And my father’s. He’s destroying him like he destroyed me.
Jakes spun to her, the delirium in his eyes slipping, if only for a moment.
Lu reared back her fist and smashed the Rhodofume pod on the platform.
32
SMOKE FILLED THEarea in an explosion of gray.
Lu surged through it, toward the exact place she had seen Tom standing before fog shrouded them. She hit the platform, leaped onto it, propelling onward until she smashed into her father and the two of them flew back in a jumble of limbs and speed.
A single Rhodofume pod did not have an excess of smoke, nor did it last long. As Lu scrambled up onto her knees, the air had already started to clear—and she saw Tom, an arm’s length before her, stumbling to his feet. He used the hand holding his pistol to wipe his mouth, smearing blood across his chin.
Distantly, Lu heard Kari cry her name. She heard the sounds of battle. She heard Teo weeping, but he wasn’t near Tom, no longer close enough for that man to touch him.
That man. His father.
Lu tore away from him, across the wood, and threw her arms around Teo, around Vex too, burrowing Teo’s face into her chest. She couldn’t make a sound come out of her mouth, but she didn’t need to—Kari was on the grass behind them with a look of horror on her face.
The noise of battle was starting to wane. People wept on the grass, holding their heads as friends tried to help them. Nayeli cradled a sobbing Cansu; Nate held his hands out as he cautiously approached one of his raiders.
They were fighting the Menesia, with grit and will and the small doses of Bright Mint.
The defensors still fought. Though their numbers were dropping, they rallied on, driven by the sight of their king—their god—tearing through the sobbing raiders as a sickle would cut through grass. Elazar had a sword now, his movements jerky and manic, blood spraying around him in a storm of destruction.
Kari’s eyes moved past Lu, and her face set. “Tomás—don’t.”
Lu withered, spinning back to Tom as he took slow steps toward them.
He wavered.
“Of all the things I have done in the name of Argrid, to bring peace and healing to this island”—his eyes shifted to Kari—“the one I most resisted, the one that caused meto write to the Eminence King and dare beg him to choose another servant, was the task that made me unfaithful to you.”
Lu gagged.
Her father had manipulated her. Tortured her. Lied to her.
And he didn’t count that as his worst task?
Tom kept talking. “My king wanted to know the effects of Shaking Sickness on a child born to an infected mother. After Bianca had Menesia, she believed I had rescued her from Argrid. She fell in love with me. The task was... easy to accomplish.”
“Stop.” Kari lifted her hand, fingers shaking.
“But Teo was born, and Lu—Lulu-bean, God save me, the war ended, and what Ibarra did to you—I’ve tried to spare you from this pain, Lulu-bean,” he told her. “You and your mother. This is why I used Menesia on you—you found out about Teo, and it nearly destroyed us. I’ve tried to keep you safe, but you refused to listen to me when I knew how close you were to permanent magic, and the whole of theworldhung on your potion. Can you conceive of that weight? And I thought, maybe Teo truly did have powers. Maybe my love for him was a weakness. So I offered him up to the Pious God, as I should have—”
He wouldn’t stop talking. Explanations, excuses, lies, horrors—Lu couldn’t handle it anymore, couldn’t take the fabrication he had sculpted.
Defensors reached them. Tears and sweat made Kari’s cheeks shine. She drew knives and spun to fight off the defensors. Vex, his hands on Lu’s shoulders, tried to pull her and Teo away—how far would they get? Where would they go?
“Lu,” Teo sobbed against her. “Lu, I don’t want to be here—”
Stiff, spent, Lu looked up at her father.
She still had weapons. She still had plants, and the Incris in her body.
“Lulu-bean,” Tom said, reaching out to her. “Please, let me fix this. I can make you forget everything, and we can be happy again. Teo, too. I promise, my love. Please.”
Lu faltered on the precipice of action. To kill her father. The man who had made her capable of killing at all.
