by Maya Motayne
It wasn’t.
As her flying leap began to arc downward, she knew she would be a hair short. She would fall into the boiling water just a few steps away from solid land. But then Alfie scrambled to his feet and leaned over the edge of the moat, snatching her from the air just before she fell to her death.
Together they tumbled down onto the dirt ground, rolling to a stop with Finn on top of him, her face buried in the crook of his neck, his arms tight around her back.
Pressing her palms against the ground on either side of his head, she pushed herself up and peered down at him, her heart pounding in her chest. “Prince, are you all right?”
His eyes still closed, Alfie’s lips quirked up. “I’m not a dumpling. That’ll do for now.”
He looked up at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Finn felt the rumble of the laugh in his chest before she heard it. It struck her that right now, even with his skin made sallow from Sombra’s magic and dirt in his hair from their fall, he still looked better than when she’d first met him in his clean cloak and mask. He looked best when he laughed.
Finn pulled out of his arms and stood, holding her hand out for him to take.
He took her hand and let her help him up. “At least I got to do the saving for once.”
She reached up to brush the dirt off his shoulders. “Don’t get used to it.”
Xiomara dashed to their side, pointing back at the Clock Tower.
Black-eyed prisoners and guards were surging out of the prison to give chase. With no bridge, they leaped recklessly into the water and tried to swim through, their skin bleeding and boiling. The infected on the roof threw themselves off foolishly only to fall into the moat or splatter on the ground below.
“Let’s go!” Finn said. “You two in the back.” She shoved Alfie toward the carriage door when he went to man the head of the carriage instead.
“What? But I—”
“Prince, you’re half dead. Get in the back and rest. And keep an eye on her.” Finn looked pointedly at Xiomara as she scrambled into the back of the carriage.
Alfie opened his mouth to protest, but then Ignacio’s voice boomed around them.
“Stop!” Ignacio shouted. He stood on the roof, his eyes locked on Finn’s. Each of the black-eyed monsters pouring out of the prison stopped mid-run, awaiting their master’s word.
“Let them go,” Ignacio said, his voice echoing around them. “Let them warn the pretender rulers of what is to come. Let them tell the people that their true king will soon rise.”
He cocked his head at Finn, a chilling gesture that she knew too well. Then his voice whispered in her ear alone. She could feel his hot breath on her ear though he did not move from the tower roof, Run all you like, Finn. You know I love to hunt you.
A shudder rolled up Finn’s spine.
“Finn—” Alfie began, his voice tight with a concern that made her eyes want to search for the ground. Her throat burning, she shoved him into the carriage and shut the door behind him. She climbed up to the head of the carriage, jerked the reins, and guided the horses forward. She didn’t dare look back, but she knew that Ignacio was watching her.
And smiling.
32
Words Carved in Wood
As Finn took the reins and sent the horses galloping back to San Cristóbal, Alfie sat inside the carriage, his eyes trained on Xiomara. She squirmed uncomfortably beneath his gaze.
Xiomara had saved his life. She could have let that infected man drag him away, but instead she’d grabbed his wrist, her hooded eyes full of fear for him.
To add insult to injury, when they’d been separated she could have run away with the vanishing cloak, absolving herself of any responsibility, but she’d stayed and helped them escape.
She had saved his life. Twice. And Alfie had never felt so fiercely angry and confused.
More than anything he’d wanted her to be a monster, to be worth all the nightmares, all the anxiety, all the what-ifs. He’d wanted her to be uncooperative. And yet she’d proven the opposite. She’d been scared of Alfie but not averse to helping him, saving him.
Alfie hated her for it.
He wanted to fall asleep in the shaking carriage, to regain his strength for the fight ahead, but the turmoil twisting his insides kept him awake. He stared at the girl, his gaze hardening. She looked away from him, her face tight.
Alfie wanted to shake her into anger, into anything but this guilty and inexplicably helpful person. The sorrowful look on her face made him feel guilty for hating her.
Why feel guilt when she took Dez from us? he thought. The only thing I should feel guilty about is letting her take another maldito breath.
Alfie’s hands curled into fists as his anger swelled. He should exact his revenge for what she’d done to him. What she’d done to his family. She deserved it, didn’t she?
A bump in the road lifted the carriage off the ground, turning his stomach as it sped on with loud creaks. Finn’s shrill curse tore him away from the whispers in his mind.
Alfie took a deep breath. He could kill her, he knew he could. But that wasn’t who he was. And it never would be. He thought of Paloma stopping him from hurting this girl before.
Her voice echoed loud in his head, drowning out his thoughts: I know the difference between “could” and “will.” Those words spell the difference between a good man and a bad one. The light and the dark. I know which you turn to.
He hadn’t lost himself to the dark yet, and he wouldn’t do it now.
Alfie’s fists unclenched. The prisoner stared up at him, fear in her eyes.
“I want to make something abundantly clear,” Alfie began, the steel in his voice barely recognizable to his ears. “Just because I broke you out of the Clock Tower does not mean I forgive you. It does not mean I will ask for you to be granted clemency. It does not mean anything aside from the fact that something very bad has been released, and I need your power to get rid of it, entiendes?” She nodded shakily. Her fear only made him angrier. “Maybe if years had passed instead of months, I wouldn’t be saying this. But I need to know why you did it. I need that question answered, because until it is I don’t think I’ll be able to go on with my life, whatever little of it I have left. I’m afraid that I might just kill you myself before we even leave. I need to know the truth.”
Xiomara only looked at him, her mouth opening and closing silently.
He had no paper or quills for her to write with, but they would have to make do. Alfie pulled the sheathed dagger that Finn had lent him from his pocket. Xiomara skittered away, her back against the carriage door.
He held it out to her. “Here.”
She took it in her hands gingerly, confused.
He pointed at the wood of the carriage interior walls. “You could carve it in the wood. Just try.” He couldn’t help but add a fervent, “Please.”
Xiomara wished the girl hadn’t left her with the angry prince.
The sun had set as they tore away from the prison, and now fledgling moonlight poured through the windows of the carriage, lighting Xiomara’s pallid face with an eerie glow. She looked at the dagger in her hand. She hadn’t written in so long, and even if she had, she wouldn’t know where to begin, and she knew that whatever she said wouldn’t be enough.
Should she begin with how she had gotten her propio? She’d grown up in a home where her father beat her mother bloody. Xiomara would sit in her room with her hands over her ears, a poor attempt to block out the sounds of her mother begging, then whimpering, then silence.
It was on the day that her father killed her mother that Xiomara gained her propio. She’d found her mother lying facedown in a pool of her own blood. She’d turned her over and felt all the broken things shifting inside of her, like a bag of shattered glass. Something within her tore open and never closed, something dark and empty, all-encompassing.
She’d spent all her life wanting to block out the noise, the violence, imagining that she could send it somewhere el
se. Her propio took that feeling and made it real. She’d waited until her father had fallen into a drunken sleep and beat him until he stopped breathing, then the house was full of still, bloodied bodies. She’d wanted it all to go away, to just disappear.
That’s exactly what happened.
The vacuum within her became physical. A void of blackness opened in the floor, swallowed her parents whole. At her command, it closed.
Should she tell the prince about the months she’d spent on the streets, parentless and afraid of herself? Scared that she would swallow herself and the whole world if she wasn’t careful?
Should she tell him about when her propio was discovered and suddenly some very powerful people wanted to take care of her, be her new family. How kind Marco Zelas’s smile had looked when he’d wrapped an arm around her shoulder and promised to keep her safe.
So long as she did something for them.
So long as she helped him get rid of the royal family.
Should she tell the prince that her nerves had made it impossible to eat for weeks ahead of the planned day? That she’d been a teenager on her own and had let her desire for family and protection cloud her judgment?
These thoughts ran through Xiomara’s mind in a matter of seconds. The prince was still staring down at her expectantly, his chest rising and falling rapidly as if he’d been chasing these answers his entire life.
Xiomara didn’t know where to begin, but she knew one thing.
She took the dagger and slowly carved into the wood wall: I want to make it right.
The prince looked down at her words, his face inscrutable for a moment. Then he breathed deeply through his nose and gave one stiff nod as if that were enough. For now.
“Just answer me this,” he said. “And please, please don’t lie. I’ll know if you lie.”
Xiomara nodded at him, a lump growing in her throat. The prince took a deep breath. His voice still shook. “Did you want to kill him? Did you want to take him from us?”
The question made her chest ache. It took her back to that terrible moment. She wanted so badly to refute it that she opened her mouth to speak, but only a strangled cry came out. She shook her head with such force that her neck hurt. She felt her eyes burning.
“All right,” the prince said. His expression was hard, but his gold eyes were tinged with sympathy. “All right.”
A long silence stretched between them. The prince stared at the words she’d written, his gold eyes clouded.
“I know someone else who’s been made to do things she didn’t want to do,” he said softly. Xiomara looked up at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He leaned his head against the carriage window and stared up at the sky as if he were searching for answers in the stars.
Finn had imagined her own death more times than anyone her age should have.
As the carriage zoomed down the sugarcane-lined road, whipping the stalks forward in forced bows, the scenarios played in her mind. Each one had the common thread of Ignacio standing over her, watching her take her last breaths. Even after she’d slashed his eyes, she’d always assumed that he’d be the last thing she saw. Now it seemed that she would be right about that, no surprises there.
But she’d never expected her death to be entangled with the fate of a prince who had more book recommendations than sense, and the fate of a kingdom she’d told herself meant nothing to her. Yet here she was, steering a careening carriage in hopes of getting to the palace in time to stop Ignacio from retrieving those eerie stone hands.
But she supposed these things were supposed to be a surprise anyway.
And then there was the surprise of the prince himself.
She would never forget the way he looked at her when she’d found him in Xiomara’s cell, as if the world had been swathed in darkness and in her eyes she carried the light. His face had softened and he’d bowed his head, as if embarrassed by something he thought. Or felt. She was afraid to know what he was thinking and afraid not to know, afraid of the answers that her mind was supplying.
His voice echoed again in her head, soft and insistent. I believe you.
His words had formed into flesh and bone—a hand held out to pull her to her feet and out of Ignacio’s grasp. Even when the despair of what had happened to her parents had razed her to the ground, his words had found her, promising that she could break free of the fate that Ignacio had sewn into her skin years ago. His voice in her head pushing her forward had felt more intimate than anything she’d ever experienced, and he didn’t even know it.
He never would. She was never going to tell him.
But the fact that she knew it was enough to make her face burn hot under the cool moonlight pouring over her.
The carriage rocked as the prince climbed carefully from the back into the seat beside her at the carriage’s head. Finn didn’t turn to look at him. She stared ahead at the winding dirt road, willing her face to cool. She didn’t want to see how drawn and sallow his face had become from using the magic. They were already dashing toward death; no need to speed the process further.
“I told her . . .” Alfie’s words ground to a halt. He seemed to struggle with something. “I told Xiomara the plan.”
Finn raised an eyebrow. She’d never heard him use the girl’s name, and from the way his nostrils flared, it took a toll on him to utter it even once.
“Which is?” she asked.
“We get to the palace and warn them of what’s to come, and ask the dueños to set up protections to stall Ignacio and his soldiers from getting to the hands. When he comes for the hands, you and I will take him on. If we’re lucky, we kill him, and I successfully trick the magic into the toy dragon. Xiomara will stay hidden under the vanishing cloak until the time is right and then open the void for me. I’ll toss it in there and there will be no bodies for it to infect, no way for it to use its power again.”
“And if we’re not lucky?” Finn asked, her voice worn thin.
A silence spread thick between them.
“If we’re not lucky.” Alfie tilted his head back, his eyes closed. “Then we’ll have nothing to worry about any longer.”
“A sweet way to say we’ll be dead,” Finn said.
“Would you rather I say it the sour way?” he murmured to the moon.
The prince’s face was bathed in moonlight as he bit the inside of his cheek. Her mother had always told her that keeping one’s softness in the face of a world that was tough and callous was a strength unto itself. It struck her that her mother would’ve liked Alfie very much. “No,” she said. “Sweet’s all right for now.”
Silence reigned for a long moment, and Finn wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
“Did you really kill someone when you were eight years old?” Alfie asked, his voice soft. His eyes were closed and his head leaned sideways. The dragon sat against his chest. He must have made Xiomara give it back to him when they’d spoken in the carriage. If he leaned a hair more, his forehead would press against her shoulder.
The moonlight silvered him, tracing the delicate cut of his features in its cool light. Finn wondered if this was what magic looked like to him, lush color licking the skin. Or was it a softer glow, trapped beneath the flesh like a flush blooming up the neck to claim cheeks and lips. Maybe a shimmer, like sweat.
“Why are you asking me that now?”
“Because I don’t believe you,” he said, his eyes meeting hers. The gold of his gaze took on a new life, the brightness pronounced and dazzling. “And if we’re going to die together tonight, I want to know who I’m dying with.”
Silence stretched between them.
After what Ignacio had done to her, a fear of him had taken root, black and crooked inside of her. Finn decided that if she feared one man that much, she couldn’t afford to fear anything else. So then, when she was afraid of something, she chased it down, taught it that it ought to be afraid of her instead.
But still, she could never stop fearing the truths that lived inside of her. She
’d told Ignacio about what she’d done to that little girl when she was eight, her darkest secret, and he’d used it against her. He’d taken her words and fashioned them into a collar to choke her with. No matter how many wild heists she’d pulled off, knife fights she’d won, or encounters with this dark magic she’d survived, she could never stop fearing herself—the parts of her that made her wish she could tear open her own skin and crawl out. The parts that made her hide herself under face after face. The parts of her that had killed that little girl and, in turn, killed her parents too. Her throat thickened at that thought.
She’d never stopped believing that if she spoke that secret to someone else, she would find nothing but looks of disgust—or worse, pity.
But she didn’t want to die with that fear festering inside her, corrupting her like the dark magic did its victims. Even if she had only a few hours left before Ignacio found her again, she wanted those hours to be hers, weightless, without a secret pulling her down as she tried desperately to swim up.
Alfie raised his head and looked at her, his eyes soft with concern. If she was going to try, why not try with him?
Why not try with a friend?
“Yes, I did,” she said, her grip on the reins tightening. “It wasn’t on purpose, though.”
“What happened?”
“My parents and I lived in a small, poor barrio where there were too many people and too little food. They pretended that things were fine, but I knew they weren’t eating so that I could.” Finn swallowed, her throat burning. “I decided to try to help. I snuck out to look for food. One night I was wandering in the alley beside a bakery where sometimes they’d toss out old bread. And I saw a loaf, burnt black as hell but a loaf all the same. When I rushed over to pick it up someone shoved me out of the way.”
Finn could see the little girl’s eyes in her mind. She couldn’t have been much older than Finn had been. One of her front teeth had been missing and she’d been covered in a layer of street grime just as Finn had—a particular coating of filth that could only come from sleeping in alleyways and rummaging through garbage for food. There was a look of absolute ferocity in the girl’s eyes as she lunged for the bread. It scared Finn to see it. Not because of the intensity of her stare, but because Finn had known that her own eyes had looked the same—scorched with desperation and fear.
