Elazar smirked at Ben. “The Devil may think himself clever in his tricks, but a true follower of the Pious God always sees the pattern. You, my son, have a habit of yoking yourself to the wrong people.”
“You haven’t given me many choices.” Ben took pride in the harsh fury of his own response. “You killed everyone else.”
Elazar’s grip on Ben’s face was gentle, terrifying. “I have sacrificed everyone the Pious God has asked of me,” Elazar told him. His father’s straightforwardness shot from Ben’s head to his gut, seizing him. “But Argrid’s shortcomings are punishment, Benat, for not giving enough. I have held on to the one person I believed that the Pious God would never ask for: you.”
Every nerve twisted. Every vein pinched shut.
“I have wondered”—Elazar stroked Ben’s jaw, lingering on the scar and bump from the long-healed bone—“if I merely did not hear the Pious God’s request. If I sacrificed you, would that unlock Argrid’s destiny? Our country’s poverty, our loss of Grace Loray—did that happen because I kept you? Was I meant to sacrifice you?”
“Ben.” Lu’s voice was far away. “Ben, don’t listen—”
“I almost did.” Elazar stared into Ben’s eyes. “I almost let the crowds in Deza take you away to burn you as aheretic. But the Pious God showed me a larger sacrifice, the one I should have made long ago, something grander than my love for you.”
“The ‘coming light’?” The words lifted from Ben’s memory, his body numb.
Elazar smiled. “The world will change, Benat. The time for wavering between sin and salvation is at an end. You have repented, but we both know you are capable of lying. I promise you, if you are not sincere, I will do whatever I have to do to save you now.”
Ben was a hundred pieces, mismatched and jagged, and he believed, more than he had ever believed anything, that Elazar would go to any lengths necessary to secure his obedience.
“Adeluna.” Elazar faced her with a sad sigh. “I believe in your repentance only slightly more. You will be granted access to magic—harmless magic. If you prove trustworthy with those plants, I will consider reuniting you with your father. He has taken to the task of finding permanent magic with a zeal I wish you yourself would embrace.”
Lu’s father was working on permanent magic for Elazar now? Even Ben, in his stupor, noticed her recoil of disgust at the offer of being turned over to him.
Elazar hummed. “Is that not what you want? What a fitting pair you two make.” He smoothed Ben’s hair out of his face, another jolting caress. “Two wayward children, so certain of their fathers’ misdeeds that they cannot seetheir own. The Pious God is poetic.”
A tear toppled down Ben’s face. Elazar rose, his fingers trailing Ben’s temple, and when the contact released, Ben wrenched in a breath as though his father’s hands had been around his throat.
Elazar hummed again, acknowledging Ben’s weakness. He went into the hall with Ibarra.
Jakes took a step forward as Ibarra locked the cell. “Ben—”
“Come, Defensor,” Elazar ordered. “Let them bask in their surrender.”
They left, footsteps echoing—that thudding echo would haunt Ben the rest of his life.
Lu stirred against him when they were alone. “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t said—”
Ben grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back. New blood streaked across her face from a cut on her forehead, her eye half-open and fluttering.
“I don’t give a damn what happened.” A lie, but he needed this one for his own stability.
Lu’s arm streamed blood. Gunnar had gotten bandages—would monxes come with aid for Lu? Ben couldn’t wait for that.
He pulled the sheet off the cot and started tearing long strips. Moving felt good. As if his father’s words and touch had formed a shell on his skin, and each motion sent cracks through it, breaking it off him.
Every outcome Ben had feared had happened right there in his father’s eyes.
And Ben was still alive. That was enough, now. To exist.
“You cannot give magic to them,” Gunnar stated, his voice rough.
Lu rocked forward, back. “I’m going to make the magic for us. For me. I’ll take it, and become the unstoppable soldier they want us to create.”
Ben hesitated. “I thought you were agreeing to work on magic just to buy us time.”
“Buy us time for what?” Lu gave him a look of madness and terror, of many things and yet nothing, and that nothingness planted fear in Ben’s heart.
“The defensor. Jakes,” Ben said. “I can reach him. I can convince him to help us.”
