Tom looked up. His face was mournful, sad almost— “Burn him!” he shouted.
Vex swung back to face him, mouth open.
“No!” The plea came from Teo, his face purple with agony. “I didn’t mean it—stop!”
Teo dove forward as if to leap off the platform. Tom grabbed his collar and yanked him back, slamming Teo to the wood planks.
Fury pierced Vex’s chest so brightly he thought it might explode out of him.
Teo dropped, weeping and scrambling across the platform, into the defensors at the rear of the wood.
“Do not shame your father,” Tom told him. “You have had many opportunities. Give in to your magic. Prove yourself. You can stop all of this!Stop making me do this!”
“I don’t want him!” Teo screamed. “I don’t want to be his son! Stop—Vex!”
The defensor with the lit torch approached Vex, flames extended toward the dry, eager kindling. Smoke streamed up from the torch. It smelled of death and ash and unadulterated fear.
“Teo! Teo, it’s—it’s okay—” Like hell was it okay, but god, what else could he say?
Vex slid on the loose wood, trying to kick the logs away while clawing himself up the pole. It was useless, but he fought, a frantic wail building in his chest as the defensor knelt, touched a log—and it caught.
Flames licked other logs, spreading around Vex in a hungry wreath. The wind shifted, whirling smoke into his face, and he gagged, unable to see or breathe and—
This was happening. This was what his father had gone through. A wall of smoke, a pause in which there was no sensation but sound, before... death.
Vex was going to burn alive, his death a means of bringing down Ben and Lu.
God. That really would be the only legacy he’d leave. Just Ben and Lu to mourn him, and mourn him forwhat? For the flippant jokes he’d tell, the useless way he’d follow them around?
When Rodrigu had burned, Vex had begged the monxes and defensors guarding him to stop it.“We haven’t done anything!”he’d tried to lie.
Those words filled him again now, this lie that had become his truth.
I haven’t done anything. I haven’t helped anyone. Papa, you’d be ashamed of me, wouldn’t you?
The fire found him, clawing at his boots with orange talons. Vex tugged fruitlessly against the chains holding him to the pyre. Tremors came and went in his frenzy.
He couldn’t die like this. He couldn’t die asnothing.
31
LU AND KARIreached the courtyard’s main gate along with a wave of raiders joining them from side streets in a rising wail of battle and pain.
The gate to the courtyard was open for them already, welcoming.
Before Lu passed through it, Nayeli slammed out of the crowd and into her, hooking one arm around her neck. In comfort, and to press her lips to Lu’s ear over the screaming, explosions,noise.
“Some raiders came out a little while ago,” she told her. “Thought they’d be on our side—they’re the ones we’ve been missing. But—”
“But Elazar changed them,” Lu finished.
Nayeli pulled back, no spark of the vivacious girl visible in her rage.
Together, they broke upon the courtyard. Defensorswould be waiting for them, but raiders didn’t fear defensors. They feared nothing.
Except their own people, a dozen or more clustered in the castle’s yard, weapons out and ready. And Vex, tied to a burning pyre, Teo sobbing as Tom stood over them both.
Lu growled, and god, how she hated her father. Around her, the attacking raiders got no chance to rejoice that they had found the last of their missing people—the bodies packed in the courtyard turned on them, pistols firing and swords flashing and chaos descending as the attackers became the attacked. They hesitated—how could they attack their own people, friends, family?—and that hesitation cost lives in startled screams.
