89 of These Divided Shores
“Bianca died two years ago, of Shaking Sickness,” Lu told him. “And Annalisa too—”
She couldn’t force the words out. So many more needed to come:Annalisa died a few months ago. Has it only been a few months? But Teo is healthy. Teo is—
Teo had been born on Grace Loray. Jakes had a nephew he didn’t know about.
Lu almost told him, but the emblem on Jakes’s uniform stayed her. Argrid’s ivory curvedV, the crossed swords, bloodstains and dirt smeared across them. She remembered this defensor standing outside her cell, complicit in Gunnar’s whippings, in Milo’s torture of her.
Jakes had proven he would sacrifice anything, anyone, to achieve his goals.
Lu would not let him factor Teo into his machinations.
Nate and Pierce joined Rosalia at the door, talking to whoever had come.
Jakes’s eyes moved from Lu to the orange embers in the firepit. “We were part of the resistance in Argrid, and defensors caught them with other conspirators. Elazar experimented on them. Physicians told my mother that Bianca and Annalisa died, that my sister had been pregnant, and there were complications—” He cleared his throat, yanking his voice level. Glints of hope showed in his dark eyes. “But they went to Grace Loray? The resistance was only able to send a handful of refugees out of Argrid. Elazar watched everything—” Jakes sucked in a breath. “Elazar. Diaño.He did this. He sent them to Grace Loray. Bianca would have contacted me if they had lived. Elazar did this to her.Why?”
Lu lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. She looked at Nayeli, silent and watchful, but no help lay there. No help lay anywhere.
“My father found Bianca and Annalisa,” Lu gasped. “He said he came across a refugee boat on the coast. That the rest of the refugees had perished in the crossing. But he was working with Elazar. The whole revolution, he was a spy for Argrid.”
Lu’s mind spiraled, wild and panicked.
Elazar had sent Bianca and Annalisa to Grace Loray.
Tom had found them. He had used them for something.
Nausea throbbed in Lu’s stomach, up her throat, in the core of her being. What more had her father done? And Teo. No,no—Bianca hadn’t been pregnant when she arrived in Grace Loray, had she? Teo was younger than that, Lu thought.
But Tom had made the defensors take Teo.Not Vex, who meant just as much to Lu. Not Ben or Edda.Teo.
Lu shot upright, her rage powerful and blinding.
Jakes shoved closer, his manacled hands hindering him. “My only desire has been to fulfill my family’s goal of stopping Elazar from destroying our country. They died before they could see it through. I know you won’t believe me, but everything I’ve done, getting close to Elazar, earning his trust—I’ve been trying to stop him with his own magic. Magic is a gift from the Pious God, something that shouldbe free for all people to use. Elazar bastardizes it for his own benefit.” He bowed, supplicating on the floor of Lu’s makeshift laboratory. “I swear fealty to you, to permanent magic, to anything you ask, so long as you let me help end Elazar.”
The impossibility of this outcome processed in startling jolts. Jakes, the defensor Ben knew so well, the one who had overseen their tortures in Port Camden—he wanted to bring down Elazar. He had been part of the resistance in Argrid, the same group led by Vex’s father. Vex hadn’t recognized Jakes, though. Had he? And Ben hadn’t called him Jakes Casales, matching Bianca’s last name—he’d called him Jakes Rayen.
Lu steadied herself on the edge of the table. The three vials of magic clinked against each other.
Rosalia swung from the door. “A messenger said Elazar is half a day from Port Fausta. Fatemah and Kari are getting ready to assassinate him.Test the potion.”
Nate and Pierce turned, backing up Rosalia, the three of them in rare agreement as they eyed Jakes and the vial in Lu’s palm.
Teo’s uncle. He was Teo’sfamily.
Lu held her breath. Uncorked the vial. And gulped down the contents herself.
“Lu!” Nayeli grabbed her shoulder too late.
Lu coughed, the tonic bitter and thick. The potion burned her belly, a sensation of fire creeping higher, higher still,spreading out to her limbs and down to her toes and up to the tips of her hair. She doubled over, trying to contain the inferno within her, pushing it down into the crevice of her heart. Let it lie there, forever a part of her, unstoppable and brilliant.
She was fire, and ash, and strength and magic andpower.
For a moment, everyone in the shack stared at her.
Pierce broke the silence with a heavy sigh. “Well, she isn’t dead.”
“Good enough for me.” Rosalia grabbed one of the other vials.
Sweat burst down Lu’s back and she stumbled forward, fingers out in panic to stop Rosalia. She blinked—and found herself face-to-face with the wall of the shack.
