Why would he have done such a thing? Why would he have ever wanted to help the last queen?
It makes no sense. Too many thoughts race through my head, too many memories. I have to get out of here.
I grab my shoes and run back out the way I came. At least, I believe I do. The hedges appear to line solid paths but have clever narrow entryways, secret passages that allow you to cut across into other gardens. I could be lost in here for days.
A warm alto voice drifts from the end of this path. I need to see a familiar face.
“Leo!” I cry, turning the corner. He’s leaning against a pillar, his face nearly touching someone else I can’t see. When he hears me, he snaps in my direction, eyes wide.
“Miss Renata! What are you doing here?”
The other person behind the column slinks away into the shadows. My mind goes to Alessandro, and I back away a few paces.
“My apologies,” I say. “Who was that?”
Leo’s initial shock fades. “Well, you know me. I always find my own entertainment.” He winks, but I’m certain this wasn’t a dalliance.
“Did you speak to Judge Alessandro yesterday?” I ask. I don’t have any smiles left for him. For anyone.
He stands straight and offers me his hand. “On my life, on the memory of my husband’s, I did not tell the judge where to find you. Nor do I know how he ended up in Justice Méndez’s office fully asleep. Even if you did not hold my secrets, Renata, I would think you and I are friends by now.”
Friends. The word hurts as much as it brings me joy. I take his hand with my gloved left one, and at least this part feels right.
“Do we have to go back?” I ask.
“Only until the last of the performers. Then we have to prepare for the evening festivities. There’s a surprise.”
“Is the surprise that we’re celebrating the sun at night?”
He laughs and I grip the fabric of his emerald jacket too hard. He brushes my hand with his in that way he has of calming me down.
“You know I don’t like surprises, Leo.”
“This one I believe you will like.” He takes a different path than the one I came here on.
For a moment, I think I’m seeing things. There’s a woman the same height and build as Sayida walking past me. Newcomers hurry into one of the many archways that lead to the center gardens to join the party as waiters weave through the crowds with glasses full of cava. I hurry after her, but dozens of bodies cut between us before I spot her again.
I don’t think, I just grab the woman’s sleeve.
The young woman in the golden dress turns around, black hair twisted in twin knots at the base of her neck. Part of me is so desperate to see my friend that I didn’t consider what it would look like, a Robári grabbing another person with my open hand.
“What are you doing?” she snaps at me, so very much not Sayida that I don’t know how I could have mistaken her for my friend. This woman’s large blue eyes stare bewildered at me. She holds a hand up to her lips, as if she’s waiting for someone to come and rescue her.
“Lady Armada, may I escort you?” Leo bows to her, but shoots me a look that asks if I’ve come unhinged.
She spreads a delicate fan open and flaps it about her face, hiding all but the scandalized look in her eyes.
I grab a cava glass off a tray and steer clear of the center garden, where everyone tries to stand as close as they can to the king and queen. I find a shaded spot against a hedge. Though I can still feel the occasional curious stare slink my way from behind fans, it’s better than being surrounded.
A group of children next to me is sitting in a circle. At first, I cannot hear the song they’re singing to one another. But when I do, my heart sinks through my belly and onto the dirt.
They take turns with each line.
“I dug up a Moria grave to find.”
“Two silver eyes to peer in your mind.”
“Three golden fingers, illusions I’ll cast!”
“One copper heart to persuade senses vast.”
“And four platinum veins to lock up the past!”
I turn before they finish the final line, though it’s imprinted in my bones. I dug up a Moria grave! I’ve always hated that rhyme, hated how they reduced us to a children’s ditty, a joke.
“Renata,” Lady Nuria says to my right. I didn’t even hear her approach. Can I truly be this far gone that I’ve let my senses fail? “Where have you been?”
“Leo was showing me the gardens. I hadn’t explored them all before.”
“Let’s dance.” Lady Nuria lifts her chin in a fetching way, the sun warming her brown skin and enhancing the creamy mint color of her lavish gown.
“I don’t dance,” I tell her. I never dance. Even at our Moria bases, when we celebrated the change of seasons, the holy days of Our Lady of Whispers, I didn’t dance.
She cackles in a very unladylike way. I can’t help but like her. Even if she has burned the image of the half-naked prince into my mind.
Lady Nuria is already leading me away, past the eyes that watch us behind fans like lynxes in tall grass. I chance a look at the king, but he’s got the ear of Nuria’s husband, Alessandro.
“Dancing is good for the spirits. I do it quite often in the nude while my husband is away.”
I bark an unexpected laugh. “I suppose that would be frowned upon at a holy festival.”
She smirks, a secretive glimmer in her eyes. What could this bold, reckless young woman do if she were unfettered? I would like to live to find out.
We go to a sitting area shaded with gauzy sheets. Attendants wearing the crest of the Tresoros family—a mountain studded with stars above it—are at Nuria’s beck and call even before her delicate dress hits the velvet bench. She plucks two glasses of cava and offers me one.
“Why are you so kind to me?”
“You’ve asked me that before.” Her dark eyes turn from me and out to the party, where curious stares flick in our direction.
“And you evaded the question. I have done nothing to deserve it.”
She sighs, a pretty thing that makes her appear as if she’s longing for something. I wonder if it’s for Castian. I wonder if taking that one memory has helped ease her heartache or made it worse.
“There is so much wrong in the world,” she says. “Sometimes, I feel the only thing I can give is a bit of kindness, even when I can’t give hope. I wished I’d get to speak more with you, but my dear husband is always watching.”
“You speak like a prisoner.” I sip at my glass.
King Fernando has spotted us and is staring as he confides something in Judge Alessandro’s ear. My chest tightens with anticipation. But I convince myself that I am safe with Nuria, if only for a moment.
The voice that trills in my mind is Margo’s, and it says, There is no such thing as safe.
“There is so much the kingdom doesn’t know,” Nuria continues, dabbing a handkerchief on her forehead. It’s the first crack in her armor.
“Like what?”
Her rich brown eyes betray worry. Her smile does not. “The Moria were once trading partners with the kingdom of Tresoros.”
Whatever I thought she would say, this was not it. “Trade what?”
“Our metals for information on how you wield them. I know your histories. There is so much that was lost.”
“Erased, you mean,” I correct.
“A better description.” She lowers her voice but pulls me close to her.
An uneasy feeling settles around my gut. “What else was erased?”
“My family is so much to blame for the Fajardo reign. We signed our kingdom away to keep a few mines and our titles, to make sure our descendants would be queens. All I wanted was to marry Castian. I was young and foolish. I gave King Fernando everything. Our platinum mine and a caveful of alman stone.”
“That’s where the throne came from?” My heart is beating too fast. How can something so precious to the Moria be nothing but a seat of p
ower to the king? Maybe that’s all it is meant to be. “But what of the tons of alman stone beneath the palace?”
Her eyes flutter and she settles her gaze on mine. “My dear husband let slip that the justice uses it for more. For the good of the kingdom.”
The weapon.
I wish I had Margo or Sayida with me—hells, even Esteban—to tell all this to. I have to get out of here. I can’t do this on my own anymore.
She squeezes my arm too hard. “Did you know that there was once a queen of Puerto Leones who was Moria?”
I frown. My ears pop because there’s no way I heard her right. “That’s not possible. Our royal line was killed during King Jústo’s siege of Memoria.”
She stops to acknowledge the court vultures that circle her for attention. Her red-lipped smile is striking and deceptive. We are but young women at a garden party discussing things young women usually talk about—the weather, sparkling wine, the pockets in our gowns, secret queens, secret cures. Treason.
“Ah, there’s my darling husband,” she says, holding up her glass as Judge Alessandro makes a beeline for her.
Sweat drips down the side of his forehead. I don’t know if the fear in his eyes is because of the king or because he doesn’t want to face Lady Nuria.
“Why are you telling me these things?” I ask her.
There’s a secret there in her, waiting to sprout. “Because I can’t tell anyone else. I don’t know what you’re planning, but I know you’re up to something. And if you kill the king or Castian, you’ll expose the hidden Moria in the capital. With the weapon, it will be a slaughter.”
I wrap my hand around her wrist, then drop it as Alessandro is upon us.
“We’re out of time, Renata,” she whispers.
“Lady Nuria,” the judge says, adjusting his heavy robes. “King Fernando is ready to speak and present the entertainment before the sunset parade.” He turns to me and snatches the glass from my hand. “You are to take your place with the Hand of Moria.”
He escorts me back across the garden, where the crowd has gathered to listen to the king speak. I stand beside the other two Moria on my own pedestal and try my best to be as still as they are.
“Thank you, honored guests and citizens of Puerto Leones,” King Fernando says in that deep, fervent way he has. He takes his wife Queen Josephine’s hand into his. “Tonight is our sacred Sun Festival. It marks the occasion when the Lord of Worlds rose from the earth and molded Puerto Leones as an example of paradise. But paradise is not easily kept or won. It demands blood. It demands the sacrifice of every citizen who reaps the treasures of its earth.
“A few months ago, Puerto Leones welcomed Dauphinique into our kingdom with the marital vows between myself and Queen Josephine.” He pauses to let the crowd bow their heads to the queen. “Tonight we celebrate this new alliance, as our neighbors to the east have agreed to help Puerto Leones defeat the enemies of the crown. With Dauphinique by our side, Puerto Leones will not only be stronger, but we will become the greatest empire the world has ever seen. To Puerto Leones.”
I catch a couple of worried glances when he says “empire.” The rest of the court bursts into reverent cheer. Waiters are ready and waiting with ten bottles of cava so large, it requires three people to open each one.
The king turns around suddenly and raises his glass to acknowledge me. I hold his dark stare as long as I can before I bow.
“Please, enjoy the festivities!” The king speaking now is a different man from the one stewing in anger earlier. Even kings wear masks. He settles back into his chair as the band is escorted into the center of the garden.
Four guitarists and a man with a single drum begin to play. A singer whose voice is heavy with tragedy croons a love song that is popular in the coastal cities. As he sings, a woman in a flowing red dress steps forward. She is statuesque with skin like porcelain. Her hair is smoothed down to one side and braided over her shoulder. Her hands hold shells, which add a clack, clack, clack to the rhythm of the song. Her eyes are rimmed in shadow and her cheeks are apple red. When she dances, everyone follows the stomp of her black-heeled feet, and the rise of her skirts, which spiral outward to show powerful calves.
At her hip is a fan.
From my place on the podium, I see a brief glint and my breath catches. Though I’m not sure that I’m right. This is too bold, too reckless. I look around the garden, where even the guards are transfixed by her long, supple limbs and graceful arms. The singer falls into a sharp wail, lamenting his broken heart, and the dancer throws the shells into the grass and grabs her fan. When she unfolds it, I know I’m right.
There, concealed between the paper-thin folds, is a flash of slender steel with a delicate rose hilt. Only one person I know owns a hairpin dagger. I did see Sayida. Then this dancer must be under an illusion.
She turns to the king, pulling her skirt, distracting everyone from the weapon in her hand. My stomach twists with revulsion.
I have a choice. I could let her kill him. It is what I want most of all. But his death, after the speech he just gave, would ruin everything I came here to do. The weapon would be used before I could get to it. Nuria is right. Lozar was right. I came here for more than my own vengeance.
The guitar strums as fast as my heart. The woman spins, her dress like the bloody red spill of death around her, and when she stops, her arm is raised high.
King Fernando sees the blade too late. Everyone does.
But I didn’t. I’m already moving, lunging between the dancer and the king, arm poised to shield my face.
Pain blooms. Her eyes, familiar and blue, are full of hate. Not toward the king who is screaming orders, or the guards who pin her to the ground. The illusion she’s created around her holds strong, keeping her blond hair dark and cloaking her in front of all these strangers.
“Take her away!” King Fernando shouts. “Take her! I’ll deal with her later.”
“Renata!” Leo shouts, running to me from the other side of the garden.
Where did he come from? Justice Méndez is already at my side. The blade is driven right through my forearm.
There is too much confusion, too much blood, too many people touching me and calling my name. Bells ring throughout the entire kingdom and I know I hear people shouting.
But as the medic tends to me, all I can see is the hatred in Margo’s eyes as she is dragged thrashing and screaming out of the garden.
Chapter 22
I’ve felt worse pain.
One time, on a mission outside the Memoria Mountains, past the Sedona Canyons, I fell into a nest of ice vipers. I nearly died from their poison. It was Margo who knew a cure. A root that grew in the same desert. Dez spent all night digging for it, and she spent the night keeping my body from freezing as the venom lowered my body temperature.
Then there were the thorn reeds that gave me the scars on my back. A group of young boys from a different unit pulled me out of my tent and onto a raft, where I woke, startled, and fell into the tangle of river thorns. Those boys were sent to a separate safe house across the country, but that’s when I started keeping to myself around the Whispers’ stronghold.
There was the burn on my right thigh.
The slash on my neck from Esmeraldas.
The poison after that.
Watching Dez die.
“I should’ve died a long time ago,” I say as a guard carries me into the medic’s chamber.
“You’re not dying, do you hear me?” Leo trots alongside us to keep up. His green eyes never leave my face. There’s worry there, and I know that I don’t care if he’s the spy or just a very good actor or a fabrication of the unraveling threads in my head. He’s the only friend I’ve got within these walls and he’s here.
“Was the blade poisoned?” Justice Méndez asks, pushing something off a bed.
They lay me on it. I don’t look down because there’s blood everywhere. There’s always blood everywhere.
A decrepit old medic peers at me,
but he doesn’t touch my skin. Doesn’t get within an arm’s distance of me. I can smell the fear bubbling through his pores, and it smells like—aguadulce.
“Move aside,” Leo says, frustration overpowering his usual pleasant demeanor. “She had three glasses of cava and she’s lost a lot of blood.” He holds my arm and sniffs. “If there’s poison, it’s odorless.”
“Bring me the girl!” Méndez shouts at someone.
Leo lowers himself to my face. His warm fingers brush my hair back. “This is going to hurt.”
It’ll hurt, I told him. I know, he said.
Perhaps it was the drink, but when Leo grabs the end of the hairpin dagger, it doesn’t hurt. There’s a deep numbness stretching from my shoulder to my fingertips. But when I feel hands hold my feet down, my waist, something within me snaps.
“Don’t touch me!” I snarl at the guard—Hector—but he doesn’t let go.
White-hot pain sizzles inside my flesh, the pain of my latest wound making itself known with a vengeance as Leo makes cuts around the dagger. His beautiful soft words apologize over and over again. Someone holds a weak poultice over my nose to help calm me. Manzanilla and other herbs. But all it does is give me whiplash memories of Esmeraldas. Was it just over two weeks when my life was shaken by the root? Unearthed and splintered. Then the numbness returns, slick wet warmth coating my skin.
I know I’ve blacked out when I wake to silence.
The splash of cold water.
The rustle of fabric.
Leo is re-dressing my bandage, his shoulders shaking with silent tears.
“Leo,” I say.
“Thank the Six Heavens,” he says, lowering his forehead to mine. “I’m so sorry, Ren. I’m so sorry we had to do it this way.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. But if the blade had been poisoned. If they left it in and it got infected. He acted as quickly as he could even if it hurt.
I want to thank him for tending to me when the cowardly medic would not, but Méndez rushes back in.
“How are you feeling?” Méndez asks, his voice hard despite the tightness of his lips. Is he rattled because I’m alive or because he should’ve seen the attack?
Incendiary (Hollow Crown) Page 29
