by Maya Motayne
With the Equinox Festival happening tomorrow and the royal family hosting a ball, the city had already broken out in celebration. Tipsy couples danced in tight circles, tossing pesos at the musicians playing quick merengues back to back.
Finn should have been roaming the marketplace, thieving from every drunk she came across and treating herself to some sangria, but instead she followed the prince on his scheme to track this magic and trap it with whatever he’d learned from that weird Englassen book.
Like all Castallano children, Finn had heard the legend of Sombra and Nocturna—the darkness he would bring if awakened. She’d once asked her mother what Nocturna even meant.
“It means the end of all things good,” her mother had said as she mashed garlic cloves. Finn had shrugged those words off as a child. Now they rang in her ears, the sound crisp as the snap of a bone.
“There!” Alfie said, drawing her from her thoughts. He pointed at a pub with blue doors tucked into a darkened, quiet corner of the Brim. He walked toward it, the hand holding the black dust outstretched before him. His palm was turning pink from the heat of the dust. “This must be the place.”
The end of all things good could be waiting for them inside this very pub. Finn stopped short at the sight of its name—the Blue Thimble.
“This place?” Finn swallowed. The Blue Thimble was where she was supposed to meet Kol to give her the vanishing cloak. Would she even be here tonight? It was too strange a coincidence. And any place Kol owned was not the sort that you simply walked into. No one dared to step into her pubs without an invitation from the boss herself.
Alfie looked down at her from beneath the hood of his cloak. Once they’d reached the Brim, they’d removed the vanishing cloak to move with ease, but the prince still wore his own to keep people from recognizing him. “Sí. Do you have a problem with this specific pub?”
“No,” she said, quelling the fear billowing up inside her. She’d meant to kill Kol anyway; might as well kill her and help the prince trap the magic at the same time. Two annoying birds, one stone fist.
The prince squared his shoulders. “Then we ought to get this over with. Quickly.”
It was bold of him to think they’d be able to trap this thing at all, let alone quickly. Exchanging a grimace at what was to come, the two opened the blue doors of the pub and stepped in.
The first thing that hit her was the smell. The metallic scent of blood clung to her, coating her tongue. She clapped a hand over her mouth and nose as she took in the horror around her.
There was so much blood. Too much.
The Blue Thimble was large and sweeping, with a serving bar that stretched the length of its left side, and the pub in its entirety was awash with blood. The wood bar was slick with it, as if it had been varnished red. Twenty or so corpses were strewn about the place, like toys tossed by a spoiled child. Limbs had been cut off, throats slashed, and bellies eviscerated to leak rivers of red. The pub’s countless tables and chairs were toppled and overturned onto the slippery ground. Her eyes couldn’t make sense of what she saw. The red overwhelmed her, dizzying her senses.
Finn bent over and vomited where she stood.
She grabbed the bar for support. Her hand came away wet and crimson. With a strangled gasp she took a step away and slipped on something bony—a dismembered hand splayed on the floor like a spider of flesh and bone. Finn landed on her knees, her trousers stained red. From this angle she could see that the floor was dotted with piles of the same black dust from the palace, as if someone had emptied a chimney into the pub and spread the ash in mounds.
The prince pulled her up gently by the shoulders. He was saying something to her, but his voice was muffled and carried an echo, as if it were coming from the inside of a long-necked bottle.
Two drops of blood splattered on Alfie’s forehead. He froze mid-sentence, fear pulling his face taut as the blood rolled down his nose and onto the bow of his lips. His gaze drew up and Finn followed his stare, afraid of what they’d find. A body was pegged to the ceiling with knives, a smile cut into the throat. Blood dripped from it like a leaky faucet.
The corpse dripped three more times, dotting his cheeks with blood before Finn pulled him sideways. He was stunned to silence as he wiped his face, smearing the blood in fat stripes.
For a moment, her fear was eclipsed by a flicker of hope. This was Kol’s pub. Maybe she’d been killed in this massacre. If Kol had been killed, then her magic would die with her, and Finn would be free to use her propio again.
Finn focused, willing her face to change, but she felt that same stoppered ache building in her head. Her propio was still blocked. The ember of hope was snuffed out, replaced by a blinding anger that singed her from the inside out. She wanted to overturn the bloody tables, to add more carnage to the scene. So Kol was alive, but after this massacre, likely done by an enemy mobster, Kol had probably left town. How would Finn find her now?
Then the thought came, crawling from the darkest recesses of her mind: Will I be stuck like this forever? Trapped with this face?
That made her sicker than the bloody scene before her.
The prince’s eyes widened. He pointed over her shoulder. “Finn.”
Finn followed his gaze back to the blood-smeared bar she’d gripped only moments before. At first, she couldn’t tell what Alfie pointed at among the broken bottles and unmoving bodies draped over it, but then her eyes found it. A hand with blackened nails rose from behind the bar, curling over the wood, its palm slick with blood. A second hand followed. A man rose slowly from behind the serving bar. He was shaking violently, his eyes black from edge to edge. His veins, raised and dark, squirmed beneath his flesh. He breathed raggedly, the sound sending a shudder through her bones. Finn and Alfie skittered back, stepping on limbs and puddles of blood as they darted away from the man.
“I can see it inside him,” the prince said, his face ashen. “He’s full of it.”
Finn squinted at him. “Full of shit?”
He blinked down at her. “No. The dark magic, it’s inside him!”
She looked back at the man and grimaced. “Well, that can’t be good.”
She’d expected the dark magic to reduce people to dust, like the victims in the palace, not to live inside of them, like some sort of parasite. Was an echo of this man still alive and being controlled by the magic? Finn’s jaw tensed. She knew too well the agony of being trapped in your body while another pulled the strings. Her hand twitched, wanting to conjure a dagger to put this man out of his misery. But when the man crawled over the bar with a guttural growl, Finn knew she’d been wrong. No. This creature was not a man any longer. He’d become something else entirely, and Finn was afraid to find out what.
He stretched a black-nailed hand toward them, his breaths hoarse, his knees digging into the shards of glass on the bar. Finn flicked her wrist, pulling a dagger into her palm, but as she took aim at the man’s throat, his skin began to break open, black fissures spreading over his body like splinters in broken glass. Piece by piece of him began to slough away into black dust, as if his flesh were burning from the inside out. Finn stared, her mouth agape as he fell away into nothing without a sound. Not a cry of pain or surprise came from his lips. All that remained of him were his clothes and the black dust on the bar that sat to be soaked up by the thickening blood.
“What the hell just happened?” Finn said, taking a tentative step toward the bar.
Alfie grabbed her by the arm, his voice thin with fright. “Wait!”
A dark curl of smoke, a smaller version of what she’d seen in the Blue Room, rose from the ashes of the body. The magic had burned the man from the inside out and now it would seek a new body to smolder. She’d be damned if it was hers.
Beside her, the prince stood still, the stink of fear marking him like a dog marks a tree.
She grabbed him, her nails digging into his shoulder. “Do your maldito thing! Trap it!”
Her touch seemed to spur him back to life. Th
e prince pulled a necklace over his neck; hanging off it was a deftly carved dragon figurine. He bit his thumb until the skin broke and messily drew a circle on the dragon’s chest.
Alfie took a deep, shaking breath, raised the dragon high, and shouted, “Cerrar!”
Finn waited for something, anything.
Nothing.
Not a maldito thing happened. The dark smoke paid the prince no mind. It kept rising slowly from the ashes, collecting in a horrid ball of darkness over the bar.
Alfie looked down at the dragon, his mouth closing and opening uselessly.
Finn glowered up at him. “Really?”
His voice a hushed whisper of fear, he said, “It’s not working, it’s—”
“Yeah, I can see that it’s not working! We’ve got to get out of here!”
“No! I have to keep trying,” Alfie shouted. “Or it’ll hurt someone else!”
“Yeah,” Finn sputtered. “And that someone else will be you! Let’s go!”
Alfie opened his mouth to protest when a moan of pain rang from farther into the tavern, among the overturned tables and still bodies. A man stood up from the carnage, limping, somehow alive. He’d been so still that they’d mistaken him for a corpse in this scarlet tapestry of death. His eyes weren’t blackened; he was still normal. Clutching the bleeding wound on his side he looked at Finn and shouted, “Help, help me, please!”
The coil of dark magic twisted at the sound of the man’s voice. It zoomed away from Alfie and Finn and poured itself down the man’s throat as he screamed in pain. Alfie cried out, his arm reaching forward as if he could somehow help the man. The stranger fell to his knees, convulsing. Alfie took a step toward him but Finn held him back, her arm outstretched before the prince’s chest. Then the man fell still and slack, his head hanging, face hidden. Silent where he knelt among the broken furniture and shattered glass.
“It moves from body to body.” Alfie’s voice was hushed with horror. “Killing as it goes.”
Finn stepped forward and squared her shoulders. “Hey, you!” she shouted at the still, black-eyed man. “I don’t care that you’re related to some stupid god. You’re going to answer my maldito questions. What do you want?” She hated herself for letting a quiver of fear wriggle into her words, but the way the man stood, tremors of excitement running through his body like a child about to receive a sweet, made her stomach roil. “Answer me, or I’ll skin you alive!”
He flexed his fingers and smiled at her like a cat would at a limping mouse.
“You’ve been singing of our master for lifetimes, calling him,” he said. Black, raised veins squirmed beneath his skin like worms. He opened his mouth and sang, his cry a crooked twist of countless voices twined as one:
The Black King, turned to bone,
In your heart he’ll make his home
Your eyes will bleed, your soul burned black,
At his feet, you’ll bend your back
So hurry little ones, off to bed!
Lest Sombra wake and take your head!
It was a lilting children’s song about that stupid legend. A song one sang to a friend for a scare and some laughs. Now each word rang in Finn’s bones like a threat. Like a promise.
“You’ve been singing his name.” The man cocked his head at her, his grin wide. “We will clear this world of false kings and wake him. He will answer your call.”
With a laugh that sent spittle flying from his lips, he ran toward her. He moved as if he were unused to being confined in flesh, his body jerking at odd angles. She heard the slip of blood beneath his feet.
Finn never waited to be attacked; it wasn’t her style. She liked the power of making the first move, whether it was a good idea or not. In this case, it seemed like a very bad idea. But if Finn was known for anything, it was for jumping headfirst into things that were very bad ideas.
And she’d be maldito if she wasn’t going to stay consistent.
She dashed forward to meet him at the center of the pub, pulling stone from the ground to cloak her fists. The man made no move to defend himself; he only grinned. Finn landed a swift punch to his stomach. She felt his ribs crack, but the creature only stumbled back, a laugh bursting from his lips.
“For our cause we need bodies,” he crooned in his singsong voice. He stood straight, cracked ribs and all. Ignacio had taught Finn the agony of injured ribs; the man should’ve been doubled over in pain. “It matters not if they are broken or whole. And yours will do nicely.”
As he launched himself at her, Finn raised her fists again, but he batted them away easily, and she knew that he’d only been playing with her when he’d let her punch him. The embarrassment stung like the crack of a whip.
In the space of a breath, his black-nailed hand closed around her throat and, with terrifying strength, he lifted her off the ground. She clawed at his wrist, tearing at the delicate flesh there until his blood soaked her fingers, but he only grinned up at her. The grin slipped as he surveyed her, as if smelling a stink on her skin. “You are close, but of no use.”
His hand squeezed tighter, and Finn could feel her bones creaking under his strength. How long until they splintered?
Her eyes tearing, she choked out a single word. “Prince!”
She heard clumsy footsteps slipping in the blood, and then came the thick thud of something sharp sinking into flesh. The man stilled and dropped her, his eyes wide. Heat returned to her body as her back hit the blood-soaked ground. Her shadow was gray and limp at her feet. Behind the black-eyed man stood the prince, with a dagger of ice poking through the man’s chest.
As the black-eyed man fell to the ground, still with death, Alfie didn’t know how he’d done it.
How he’d killed someone with his own hands.
Finn had called for him and the desperation in her voice had sent a shock of adrenaline through him, his paralyzing fear replaced with searing energy. He’d run behind the man and stabbed him in the back, right through the heart. Like some sort of coward. And now he stood at the center of the pub in a nest of overturned tables and chairs, a body at his feet and his heart in his throat.
A sound broke past his lips, a mixture of a gasp and a sob.
He’d feared himself on the day he’d attacked Paloma. He’d so deeply feared what he was capable of that he sought to bury it. But who was he if he could kill a man this way? Worst was the nagging inside him that told him he had no time for this, no time to break open and worry that he was losing himself. He had to trap this magic and save his kingdom, even if it meant committing acts that made him a stranger to himself.
Finn rose to her feet slowly and walked to his side, her eyes wide with uncharacteristic fear. Then her hand was on his back, resting stiffly between his shoulder blades.
“One bad thing doesn’t undo all the good, Prince,” she said, her eyes on the corpse. “It takes more than this to lose yourself, trust me. I’ve seen it.”
Alfie fell silent. How could she see so clearly into his heart as it broke in his chest? It occurred to him that long ago she must have reacted this way to a killing of her own, but over time she’d shed that part of herself like a snake shed its skin. It struck Alfie as a horribly sad way to live. He jerked the flask from his hip and took a long swig. The heat of the tequila settled over him, like a patch placed over a gushing wound. He looked at her, his eyes wet. “Will you stop me if I get too close?”
She met his gaze, the set of her mouth grim. “If you do, I’ll tell you and you’ll decide to step back or dive in, but I can’t stop you.”
Alfie could only nod before whisking the back of his hand over his eyes. His shadow curled close around him, his anxiety pooling around his feet. The blood spilling from the man was stretching across the floor. He made to step away but let the blood soak the sole of his shoe instead. This was his fault. He’d freed this dark magic and stained his hands with this man’s blood. Why not his shoes too?
“I’m so sorry,” Alfie said to the body, his voice thick. He knelt b
eside it, unsure of what to do. What to say. Paloma had told him never to dabble in unknown magic because it always came with unknown consequences.
He should have listened to her. He should have known his place.
Alfie’s hand found the corpse’s shoulder. “Please forgive me,” he said, his eyes wet. “I never meant to hurt you or anyone. This is my fault.”
Finn’s hand moved from his back to his shoulder. “Prince, we have to go before it happens again. Come on, get up.”
“No,” Alfie said. His limbs felt weighted with stone. He was responsible for all of this, for the boy and nothing but his earring left in the ash. He could not leave no matter how afraid he was.
The corpse’s shoulder twitched beneath his hand.
Alfie wrenched his hand away and shot to his feet. The magic was going to rise out of the body again. This time he would get it right. He would seal it. The body convulsed against the floor, sloshing in its own blood. It trembled against the shards of glass littered on the ground, sounding like nails scraping a chalkboard
It wasn’t the body that was moving but the dark magic within it, fighting to get out, like a parasite caught in a dead host. A body with a still heart was of no use to it. Alfie killing this man was forcing the magic to escape once more, in search of a new home.
The dead man’s jaw slackened, easing open. A thick, black smoke oozed out of the bloodied mouth like dark sap from a tree. Alfie’s thoughts shaved down to a sliver of panic, and he could barely string a thought together as the corpse seized and belched more and more dark magic, its back arching from the effort.
He had to contain it somehow. There had to be truth in that Englassen book. It was his only hope of ending this.
“It didn’t work then, it’s not going to work now! We have to go!” Finn shouted beside him as darkness oozed out of the body. She tried to pull him away again, but he remained rooted to the floor. She looked up at him, incredulous. “You’d really give your life for this?”
