by Maya Motayne
“I think I have just the challenge for someone as skilled as you,” Kol said. Finn’s heart usually raced with excitement just before a job was offered. But this time it wouldn’t be a task she chose. It was being shoved down her throat. Her heart slogged in her chest, sore and tired and scared, but painfully alive. Like an injured animal limping away from its hunter.
“I’ll be nice—I’ll let you keep most of your magic. Your stone carving, you’ll have. But you’ll be keeping that face of yours for now,” Kol said. “No propio until you’ve completed the task. I’m going to ask you to bring me something I’ve wanted for some time now. . . .”
Finn spat blood at the ground between Kol’s feet. “A social life?”
There was a quick dry sound, like snapping a twig over a bent knee, and pain shot through her wrist. She couldn’t stop the anguished yelp from slipping past her lips.
“Not quite,” Kol said. “What you’ll be getting for me is a bit more useful than that.”
“I’m on the edge of my seat,” Finn said, her words rough with fury.
“The deal is that in exchange for your freedom, you will bring me the vanishing cloak.”
One of Kol’s men snorted behind her. Finn stared at her incredulously, the pain in her wrist numbed by rage. “The vanishing cloak? Passed from son to son? King to king?”
“That’s the one. Bring me the vanishing cloak from the palace in three days’ time. If you succeed, you’ll get your freedom. But if, for some reason, you should fail . . .” Her minions snickered at that. “You work for me with a smile. Is the deal set, Face Thief?”
Finn glared at Kol, a glower so hot it might singe her brows off. Kol’s grin only widened.
“Where I come from, both parties voluntarily agree and shake hands, entiendes?” Kol asked.
With four thugs holding her down and her magic stolen, this was anything but voluntary, but people like Kol changed the definition of that word when it suited. Nos became yeses as they flowed in one ear and out the other.
Someone let go of Finn’s hand. She raised it to shake Kol’s.
Kol shook her head. “No. I don’t want that one.”
The goon restraining her paused before pulling the free hand back and letting go of the other. The one with a splintered wrist.
Finn refused to miss a beat. She raised her limp hand to meet Kol’s. When the mobster gripped it hard, jarring what was already shattered, Finn let what should’ve been a pained sob fuel a low, feral growl.
“Set?” Kol asked, a polite lilt in her voice.
“The deal is set,” Finn snarled.
Finn tried to unlock the door to her rented room at the Apple Core. It took her three tries because her hands kept shaking.
When it finally creaked open, she rushed in and slammed it shut, upsetting her tender wrist, which she’d just had healed by some back-alley bruxo in the Pinch. She’d paid him with the fox-masked boy’s cloak. She wished she could hang him with it—if not for him, Kol’s gang wouldn’t have caught her. But then again, Kol still would’ve found her, wouldn’t she? She knew she stayed here at this pub, knew her every move. Bile rose in the back of her throat.
She had to leave town, had to change her face, had to get out of this. Finn rushed to the cracked mirror that hung above the small desk beside her narrow bed. Her face was purpling with bruises, as if she’d messily eaten a fistful of berries. Her bottom lip had split.
She passed her hands over her face and thought of a different nose, one that was wider. But when her hand fell from her face, the same one remained. She pounded her fists on the desk, upsetting her wrist again. After letting out a stream of expletives, she took a deep breath and tried again. This time she passed her hands through her hair as she thought of blonde tresses. Nothing happened.
Frustration raked its nails over her bruised skin. Who the hell was Kol to decide if she should be able to use her propio? Finn didn’t give a damn about her name or the face she was born with—all of that she could toss over her shoulder and never look back—but her propio was the only thing she held dear. The only thing she clung to. If she could change her face then she could change her fate, her future, and now that was gone. Stolen.
She felt like a sealed bottle of fizzy drink. Whenever she tried to use her propio it was as if she was shaking the bottle instead of removing the stopper. Pressure built inside with nowhere to go. A painful headache bloomed between her brows. Her propio was gone unless she got the vanishing cloak, a mission that would surely end with her getting run through by a palace guard.
Run, her mind hissed.
But there was no point in that. If Kol had la Familia watching her, there was no way she’d make it out of the city alive.
Finn grew still, hunched over the desk, her breaths ragged. With a frustrated scream she lifted the husk of the desk, tender wrist and all, and threw it across the room. The ramshackle thing broke against the wall, narrowly missing the small window.
She thought of admitting that she couldn’t handle the bet, getting her magic back and working for Kol. She thought of Kol’s satisfied smirk, of her thumb pressed against her lips. Finn scrubbed at her bruised mouth, chasing the memory away. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.
She thought of taking on the bet. Of infiltrating the palace. It was a suicide mission in any circumstance, but to waltz in without being able to change her face? It was absurd.
Her mind fell silent, tying itself in knots trying to come up with an answer.
Her bed gave a familiar yawn of a creak as she sat. She’d slept in this bed for weeks now—just long enough to call it hers. She should’ve known better. The moment the sheets started to feel comfortable, she should’ve run and never come back. When you put down roots, you pulled up weaknesses, vulnerabilities, strings. Always strings.
And there was his voice in her head. Ignacio.
Puppet strings, Finny . . . Puppet strings . . .
A cold sweat prickled on her forehead. Kol was just like him, someone else trying to make her their obedient little daughter. Trying to control her. Control her face, who she was, who she worked for. She couldn’t help but be pulled by a memory.
During their first days together, Ignacio had treated her to a slice of sweet flan at a marketplace, and she’d kindled the courage to ask him why he’d taken her off the streets.
He’d gazed down at her with that terrifying intensity, a hunched bridge between love and obsession. “To love me,” he’d said. “I made you my daughter to love me.”
Ignacio’s propio was compulsion. Like anyone else’s propio, it had its limitations. In order to control a person, he needed them to reveal their true self to him, to tell him something intimate that gave him a foothold on their spirit to latch onto. Then they were his for the taking. He need only look them in the eyes and speak to make them obey his command. But his propio made it difficult to tell who loved him. He’d forget where the real person began and his compulsion ended.
“But the love of one’s child,” he’d said. “That is real. You’re the only one who I know will love me truly. No matter what I say or do to you, little chameleon, I’ll know that you love me. That you are mine.”
Then he’d held her in his arms the way she’d remembered her parents had and she’d felt safe and loved. But as she grew older he’d stifled her, demanded all her time, all her love. There could be no other recipient. And if another recipient arose, Ignacio would snuff them out.
Or he would tell her to snuff them out.
Don’t act like killing has ever been a problem for you, Finny, his voice purred between her ears. We both know you’re a natural.
In another searing flash of memory, Finn remembered a little girl standing before her, a girl as young and lost and hungry as Finn had been then. In her mind’s eye, Finn watched herself dig her nails into the girl’s skin, tackling her until she landed on her back. Her stomach roiled as the sound of rusted nails sinking into skin beat in her mind like a drum.
; Finn’s panting broke her out of the memory. She pulled her knees to her chest. “I’m safe here,” she murmured to herself with shaking breaths. “He’ll never recover, never be able to find me. Just calm down.”
But her own words couldn’t slow her trembling heart. Her palms and face were slick with sweat. She screwed her eyes shut and counted. Counting helped.
By the time she counted down from ten twice over, her pulse had finally calmed, and she’d made her decision.
No one was ever going to own her like that again. Not Kol, not Ignacio, not a maldito soul. She was going to do the unthinkable. She was going to finesse the vanishing cloak right out of the palace. If she died in the process, then that would be that. But if she pulled it off, Kol would never see it coming. She certainly wouldn’t expect Finn to use the cloak to catch her unawares and cut her throat. Then she’d have her propio back and she’d leave this city for good.
Finn stifled the yawn building in the back of her throat. There was no time for rest when she had a heist to plan. She would sleep when she was dead.
And that, she thought, might be sooner than she’d anticipated.
8
The Pig
Finn couldn’t help but think that this must be punishment for stealing those pork skewers.
She’d done many strange things in her short career of thievery. She’d changed her face into that of a woman whose family suspected she had been murdered by her husband. Finn had haunted the husband for two whole weeks before he finally cracked. Turned out, the family had been right.
She’d done many odd things, but this was likely the strangest.
Finn was inside a dead pig.
It turned out that there was some fancy dinner at the palace. The occasion gave her an opening: a gargantuan puffer pig to be delivered to the royal kitchens. The chef himself was a stone carver, and he’d constructed a clay box for the hog to be transported and then baked in.
So Finn had snuck into the renowned chef’s kitchen and wriggled herself into the great split in the boar’s stomach. Surrounded by an array of fragrant herbs and spices, she waited until the guards delivered the pig and the servants carried it into the palace kitchens. There she heard the sizzling of pans and the bubbling of pots brought to a boil. Now she just needed them to leave the crated pig somewhere while she escaped.
“Into the oven, then!” the boy carrying the crate said. Finn’s heart sputtered in her chest.
The servants grunted and Finn felt the crate being lifted higher and pushed forward. A sudden wave of heat rushed over her.
Damn, damn, damn!
Should she burst out of the pig and the crate? Would she have to kill them? Where the hell would she hide the bodies?
“Not just yet!” a voice boomed. “Leave it in the pantry for now. Bake it in an hour.”
“Sorry, jefe!” Finn heard the boy say. “Right away!”
Finn felt the crate being pulled out of the oven. The stifling heat receded. Sweat poured down her face. She hoped these people liked their pork salty.
With that, the crate was lowered onto the floor. She heard them retreat from the crate, shutting a door behind them. Silence swaddled her. It was now or never.
She got on all fours, her back grazing the pig’s cavernous rib cage. Finn rocked sideways, her cheek pressed to the pig’s wet, meaty flank. The pig finally rolled onto its side. From within, Finn thrust her hand upward, lifting the lid off the crate and lowering it to the ground. With another swipe, she collapsed one side of the crate to give her space to exit.
She crawled out of the slit in the pig’s belly, tearing it even wider in her haste. When she was finally free, she’d never been happier to lie on the dirty, hard floor. Covered in a layer of seasoning and moisture, she smelled like a walking kitchen.
Finn rose from the ground and resettled the boar into its former position. She stepped back and took stock of the damage. The skin was mashed down on the side she’d rolled it onto.
“There goes the dinner presentation,” she said. With careful flicks of her hands she reconstructed the crate wall she’d collapsed. She lowered the lid back over it and set to work. The pantry was bigger than her rented room, with wall-to-wall shelves of pickled spices and herbs. She felt around the walls, looking for what Kol had told her to find.
Before sending her off, Kol had provided her with a map and told her how to access the secret passageways of the palace.
“Why are you telling me this?” Finn had asked, her eyes narrowing.
“I want my cloak, Face Thief. I’ve got no chance of getting it if you’re too thick-headed to get around the palace unseen. Find the switches hidden in the walls and you’ll get into the secret passages.”
She pulled the map out from under her shirt. It was stained with very expensive seasonings, but still good to read.
She checked for the switch behind each bottled spice but found nothing but sandy, stone walls. Finn moved to inspect the wall behind the pantry door. Just when she got behind it, it swung open. She flattened herself against the wall, the open door blocking her from sight. She heard a voice murmuring as bottles of spices pinged against each other. Then they were gone.
That was too close. She needed to find the passageway or she’d be stuck here until someone found her. Then she saw it. There, half obscured by a bottle of pickled garlic, was a statue the size of her little finger jutting from the wall—a bird with outstretched wings.
Finn twisted it to the left and heard a click. Slowly, the spice-laden wall swung inward. Finn hurried into the passage, leaning against the heavy wall of stone to close it.
She’d made it. She sagged against the wall, breathing a long sigh of relief. Her fingers skittered up the wall in the dark, searching for the torch Kol had said would be there. She found it and lit it with a set of sparking stones she’d brought. Light poured down the dark, tight passage.
Now all there was left to do was find the cloak, grab it, and walk out the front doors.
“Easy,” Finn said.
She didn’t believe herself.
From his bedroom balcony, Alfie watched the fireflies wink in and out of existence across the grounds.
Soon winter would strike and the chill would chase them away until spring came. In Castallan, the weather never got so cold as to see your own breath, as it did in the winter kingdom of Uppskala, but the air grew cooler still and the shimmering lace capes worn by nobles were replaced by weightier cloaks.
“Everything has its season,” his father had once told him. Did his mourning have a season? Would it peel away from him, like petals peeled from stems as winter marched ever closer? Alfie’s jaw tightened at the thought. His mourning was like the fireflies—there were moments when it disappeared from sight, but it would always spark into existence again, recurring, resilient.
Everything had its season, but seasons always repeated. Though he’d promised himself to let go of his plans to find Dez and commit to becoming king of Castallan, he knew the grief would never leave him.
The clock in his bedroom chimed the hour, and Alfie started before rushing back into his rooms to change into his formal clothes for tonight’s dinner.
His shadow zigzagged about his feet, betraying his nerves, as he smoothed his blue double-breasted overcoat. He adjusted the silver circlet before throwing his hands up in exasperation. Did it matter if he looked like a proper prince if everyone at this dinner was going to whisper behind their hands about the validity of his rule? About how unfit for the throne he was compared with Dez? Alfie massaged his temples.
Now would be a great time for a pep talk from Luka, but Luka hadn’t spoken to him since Alfie had come home. Alfie could only hope that giving him space would help the situation.
A knock sounded at his door. Alfie dashed to it, hoping to find Luka on the other side. Instead, it was his mother, swathed in a ruffled red gown. A cape of gold lace trailed behind her. Her black hair was pulled back and threaded with scarlet ribbon.
Alfie defl
ated. “You look lovely, Mamá.”
She tilted her head. “You look disappointed.”
“That obvious?”
“Nonchalance has never been your strong suit.” She squeezed his hand. “Give him some time and do some well-deserved groveling. Things will go back to the way they were, Mijo.”
Alfie nodded, but he knew she was wrong. She didn’t know about Luka catching him sneaking out of the palace, or how he knew what Alfie had been up to for the last three months.
“I know,” he forced himself to say. “You’re right.”
“I am always right.” She offered him her arm. “Now come with me. You and I are due for some mother-son time.”
Alfie smiled and took her arm. She grinned back, giving his hand another comforting squeeze. But as they walked into the hall, she shot him a look, a spark of humor in her eyes. “And if you disappear for so long again, I will break my chancla off on your backside, oíste?”
Alfie could not help but laugh at that. “Yes, Mother.”
If I were a prince’s bedroom, where would I hide? Finn thought as she stared at the map by the light of the torch. She didn’t know if her voice would somehow be heard through the wall, and she wasn’t stupid enough to test the theory.
She was still beside the kitchen pantry, on the second lowest level of the palace. Her shadow moved this way and that as she considered which way to go. According to the map, the prince’s chambers were, as expected, on the highest floor of the palace.
Naturally, she thought, and rolled the map back up in her hand. Kol had told her that the royal family each had a key to the palace vault, and she’d rather ransack the prince’s rooms than the king and queen’s.
She walked through the winding passage until she came across a steel ladder. She’d need to climb two floors and walk another long passageway through the fifth floor until she found the next ladder. Then finally she’d be on the prince’s floor. As she walked, the torch lighting her way, she could see small, notched slats appearing intermittently in the walls. Her curiosity finally getting the best of her, she grasped a slat by its small notch and slid it sideways. Through the slot she looked into a grand dining room where servants adjusted place settings.
