A defensor hefted Teo over his shoulder and marched up the road behind Tom. Ingvar followed, no emotion, no reaction at all.
Edda pitched to the side and hit the road with a heavy thump. Vex kicked the dirt, but he was shaking again, every part of him, goddamn it,goddamn it.
A circle of wine-dark red spilled out of her, across the ground. She wasn’t moving. Not to breathe. Not to wince or look back at Vex with that frustrated scowl she wore so well.
They’d been talking moments ago.Secondsago. They’d been sailing all over Grace Loray. They’d been two broken hearts released by the Church, trying to survive, and Vex wouldn’t have, he wouldn’t have made it a month on this island without her.
Vex pressed his foot for leverage against the soldiers holding him. He got halfway up, fueled by fury and horror and Teo’s cries.
Defensors kicked Edda as they marched over her body. Her body.
“Teo!” Vex screamed again. “Te—”
A thud echoed through his head. All Vex knew was the ground rising to meet his cheek, and darkness creating a warm, velvet cloak around him. Teo’s screams faded and the cries of the sanctuary dissolved into blackness.
Digestive Death
Availability: moderately common
Location: peat deposits
Appearance: magenta leaves of the Digestive plant
Method: come into contact with the oils of the leaves in any way
Use: fatality in less than a minute
23
LU AND THEraider army left the center of Port Fausta in ruins. Two buildings were ablaze, the rest missing windows, doors, walls bashed in. People wept, families huddling together and casting furious looks at the raiders. Elazar’s defensors—any who had survived—were gone. Only bodies remained, raiders and Argridian soldiers alike, sprawled in grotesque poses across the stones.
This had been a mistake. All of it. A bloody, costly mistake, and Lu relived every poor decision as she paced the bow of Rosalia’s steamboat, a low, dull ache throbbing in her head.
She wanted to run back to Port Mesi-Teab. To use her Incris and traverse the island in a single step. But, equally, she shuddered at the knowledge that it was inside her. Only time would tell if the magic she had made was permanent, but at the very least, she had lengthened the effects—andit still felt like she’d lost this war.
Milo was dead thanks to permanent magic she had created.
She had to think that, over and over, to hold the truth in her mind.Milo is dead.
It didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel like a victory. It didn’t feel like anything.
Nayeli sat on the railing, her eyes on the deck, and for the first time since they had met, Lu saw herself in her. The delirious, hysterical girl was gone, and all that remained was a shell, vacant eyes on the teak planks and hunched shoulders caving her body inward.
They came at Port Mesi-Teab from the east. Fort Chastity punctured the horizon, the roofs of buildings peeking into the twilight. Smoke spiraled up from chimneys—
Lu stopped in the middle of the deck. Around her, Rosalia’s crew halted their activities, everyone going silent. There was far too much smoke, billowing funnels of it as they entered the waterways of the city.
People filled the streets, weeping, shouting for help. No—not help. Lu clamped her arms over her chest, listening to angry fathers and red-faced mothers screaming obscenities as their steamboat came into view.
“You destroyed our home!”
“Get out—get out, now!”
The same accusations that defensors had shouted at heras she stood with Milo’s blood on her hands. Martyrdom, blame, hatred.
Lu glanced at the raiders on Rosalia’s boat. Why would anyone be mad at them? They had opened Port Mesi-Teab as a haven. They had fought against Elazar.
“You criminals!”
