by Maya Motayne
Alfie’s grip on the dragon tightened. When he looked down at her, he didn’t try to mask the fear that racked his body. Let at least one person know that fear would not stop him. “Is there nothing you would give yours for?”
Finn looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. “You’ve lost your maldito mind.”
Alfie trained his gaze back on the magic pouring out of the body like pus from an abscess. He was terrified of it, but he was more afraid of who he would become if he let it run free. This was his responsibility. He would die here before he ran away like a coward.
Like a coward who would stab a man in the back.
“You’re an idiot.” She backed away from him, stepping around a broken bar stool as she pulled daggers from her belt. Alfie could swear he heard respect hidden deep in the insult. “You’re brave, but you’re an idiot.”
The darkness swirled before him. His body grew numb and cold at the sight of it, blacker than any shade he’d ever produced.
An idea flickered to life in Alfie’s mind like a struck match.
“Magic of the same color always flows together,” he said, conjuring Paloma’s calm.
“This isn’t the time for a maldito magic lesson!” Finn snapped from behind him.
“Hush!”
Magic of the same color always flowed together. This was a fact he’d seen with his own eyes while watching people’s magic permeate the air in ribbons of color. This was how his propio worked, how he was able to weave his own magic into someone else’s. If this black magic saw a magic of its own shade, it might follow it, try to stick with it, maybe even obey it. It would make sense. Maybe that was what he needed to do to seal it away.
Alfie let his magic deepen to a pitch as black as he could get it. With the dragon held tight in his palm, Alfie let his newly darkened magic envelop it. The black magic that oozed from the body seemed to take notice and moved excitedly at the sight. It slithered through the air, away from the corpse and into the dragon’s open mouth as if it had found its brethren. Alfie felt the little dragon grow warm in his hand. The magic stayed in it, as if waiting for Alfie’s word. His command.
His magic still black as night, Alfie pressed the bloodied tip of his thumb against the dragon with all his might and shouted again, “Cerrar!”
He shut his eyes, expecting the black magic to recognize his trick and swallow him whole. But it didn’t. The dragon only hummed in his palm, warm with energy.
Alfie slumped against the bar, pulling the dragon chain around his neck. Somehow, he’d done it. Maybe, just maybe, things would be all right after all. Maybe he could fix this.
As if in answer to that fantasy, the corpse collapsed in on itself, skin blackening and sloughing away until the body was nothing but a pile of ash.
As the ashes flew up his nostrils, Alfie’s stomach twisted at the scent of burnt flesh, a life and all its possibilities snuffed out in one fell swoop.
Or maybe nothing would ever be all right again.
Then Finn was crouching at his side, her back leaned against one of the only small round tables left upright in the pub, spared from the chaos that had unfolded here. “It worked?”
Alfie squeezed the dragon that sat warm against his chest. “I—I think so.”
“So that’s it, then? We caught it?” He heard a lilt of hope in her voice and Alfie couldn’t help but cling to it. “We’re done?”
His bloodied hand still wrapped tight around the dragon, Alfie took in a shaky breath. He would not have to bear looks of shame from Paloma and his parents. No one else would die because of his foolish mistake. He could present himself at the ball tomorrow night with his head held high, with the promise that he would protect his kingdom’s future instead of endangering it. Alfie whisked a hand over his eyes. “We did it.”
Now he needed only to figure out where to keep this foul magic so that no one else would find it. But that dilemma sounded like a holiday compared with what they’d just endured.
Finn nodded, her shoulders sagging in relief. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
Alfie stood slowly, grabbing the table behind Finn for leverage. When his shaking hand came away bloody, he couldn’t tell if it was from the table or if his palm had already been scarlet from the man he’d killed. Alfie walked close by her side as they stepped over corpses, shattered lamps, and smashed bottles. His shoulder bumped hers, and he couldn’t help but savor the moment of contact. To relish the knowledge that he was not alone here, that though this day was a nightmare, it was a shared one.
When they finally stepped out of the pub, Alfie gulped in the cool air. He’d never been so thankful to breathe air that did not taste of clotted blood.
“I’ve got to say, Prince,” she said, “I didn’t think you could pull it off.”
As they moved deeper into the Brim and farther from the bloodied pub behind them, Alfie stared at the stalls of magical baubles and trinkets, pastries and sangria, with a new appreciation. His people were safe to enjoy all that the marketplace had to offer, all that this kingdom had to offer. He watched his people move merrily from booth to booth, smiles on their faces as they prepared for tomorrow’s Equinox Festival.
Alfie’s heart still ached at the thought of the man he’d killed and all those who had fallen to dust at the magic’s touch, but now there was hope. He’d fixed it.
His mind hazy with exhaustion and adrenaline, he couldn’t help but look at Finn, gratitude welling up in his voice. “Finn,” he said. “Gracias. I—”
A force he couldn’t see thrust Alfie back, sending him flying the length of ten men until he slammed against the door of the Blue Thimble, his head cracking against it, his sentence dying on his lips.
“Prince!” he heard Finn shout as he slid down the door and onto the ground, but it sounded as if she were calling his name from the other end of an endless tunnel.
Then there was only darkness.
18
A Father’s Instinct
The man walked through the Brim, power flitting through him like lightning trapped in a bottle.
He’d torn through a pub, letting the magic within him ravage everyone in sight and slaughtering those who dared fight against him. With each body the magic claimed, more power bloomed within him. His senses grew deliriously heightened. Each hair on his skin seemed to be alive. He could sense the currents of air, individual threads of wind that moved in their own right. He could smell the fresh coat of paint swathed on a hacienda miles away, deep in the city.
As he watched the people in the marketplace, he wanted to shout, to laugh in their faces, to tear them limb from limb so they might know how insignificant they were beside him.
He wanted to make them all kneel.
Not yet, the magic hissed. Those in the pub fall to dust, for they are not worthy. This power you feel will fade as their bodies fade. We must seek those strong enough for—
“Silence,” he said. Something called to him in the air. Something painfully familiar that clawed at his insides for attention, for punishment. There, in this medley of scent and sound and touch, was the girl who had taken everything from him. He could smell the scent of her, of her fear.
Not now. The magic persisted. You will have the girl and much more after we—
He shook his head, the magic’s words falling on deaf ears. Finn was here. Fate had brought her to this city just as he’d thought. The man turned on his heel and walked back toward the pub he’d left soaked in blood, knowing his daughter would be there awaiting his love, his judgment. It was strange how those two things were often one and the same.
As the magic writhed in annoyance within him, Ignacio pushed its words away. After all, what kind of father would he be if he didn’t pay his daughter a visit?
19
The Puppet Master
A dagger in her hand, Finn barreled through the crowds of the Brim and ran back to the Blue Thimble, where the prince sat crumpled against its doors. She knelt at his side, her eyes scouring t
he congested marketplace for an enemy, for whoever had magicked the prince backward as if he were a stick for a dog to fetch.
But there was no one of note around her, just shoppers moving from one brightly colored stand to another, chattering about the festival on their tongues. A few were looking at her and the prince, whispering behind their hands, taking steps forward to help but moving back at the sight of her dagger and her snarling face.
Alfie’s chest rose and fell to a steady rhythm, but the back of his head bled against the door where he’d fallen after slamming against it.
“Is your friend all right, señorita?” An old man ambled toward her and Alfie, a cane in his hand. He reached for her shoulder. “Qué pasó—”
The man fell quiet, frozen before her.
Her heart pounding in her throat, she stared up at him and snapped her fingers in front of the man’s still face. “Hello?”
It was as if the man had been turned into a statue. He did not blink, but his eyes didn’t water from the effort. His fingers didn’t cramp and twitch where they hovered above Finn’s shoulder, she could feel the heat emanating from his skin, and yet he was still as the dead. Was she somehow imagining all of this? Had she hit her head during the fight in the bar?
It was then that she noticed how strangely silent it had become.
She looked beyond the old man and saw that every soul in the Brim, from the shoppers and the vendors to the dancing couples and the street musicians, had fallen still. Mouths hung open, mid-conversation. Hands were frozen, outstretched to drop pesos into a merchant’s palm. Everything and everyone but her had stopped.
“What the hell?” she said. Her words boomed in the silence. She turned around and stared at the marketplace sprawled out behind her. Even a bit of spittle flying from a shouting man’s mouth hung in midair. She was swaddled in silence. While everyone was perfectly still, the prince’s chest rose and fell, as if since he’d been incapacitated by an injury, he had been spared. Finn had never been so thankful to see him breathe.
“Prince!” She shook his shoulder. “Wake up! Something’s going on, wake up!” But he didn’t wake, didn’t make a sound.
A sound cut through the quiet, a voice on the wind behind her.
“Little chameleon . . .”
She heard his voice on the wind, lilting and soft as a lullaby.
Ignacio.
“He’s not here,” she said to herself. “He’s not here. Wake up.”
This was all a nightmare. The whole thing. What she’d seen in the palace, Kol taking her propio, the Brim freezing. It was all a dream. Soon she’d wake up. She would. She had to.
“You know I don’t like it when you make friends with unsavory types. . . .”
She was still crouched beside the bleeding prince, her ears ringing with Ignacio’s warning. Her hands shaking, Finn turned, following the pull of the sound. There, in the center of the stillness on the other side of the stretch of market stalls ahead of the Blue Thimble, stood Ignacio. A chilling energy zipped through her, wriggling beneath her skin like a snake slithering through grass. Shock squeezed her heart in a tight vise. She couldn’t breathe. The quiet was no longer the absence of sound but a warning of what was to come.
He took a step forward.
That one motion sent a tight knot of fear unspooling within her until she was nothing but flesh full of paralyzing terror. He was here to collar her once more, to drag her back into his arms and under his will. Finn turned away from him and left the prince where he lay, taking off in a sprint around the corner of the Blue Thimble and down a stretch of the Brim that was dedicated to stalls of fine jewelry, silks, gowns, and capes. She dashed by the silent market stalls where the buyers and sellers stood eerily frozen, bolts of fabric petrified in midair. Finn’s arms pumped at her sides, her feet carrying her farther and farther from the prince. Staying near Alfie now would only convince Ignacio that she cared for him, and that would be all the motivation Ignacio needed to kill him.
Or to make her kill him.
“No,” she said, rejecting that thought with every ounce of energy she had as she ran deeper into the twists and turns of the Brim, leaving the prince far behind her. She wouldn’t let him make her do those things anymore.
She wouldn’t.
She didn’t make it ten paces before string wrapped around her ankle like a vise and held fast. Her own momentum worked against her and she fell forward, landing on her stomach beside a stall of jewel-toned dresses, her mouth open against the dirt. The pull was so strong it felt as if a hand had sprung from the ground to grip her ankle. She looked over her shoulder.
Ignacio took another leisurely step forward.
“Puppet strings, my little chameleon. Puppet strings.”
His mouth hadn’t moved, yet his voice whistled through the air. Everywhere and nowhere, as if it always had been in her head. How was he doing this? How had he found her? And his eyes, they’d changed. Black from edge to edge. Her mind narrowed to a hazy point of pure panic.
He looked just like the man in the Blue Thimble.
Ignacio was entangled with the dark magic. Finn’s throat thickened and seized with fear. He had been a monster before when he was only a man. Now he was something else, a creature who would use every ounce of the dark magic within him to hunt her down like a dog that had strayed too far from its master. He didn’t titter about a dark god coming to life like the man in the Blue Thimble did. Ignacio was himself, only made powerful. She didn’t know if this was better or worse.
Finn could hardly breathe as Ignacio took another step forward, his black eyes glinting.
Adrenaline burning through her, she made to cut the string with her dagger, but it wouldn’t break. The thread bent on her blade but would not snap. He was still walking to her. She had to get away. She pulled on the string with her free hand. It sliced into her palm and after a long, painful moment, it broke free from her ankle. She was up and running again.
“Where are you hurrying off to?” he called. “We haven’t had the chance to catch up, and I have a gift for you, little chameleon. One I think you’ll like.”
Don’t look back, don’t look back. If she didn’t look him in the eye, he couldn’t do what he’d always done to her.
She’d made it past four market stalls before she heard a whirring sound, like a fisherman casting out a line. Pricks of pain stung her skin as strings cut through her clothes and burrowed themselves in the flesh of her back and the backs of her ankles. He yanked her with such force that she landed faceup and skidded back toward him. Her lungs burning, she got on all fours. She was beside the stalls of dresses again. She sawed at the strings, but this time they wouldn’t give, whether by her hand or her dagger’s edge. She could feel them burrowing deeper into her skin, as if they were trying to replace her very veins. She clawed her way forward, fighting the pull. A string dragged her violently by the heel, and when it pulled backward she felt her skin rip, as if a seam had come undone. Her leg gave uselessly beneath her weight. Blood didn’t drip but gushed from the torn flesh of her heel. She was done for. She would be his again.
Then there was only the sound of his measured walk. Her eyes clung to the ground as his feet came to a stop just beside her head.
“Now look at what you’ve done.” Ignacio tutted with a fatherly click of the tongue, as if she were a child with a scraped knee. “You shouldn’t have run. Now you’ve hurt yourself. That seems to be what you do, doesn’t it? Silly things that only end up hurting you in the end.”
There was no point in looking away anymore. She looked up and faced him. Finn couldn’t hold back a gasp. Up close she could see that he looked exactly as he had when they’d first met a decade ago—young and vibrant, strong brows and dark brown hair, thick and lustrous. His skin was smooth, and there were no marks to show what she’d done to him. No ruined skin around his eyes. No milky pupils. Black, raised veins pulsed beneath his skin, just like the infected men in the pub—a latticework of darkness. Fear pooled in
her belly at the sight. She clutched her middle, afraid that she might be sick in front of him.
“You wanted me to run,” she spat at him before folding her hands over the wound in her heel. Putting pressure on it wasn’t helping. Her hands came away slick with blood. She didn’t know the desk magic to heal it. “You don’t want anything unless it tries to run from you.”
“In your case, limp away. But you’re right,” he said with a crooked smile. It hurt to remember that she’d learned it from him. How she’d practiced in the mirror, wanting to catch mischief in the curve of her lips just like he did. Even now when she smiled, she could find him in her face. “You know me so well.”
Ignacio had a propio, but he could control someone only if they revealed their deepest truth to him. He couldn’t control her until she’d told him hers, the thing that shamed her the most. Yet now he could make everyone in the Brim freeze? This dark magic had heightened his powers beyond her worst nightmares. The sour taste of fear crawled up her throat like bile.
Though fear curdled in her stomach, a snarl curled her lip. “I can’t wait to watch you crumble to maldito dust.” Maybe this moment of terror would be a blessing. After all, Ignacio would be destroyed by this magic like that man in the Blue Thimble, wouldn’t he?
But Ignacio only smiled at her before tapping her on the nose. “Oh, my dear. I am not those fools. This magic strengthens me, gives me everything I ask.” He leaned in close and tipped his forehead against hers. When she tried to move away, he seized her by the back of the neck and held her there. “I told you I would never die, didn’t I? You should have believed me.”
Finn put her hands on his chest and shoved him away. When he touched her, her skin crawled, as if it would rather fall from her bones than feel his caress. Her body no longer felt like her own; it was a tool for him to wield, to sheathe, to sharpen, to parade as his pride and joy. And if he was right, if this magic sustained him instead of destroyed him, then she would never be free of him. She would be locked in her body again, a puppet dancing to the pull of his strings.
