Beyond the Ruby Veil

by Mara Fitzgerald

  I set the lantern down. A moment ago, she was ready to cut off her own hand to defeat me. Now, she just looks like a vulnerable girl lying all alone.

  So Verene wasn’t born with this power. She wasn’t born with any power at all. She went into the catacombs and somehow found this creature she could bargain with. And now she gives her people a life more perfect than they could have ever dreamed.

  She shouldn’t pretend to be a saint. She shouldn’t care if they think she’s perfect. She should let them see just how far she would go for them. Because it’s real, and it’s a little extraordinary.

  A drop of blood rolls off Verene’s hand and hits the ground. Immediately, the vide is there.

  “Don’t—” I say.

  I realize I’m reaching for Verene’s hands, and I stop myself. I don’t know what I think I’m doing. I don’t know why I’m just sitting here, staring at her like I don’t have anything better to do.

  I have so much to do. I know how to control the vide now. I’ve beaten her. I can go back to Occhia and steal all her water for myself. I can kill her. I can let this city crumble, just as it deserves.

  But for some reason, I can’t get myself to do anything.

  I hear the footsteps in the dark, but I can’t quite piece together what they mean. And then someone is walking around the corner. When they see me, they stop short.

  It’s a young man. He’s holding a lantern. He’s dressed in dark clothes, a handkerchief around the bottom of his face.

  “You shouldn’t be down here,” he says in a rush.

  “Well, why are you down here?” I say.

  He’s quiet, but his eyes are on the bloody slash on my neck. When they drift to Verene, they widen.

  “Is…” he says, and I hear the note of fear in his voice. “Is that…?”

  I look at Verene’s long, dark eyelashes. One of her curls has fallen over her face, and it’s stuck to her mouth. Her mouth looks so soft. Unimaginably soft.

  I tear my gaze away.

  I’m not just going to kill her while she’s already unconscious. That would be too easy for her.

  She stole from my city for two years. She’s going to suffer.

  I clutch at my throat.

  “Run,” I tell the boy. “Run, before she gets you, too.”

  He doesn’t need telling twice. In an instant, he’s disappeared into the shadows.

  I grab the lantern. Then I grab Verene’s ankle, and I drag her down the hall. When she’s on her feet, she looks so light and graceful. When I have to pull her through the darkness with one hand, she’s the heaviest person in all the cities.

  With a rush of relief, I finally find the staircase that leads up to the city. I pause at the bottom, trying to catch my breath.

  I have to drag Verene just a little farther. I want to make sure all her people see her like this.

  I set the lantern on the steps. I grab Verene’s ankles with both hands and heave.

  My vision goes gray. For the first time, I notice that the cuts on my hand are still bleeding. My palm is absolutely sliced to pieces. And now, all of a sudden, I can feel the pain.

  No, I tell myself firmly. I didn’t lose that much blood. Surely I lost more than this in the watercrea’s tower. I’m not going to faint. Not now.

  I try to pull Verene again. I drag us up the stairs through sheer force of will. We’re almost at the top.

  But then my knees give out. I reach for the street, but everything is spinning out of control before my eyes.

  And then, nothing.

  It’s my wedding day.

  I’m lying in my bed, snug and warm. In a moment, I’ll hear the door open and smell the coffee Paola brings me with breakfast. I’ll eat in bed as we go over the final plans for the reception, and tonight, everything will be perfect. Nothing will go wrong. I refuse to let it go wrong, so it won’t. The thought is reassuring. It’s all so simple.

  “Emanuela. Emanuela.”

  I recognize the voice and frown. Ale and I do spend a lot of time together, but he usually isn’t in my bedroom when I wake up. He must be very nervous about the wedding. Even more nervous than I expected, which is saying a lot.

  “Emanuela,” he says again.

  I open my eyes. I see Ale’s face, pale and worried. I feel his cold fingers on my hair.

  And then it all comes back to me.

  I sit bolt upright.

  “Don’t.” Ale grabs me. “Don’t. Shh.”

  I look around wildly. It’s dark. I have no idea where I am.

  “Verene,” I say. “She—she was—”

  “She’s right out there,” he says. “Shh, Emanuela.”

  We’re in an alley between two manors. For a bewildered moment, I just take in the laundry strung up overhead. Then I turn around and see lantern light. I crawl to the mouth of the alley and look out.

  There’s a small group of people in the street. They’re all staring at something on the cobblestone. Someone. Verene is lying there, limp and unconscious. Theo is standing over her stiffly. He looks very much like he’s trying to get rid of the bystanders, but they’re not moving.

  I turn back to Ale. “What happened?” I say. “You were—”

  “I came back to the greenhouse, but you were gone,” he says. “He tried to chase me into the catacombs, and that was when we found you. You and her, lying at the entrance.” He pauses. “Bleeding.”

  I notice dimly that there’s a strip of fabric wrapped around my injured hand. Ale tore off the bottom of his shirt.

  “We have to—” I’m still fumbling to get my thoughts in order. “We’re too close to them. He’s going to send the mob after us—”

  “He was trying to come after us himself,” Ale says. “But then he got interrupted. When he saw all the blood on you, he looked… I don’t know. I don’t think he wants the people of Iris to see you.”

  He looks at me expectantly. Like he wants me to explain how, exactly, all this blood came about.

  “So we have the advantage right now,” I say.

  “We could escape,” Ale says. “If… if we knew how to stop the vide.”

  It comes back in a rush. I want to tell him everything I just learned. I want to share the thrill of the magic. The thrill of the control. The thrill of not having to be afraid of something anymore.

  But then the last piece of my memory falls into place.

  I fainted. I barely even did any magic with the vide, and I fainted.

  Verene has been using this magic to bring water to her city, but there’s a price. She’s weakened. She spends all her time in the cathedral, dizzy and resting. She gives up entirely too much of herself just to keep things the way they are.

  The disappointment is bitter. Magic isn’t supposed to cost this much. Magic didn’t seem to cost the watercrea anything.

  If magic can be chosen, I want to choose the most powerful magic there is. I want the kind of magic that can bring water to a city that has none. I want the kind of magic that will let me go everywhere and change everything.

  I want the kind of magic that belongs to me, and only me.

  I want more.

  But I don’t know how to get more.

  I look back at the street just as a man tries to duck around Theo, reaching for Verene. Theo shoves the man in the chest, hard.

  It startles everyone. For a moment, I think Theo looks a little startled, too. But then he doubles down, bracing himself in front of Verene like he’s daring someone else to try.

  “Emanuela,” Ale whispers. “What… what should we do?”

  The people on the street look so unsettled. They don’t know what’s happening to their Heart. They don’t know why she would have been attacked in such a strange way—ending up with blood on her hands, and nowhere else.

  They don’t know why her brother is suddenly acting like he’s hiding something.

  I stand up. I’m a little woozy, and Ale reaches for me, but I brace myself on the white wall of the alley.

  “
Quickly,” I say. “We have to get back to the cathedral before they do.”

  FOURTEEN

  I DON’T KNOCK ON THE FRONT DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL. I find a narrow window around the back and shatter it with a rock, because we don’t have the time to bother with subtlety.

  I pick the lock to get back into Verene and Theo’s quarters. We make our way down the hall and into the dark parlor. I survey the fluffy white love seats arranged under the beautiful stained-glass window, and I wait for someone to leap out and try to stop us.

  No one does. So I lead Ale down the hall and into the studiously clean bedroom that I ignored the last time I was here.

  “Shut the door,” I say. “Look around.”

  “That was a long walk,” he says. “Are you sure you don’t need to sit down—”

  “Just start looking,” I say.

  “What are we looking for?” he says.

  “Haven’t you always wanted the chance to snoop around in a boy’s bedroom?” I say.

  Ale flushes. “Not this boy. Do you know what he told me, when he was trying to catch me back there? He told me that I’m ruining his life. What a selfish thing to say.”

  “He also said your eyes were giant and creepy,” I say, opening the nightstand drawers.

  “Oh, I remember,” he says.

  “And look at the books all over his bed,” I say. “What kind of sad person keeps books on his bed? It’s like admitting that you’ll never have any suitors.”

  “And—” Ale says. “Well, I—I do that.”

  I know. I couldn’t resist.

  “But my books are good,” Ale insists, rifling through the ones on the bed. “They’re imaginative and romantic, not… math.”

  “Shake them out and make sure there’s nothing hidden in the pages,” I say.

  “Do you think he’s hiding something about the vide in here?” he says. “But why in his bedroom? We could look in his study again. I wasn’t able to properly search it with him glowering at me the whole time.”

  I look beneath the pillows and run my hands under the mattress.

  “Do you think he’s hiding something… from her?” Ale says.

  I wish he would stop asking questions and just help me. Verene and Theo are probably sneaking through the catacombs or the streets right now.

  “Anything is possible,” I say. “He seemed to be hiding that map of the eight cities.”

  “I don’t know, Emanuela,” he says. “Maybe… maybe there’s another explanation for that. Maybe he just didn’t want her to worry about it being stolen. What they’re doing is terrible, but they’re in it together. They have to trust each other.”

  I turn around. “Everybody hides things.”

  I’m not really thinking about the fact that I’m talking to the boy who found about my secret omen on our wedding day. As soon as I realize it, I regret the words.

  For a long moment, Ale just looks at me. I can’t quite read his face, which is disconcerting.

  “Everybody hides small things,” he says. “Things that don’t really matter.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Everybody hides small things.”

  I turn away quickly to search the dresser. For a moment, we both work in a profound silence. I pick through a truly astounding assortment of colognes.

  “Emanuela,” Ale says. “I found something. Under the bed—”

  I whip around. Ale is kneeling on the floor, holding a large painting.

  It’s a family portrait. It takes me a moment to recognize the children. Theo and Verene are sitting with their tiny hands folded, dressed in a startling shade of red. Verene’s voluminous hair is pulled back and stifled, and her high-necked dress looks like it’s choking her. There’s a dark-skinned man standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. He has a perfectly groomed beard and a regal face. A single rose is pinned to his chest.

  Next to him is a pale woman in a vivid red gown. The woman they called the Eyes. Her face has been destroyed by an angry streak of white paint.

  I touch it, so carefully that I hold my breath. I’m suddenly desperate to know what she looked like.

  “So they had a papá,” Ale says. “It’s so strange. Why would a watercrea have children?”

  I look at the woman’s slender hand on Theo’s shoulder. Something about her grip seems possessive.

  “And what really happened to her?” I mutter.

  Ale shifts. He gives me an uneasy look.

  “Put that back,” I say. “Go search his underwear drawer.”

  Ale turns purple. “I’m not doing that.”

  “There’s no better hiding spot,” I say, pushing him.

  I make my way over to the armoire and rifle through perfectly pressed white clothes. I reach all the way inside, running my hands along the back panel, then crouch down and grope behind the shoes to search the deepest corners.

  I touch something that is decidedly not a shoe. It feels rectangular and leather.

  I pull it out. It’s a small red book.

  A journal.

  I peek around the armoire door to glance at Ale. He’s searching the dresser. He’s become very occupied with the colognes.

  I flip open the journal. One corner of it looks rather burned.

  It’s like someone else tried to destroy this. And someone else saved it. My hands start to shake with excitement.

  On the first page, there’s a date at the top—five years ago, assuming Iris keeps dates the same way Occhia does—and below it, writing in a narrow script:

  He got his first omen today. It appeared on his face in the middle of dinner. They begged him not to go to the tower, and they begged me not to send him. But it wasn’t their decision to make.

  They think I’ve betrayed them. They don’t realize that I loved their father more than they ever could. I waited a thousand years to find someone worthy enough to help me raise my heirs. But now I’ll just have to raise them alone. Nothing is more important than keeping the city in balance.

  My mind is reading the words in the voice of Occhia’s watercrea, even though I know they’re not the same person. It feels wrong to imagine the watercrea talking about love. I glance over my shoulder, suddenly convinced I’m going to see her standing there, watching me with her dark, empty eyes.

  I flip forward, passing through time, and stop at an entry from three years ago.

  She snuck out again. The guards found her in the gardens, holding hands and giggling with some random maid. They dragged her back kicking and screaming, and now the whole city knows my own daughter doesn’t listen to me.

  She brought this punishment upon herself. I don’t know how to make her understand. My heirs aren’t like other people. They can’t be.

  She’s so much like him. She’s all feeling and no restraint, like an exposed heart.

  I don’t think she’ll be able to do this.

  “What’s that?” Ale says over my shoulder.

  I jump out of my skin, nearly dropping the journal.

  “It’s very lewd,” I say. “I’ll spare your delicate eyes.”

  Ale gives the red cover a sideways look. Nothing else in this cathedral is red. Not even the wine. The exception, of course, the blood in the underground well, but otherwise it’s like the color has been wiped out of existence.

  I stand up. “Let’s go to the study. You’re right. There will probably be more promising things there.”

  I need to buy myself time to read the rest of this journal. I need to read it all as soon as possible. I can’t fully explain why. I just know that I do.

  “Are you going to bring that?” Ale says.

  “I… yes,” I say.

  “You want to read a boy’s lewd diary?” he says.

  I don’t know why he feels the need to emphasize it that way. I don’t want to read anyone’s lewd diary. I don’t depend on other people for my entertainment.

  “Yes,” I say, and march out the door.

  In the parlor, I turn toward the study. But then my eyes fall
on the dining room. The doors to the balcony are sitting half-open.

  The banner depicting our faces is still hanging out there, telling everyone how dangerous we are. This is a chance for me to give the people of Iris my own message.

  I run back to Verene’s bedroom and scoop up some of her paints. I rush to the balcony, crawl out to untie the banner, and drag it back into the dining room. For a moment, I just admire the painting of me. I really would hang it in my parlor.

  “I think it might be too late to take it down,” Ale says. “Everybody in Iris has already seen what we look like.”

  I turn the banner over.

  “But they haven’t seen this,” I say.

  I paint eight circles in a ring. I color one in and label it as Iris. Underneath the picture, I paint the words:

  Why is the Heart lying to us?

  I step back and admire my handiwork.

  “Help me hang it back up,” I say.

  Ale’s face is uneasy.

  “Do you really want everyone in Iris to know about the other cities?” he says.

  I want Verene’s perfect life to be demolished. If her city doesn’t trust her, everything will fall apart.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll hang it myself.”

  He doesn’t try to stop me. I make sure to bring the journal with me as I work, because he keeps eyeing it. I tie the banner to the railing and unfurl it into the night air. The square below is empty, but in a nearby street, I can see the lanterns of Verene’s mob. They start to move in our direction.

  The city is small. Once somebody sees what I’ve drawn, word will spread fast.

  “All right.” I turn back to lead Ale out of the dining room. “Now we can go to the study—”

  We’re almost at the doorway when a woman steps in front of us. She’s small and bony, but she has deep, intense eyes. She’s looking at me like she knows everything that I’ve ever done wrong in my entire life.

  I was wondering where the housekeeper had gone.

  “Hello,” I say.

  I move forward like I fully expect her to get out of my way.

  She pulls out a knife. I pause.

  “I don’t want to fight an old woman,” I say, very reasonably.