by Maya Motayne
He stared at the wall where Alfie should be stepping through. Nothing happened.
“Screw it.”
Luka bolted off the bed, dashed back to the doors, and threw them both open.
“Yes, Master Luka?” one guard said uneasily.
Just when Luka opened his mouth to tell the guards that Alfie was missing and to inform the king and queen, Alfie and a girl tumbled through the wall, landing on the ground in a heap. A lone sandal followed behind them, zooming through the wall and slamming against Alfie’s bedside table with a thwack. Luka stared at them, eyes wide. Alfie had never traveled with someone else before. He’d thought it was impossible.
“Everything all right in there?” the second guard asked, craning his neck to get a look in the room. But Luka was already closing the doors.
“Perfectly fine! Keep up the good work, boys! Making our kingdom so proud!” He shut the doors and hurried to where Alfie sat beside the girl, his back pressed against the wall as his body curled forward in pain. But worry over Alfie could not blunt Luka’s anger.
“Where the hell have you been?” he hissed. “And who is this? Did you just transport with someone?” All his life, Alfie had told him that he couldn’t transport with anyone else; it just wasn’t done. Luka’s mind was too scattered to stop supplying questions. He pointed at the smelly sandal that had flown through the wall. “And whose chancla is that?”
Alfie had used his doorknob for transport more times than he could count, and each time the magic opened its door and invited him in, cutting a path for him in its great expanse, carrying him on its current. There was a sense of gentleness to it, of cordiality between him and the magic.
Using the dark magic was different.
As soon as he and Finn stepped into the magic, it slurped them in through its teeth. It was as if they had been swallowed whole, forced down this magic’s twisting throat and into the depths of its belly.
Then for an endless moment he felt as if he were flattening, moving through a corridor of darkness so cramped that only a mouse could hope to squirm out. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t scream. As they moved through the magic, terrible pain seared his body, as if his very flesh were being scraped from his bones. As if soon there would be nothing left but marrow. The pain he’d felt when he’d used the magic to stop Ignacio was nothing compared with this. That was a hum of agony; this was a ballad, long and wrenching.
The magic belched them onto his bedroom floor. His body was a bundle of nerves rubbed raw. A scream rose in his throat like bile, but he’d scarcely had time to breathe before Luka stood over him, his face pinched with anger, questions flying from his lips.
“There’s a lot to explain,” Alfie said breathlessly. The thought that Ignacio was loose in his city with the dark magic at his fingertips turned his mind into a senseless jumble. He didn’t know if he even could explain it all to Luka.
“Then start,” Luka retorted. And Alfie could not fathom where to begin.
He wanted to keep the grisly reality from his best friend, but he found that he was too tired and too afraid to lie. His throat burning, Alfie told him the truth.
He told him everything—the poisoning, the release of the dark magic, the little servant boy’s earring, facing Ignacio, and what he’d learned of the magic’s goal to find Sombra’s bones from that horrid little song (Finn startled at this information; he had yet to talk to her about it). He hadn’t been this honest with Luka in months, and the information flew past his lips as if he were pulling colored scarves from his mouth, hand over hand, like a magician.
When Alfie finally fell quiet, Luka only stared at him, wide-eyed. He was too stunned to speak, which was very much a first for him.
When Alfie couldn’t bear the silence any longer he held his hands out, open-palmed. “What has happened is my fault, but I couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t lose you in that room.” Alfie whisked a hand over his eyes. “I know this is my responsibility and for once I don’t want to run away from my duties and my kingdom, I want to save it. Por favor, will you help me?”
Silence curdled between them once more and Alfie waited for the shock on Luka’s face to settle and change into something else.
Luka stepped forward and pulled Alfie into a fierce hug.
Alfie gripped him back, and the wave of relief that Luka was alive, here to be embraced and argued with, swept him away from his fear of what he’d done, if only for a moment.
“You’re a fool,” Luka said, his voice thick. He pulled back and took Alfie by the shoulders. “But I’m still here because of your foolishness. Tell me how I can help.”
22
The Plan
“So,” Luka began, his gaze darting between Alfie and Finn. “You’re telling me you two have absolutely no plan for how to stop this?”
Finn eyes rolled heavenward. “You’re a perceptive one, aren’t you?”
“We don’t,” Alfie said, before Finn could pull Luka into an argument. “Not quite. Not yet.”
Luka stared at him as if the answer were obvious. “Then we must go to Paloma; there’s no other choice. She will know what to do. She has to, doesn’t she?”
Panic pulled at Alfie’s stomach. He couldn’t disappoint Paloma again. He couldn’t tell her that he’d undone the work of the dueños before her for his own reasons. The thought alone had his palms slick with sweat.
“No, I can come up with a plan to fix this, and it’s not as if the dueños had this under control. That method that they used to hide the magic away did not stop me from finding it and setting it free. If I could do that, others will be able to as well. We need to find our own way to trap the magic and put it someplace completely untouchable, unfindable. A place where there is no life for it to feast on, no bodies for it to infect,” Alfie said, wringing his hands. “Just give me a moment.”
Alfie’s mind raced with possibilities, each one building only to burst at the slightest prodding, like a soap bubble. Each idea gave way to doubts, to flaws in his logic, to failure. Luka watched him, his eyes sharp. If Alfie didn’t come up with something now, then Luka would tell Paloma for sure.
Finn broke the silence, throwing her hands up in the air with a growl of frustration. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to listen to you. I’m not going to wait here like some sitting duck for Ignacio to find while you come up with another half-baked plan. I should’ve known that some pampered bruxo like you would just pull me into more trouble without even an inkling of how to clean up your own maldito mess.”
The snap of her voice rubbed him raw. He gritted his teeth. “You know nothing about me.”
Her eyes swept over him, from head to toe and back again. “I know enough.”
Anger zipped through him, moving his feet until he was before her, nearly chest to chest. “Why do you enjoy making people feel small?”
She raised her chin. He couldn’t understand how she could be so much shorter than him yet make him feel as if she were looking down her nose at him.
“Don’t kid yourself,” she said, challenge written in every line of her face. “I didn’t make you small; you were small to begin with.”
Her words burned through him, pitting his stomach with nothing short of fury. “In my experience, those who do this only do it because they themselves feel small, insignificant.”
“Did your mamá tell you that after a long day of servants kissing your ass after they scrubbed it clean—”
“Hey!” Luka shouted. “Cállate! Both of you!”
Alfie tore his eyes from Finn’s smirking face, the anger inside of him falling to a crackling simmer. If they couldn’t even handle a conversation without screaming at one another, how were they going to get through this mess? He internally chided himself. Ignacio was terrorizing his kingdom with Sombra’s magic and he was letting himself get distracted by a bout of name-calling. He shuddered to think of what the black-eyed man was doing to his people while Alfie sat safe and sound in his palace. Shame pooled in
him.
“Look,” Luka said. “I have an idea.” He glanced at Alfie then, his eyes skittish. “You’re not going to like it.”
Luka seldom looked this uncomfortable. A knot drew tight in Alfie’s stomach.
“Well, will I like it?” Finn asked.
Alfie shot her a look. She shrugged it off.
“Just let me explain before you say anything. You say you need somewhere to place the magic,” Luka began tentatively. “Somewhere no one can go. Somewhere it cannot be touched and cannot infect anybody.” He stopped then, mashing his lips into a thin line.
No matter what the suggestion was, Alfie would take it if it would help him rid his kingdom of this magic. From what Alfie had seen in the Brim, Ignacio’s power was monstrous, and there couldn’t be a valid option to stop it that he would reject. Yet Luka was looking at him as if he would explode upon hearing it.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Finn huffed, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed. “We know this. Get on with it.”
Luka ignored her instead of flinging witty repartee in her direction. It wasn’t like him. A sense of dread descended on Alfie like a veil, blurring everything in sight. Whatever he was going to suggest was going to be bad.
“Luka.” Alfie swallowed thickly. “Please just tell me what it is.”
“You know that such a place exists,” Luka said, his eyes pleading for Alfie to piece it together himself, so that he would not have to say it aloud. “You’ve seen it yourself.” He clasped his hands before him in a tangled knot of fingers. “You saw it in the Blue Room.”
The idea sprouted in Alfie’s mind then, pricking him with its thorns, drawing blood and grief and an anger so powerful that it numbed him with its heat, cauterized every wound he had.
“No,” Alfie heard himself say, his voice a rasp of fury.
“You have to at least consider it. It’s the only thing that makes sense—”
“I don’t care if it makes sense!” he shouted, the words bursting from his mouth before he could temper the heat in them. The mere idea of it made it feel as if his lungs were pinioned flat, as if he couldn’t breathe. “I won’t do it.”
A gusty sigh came from the other side of the room. Finn stared at him as if she were watching a child throw a tantrum. “Can someone please explain what the hell is going on?”
Luka looked at her and opened his mouth to speak before shutting it. He looked at Alfie then, not asking permission but giving warning. “If she’s going to help you on this, she has to know the full story.”
“No she doesn’t,” Alfie bit out, his fingers curling into fists. “Because we are not going to go through with this plan.”
Luka pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a long moment before speaking again. “If you want to handle this on your own, then by all means do it. But if you cannot come up with a plan, then I’m going to Paloma. This is the only plan that makes sense, and you know it. If you reject it, I’m walking out the door to tell her everything.”
Alfie held Luka’s gaze. He wanted to look resolute, but he could feel the shift inside of him and he knew that he was looking at Luka pleadingly, begging him to not make him do this.
The moment broke. Luka shook his head at him, a wordless apology, and turned toward the door. Alfie opened his mouth to argue, but his words died in his throat.
Luka turned the doorknob.
“Wait,” Alfie called, his voice threadbare.
“No,” Finn said, pushing off the wall. “Don’t wait. Open the maldito door and let me out. If you fools are just gonna yell at each other instead of coming up with a plan, then I’m hopping on the first ship out of this gods-forsaken city.”
Finn stormed across his room, pushing Luka out of the way and reaching for the hood of the vanishing cloak that still hung on her shoulders.
“Listen.” His throat burning, Alfie spoke. “My brother was taken from me, but not in the way you and the rest of the world were told.” Castallan and the rest of the world were told that Dez had been killed by a nameless assassin. The details of how he’d died— the coup and Xiomara’s terrible propio—had been kept secret. The knowledge of an internal attempt to slaughter the royal family and a woman with the ability to create voids was hardly the sort of thing that would keep the people calm or preserve the international reputation of the kingdom.
Finn paused at the door and looked at him over her shoulder, curiosity flickering in her eyes.
“There was an attempted coup planned by Castallano nobles. A girl broke into the palace, a girl with a propio that could create . . .” His breath caught as his lips tried to form the word. “Voids.”
Finn raised a brow. “Voids?”
“Empty, vacuous places. Places with no time, no magic, no life.” Alfie’s voice broke around those final two words and then Luka was beside him, a silent comfort as Alfie’s eyes burned. He held them open, not wanting to blink, not wanting to feel the warm slip of tears down his face.
Finn didn’t seem to pay attention to how he struggled to speak, and he was thankful for that.
She crossed her arms, considering. “So you want to trap the magic, then get this girl to use her propio to open the void and then you toss this magic in there?”
Alfie nodded and folded a hand over his eyes. “It makes sense. No one would be able to get to it there. It would never be able to harm anyone.” He dropped his hand and held Finn’s gaze. “It would never fall into the wrong hands again.”
A silence stretched between them, an understanding folded in the quiet.
Finn gave a single nod. “Fine. I’m in. Where’s the girl?”
“That’s the tricky bit,” Luka said with a grimace, and Alfie was happy to have a break from talking. “She’s in the Clock Tower.”
Finn stiffened. “Qué?”
The Clock Tower was a prison that housed Castallan’s most vile criminals. Anyone who was taken was never seen again, and now they would have to break in and sneak this girl out. He would have to ask the girl who had taken Dez from him for help. The mere idea of it tore at his insides and only Luka’s hand on his shoulder stopped him from letting the weight of it drag him into its depths.
“Yes, well . . .” Luka rubbed the back of his neck. “It’ll require some planning.”
Finn chewed her lip, her eyes meeting Alfie’s. “You said you wanted me to change you two into each other.” Finn pointed at Luka and Alfie. “So that we can leave, then we break the girl out of prison, and I lure Ignacio to us. We kill him, you trap the maldito magic in your dragon thing and toss it in the void.”
Alfie nodded, his throat still aching from the effort of keeping everything inside of him at bay. “Yes, that would be the plan.” They would have to use Finn to lure Ignacio away from the city, somewhere where others wouldn’t be hurt in the crossfire. Then they’d have to try to kill him again and take the magic.
“Wait, I’m not going?” Luka asked, looking offended. “I came up with the maldito plan!”
“Luka,” Alfie said. “You nearly died only hours ago.”
“So did you,” Luka shot back, and Alfie grimaced at the thought of Ignacio trying to debone him like a fish. “And I feel fine now. Stronger than ever, even! I won’t let you face this alone.”
Alfie shook his head. Having Luka with him on this journey was something he both wished for and feared. On the one hand, there was the comfort of having his best friend with him. On the other was the prospect of putting Luka in danger once more, but not being able to save him this time. “No. Someone needs to stay here and be me so I’m not missed. Her propio will do that, so you’re covering for me.”
“Well, can’t she stay here pretending to be you and I go with you instead?” Luka asked.
“It’s not an option,” Alfie said before quickly explaining how Kol had blocked her propio. “And even if it was, she would just rob the palace and leave.”
Finn picked her nails with the tip of her dagger. “That’s true.”
�
��Fine,” Luka huffed.
Alfie relished the sound. Things were still somewhat normal if Luka was huffing, blowing a curl off his forehead with a gusty sigh. The life he knew hadn’t been destroyed just yet.
“All right,” Finn said. “We know we’re headed to the maldito Clock Tower, but how are we getting in and out?” When Alfie fell silent she shot him a look. “Were you planning on knocking and asking politely?”
Alfie didn’t take the bait. He walked to his desk and unfurled a roll of parchment. With a quick hand he grabbed a white feathered quill from the drawer and dipped it into the inkwell. With a barely audible sluuurp, ink flowed into the quill’s stem, the feather darkening to a rich ebony as it filled with ink. On the parchment Alfie drew five circles within one another. Luka and Finn gathered behind him, staring as he etched the inner workings of the Clock Tower on the parchment.
“The Clock Tower is separated into rings, like San Cristóbal. It has five rings within it. The innermost ring.” Alfie tapped the smallest circle with his quill tip, a dot of ink sprouting there. “That’s where the prisoners are kept. But the prisoner that we need is not held there; she is in a single cell in the second innermost ring, away from the general prisoners in solitary confinement.” Alfie drew an X on the east side of the second smallest ring, his memory tugging him to the day he’d been there, standing before that girl’s door, his heart pounding in his throat. He swallowed down the adrenaline surging through him, his hand curling tight around the lip of his desk. “And she’s heavily guarded.”
“Alfie,” Luka said slowly, as if he did not want to know the answer. As if he already knew the answer. “How do you know this?”
Alfie looked away from him, but Finn caught his eye then. Her eyebrows rose.
“You’ve been to the Clock Tower?” she asked, looking uncharacteristically impressed. Of course his most shameful moment would be the one to impress her.
Alfie looked intently at the crude map he’d drawn. “Yes.”
“What?” Luka nearly shouted.
“Look,” Alfie said, stopping Luka before he could say more. “There’s no time to explain now when we have a plan to hash out. It’s not important.” Alfie told himself that was why he didn’t want to speak of it, not because he was ashamed of what he’d almost done, of the look on Paloma’s face when she’d found him at the Clock Tower. Alfie shoved those thoughts away.
