Incendiary (Hollow Crown)

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Fine,” I growl.

  I toss the bit of glass aside and charge at him. He blocks each punch, each kick. I go for his injury again, but he anticipates it and traps my arms with his against his torso. I raise my knee and slam it into his groin. It’s a lazy shot, but I’ve always found it to come in handy when I’m out of options. I slap my palm over his ear as hard as I can and he screams. He cups the side of his head, and in this moment of weakness, I strike my hand at his throat. He chokes and stumbles back, coughing through it. He throws a punch that lands on my shoulder.

  My body thrums with rage, and even in this low light, I feel it igniting me as if from within. I see the light haloed around me reflected in his eyes. Am I conjuring that?

  “You have to listen to me, Nati.” He holds his hands up.

  “You can’t call me that! Stop calling me that!” I punch and he blocks. He tries to pin my arms down again, but I throw myself to the ground and crawl between his legs. I slam my elbow into the back of his knee, and he falls forward.

  I can kill him.

  In this moment, I know I can.

  But death would be too good, too gentle. How soon will the justice, the king, come after me? Isn’t that what I wanted to avoid? Does it even matter? Margo would do it. Margo didn’t hesitate and now she’s locked up and I’m here fighting for the pair of us.

  “If you won’t tell me where the weapon is,” I say, “I will just rip it out.”

  He turns over on his back, and I pin him down, digging into the wound on his chest.

  “Ren—Renata, please.” His breath is raspy, blood covering the bottom half of his face. The Bloodied Prince indeed.

  I use a piece of glass to rip at the fabric around my top wrist, scraping a bit of skin along the way, but then I can feel air. I tear the rest off with my teeth and free my hand, cold air chilling my sweaty skin.

  My power surges through me, lighting up the fissures of scars that wind across my bloodied skin. They burn the orange of fire. A veil of light dances from my skin. I don’t have time to marvel at it. I press my finger to his temple.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Screams. Begging for mercy. Something.

  Prince Castian simply stares at me, his face covered in blood and shadow and moonlight from the single dirty window. His breath comes in quick pants. I recognize the look there. He’s daring me.

  I let my magics free, push through his memories to grab hold of them and drag them out.

  Images flash before my eyes, too quickly to make out places or faces. The rush of wind in my ears and then nothing.

  I see nothing.

  Complete and total darkness, as if there’s a wall there I can’t breach.

  “Impossible,” I gasp. Somehow, he’s found a way to block my power. That won’t work on me. He really meant it when he spoke those words in the Forest of Lynxes.

  A smile creeps up his face and then he grabs me, and something comes undone. Up is down and down is up. The room spins as he flips me over and grips my wrists.

  “What did you do?” I whisper.

  He doesn’t respond. Damp hair falling over his face. He’s weak, barely keeping himself up. I can feel his heart racing to the same rapid beat of my own right through his palms. That shouldn’t be. “Surrender, Renata. Please.”

  Please? The dizzying feeling in my head clears when I hear a scream. Not mine. Not his. We are not alone.

  “My prince!”

  “No!” Castian shouts. The pressure on me alleviates as he staggers to his feet, stanching the wound at his shoulder. A wound that looks like it was inflicted by my hand.

  I realize Leo is at the door, crashing into the room, the attendant he was flirting with beside him. The redheaded man screams and keeps shouting, “My prince!”

  They freeze at the sight of us, bloody and ragged on the floor, surrounded by oil and glass and shadows. Leo grabs the attendant by the hand, but the boy wrenches himself free.

  “Help!” the attendant shouts, then rushes out of the room before Leo can stop him. “She’s killing the prince!”

  “Wait!” Castian shouts.

  But the young man is running down the corridor crying, “Guards! Guards!”

  Leo shuts his eyes and hits the edge of the secret door. He squeezes the bridge of his nose, helplessness making his body slack. “You stupid, stupid girl. She told you not to. . . .”

  Castian’s eyes change. They’re furrowed and dark and angry as the day I saw him in the woods. It’s like he’s two people in the same body.

  “Renata Convida.” Castian says my name, his voice like gravel in my wounds. So very different from the whimper of please moments ago. He takes off his belt and binds my wrists with it. “You are under arrest for treason and attempted murder of the prince of Puerto Leones.”

  I don’t struggle as Prince Castian leads me down to the dungeons. There are only torches on the wall and the sound of guards far below. I can see his jawline ripple as he clenches his teeth, the vein in his neck pronounced in the firelight that moves across his face.

  “It didn’t have to be this way,” Castian says in the darkness.

  “It was only ever going to be this way,” I say.

  He turns me around, face twisted with rage, distorted by shadow and blood. “I have worked night and day for the betterment of this kingdom. Its people.”

  “You’ll never be more than a killer, Matahermano.”

  His nostrils flare and his mouth is a taut line.

  “You don’t want to see what’s right in front of you—” he says, but heavy footsteps echo from below.

  “Your Highness,” a guard says, brandishing a torch as he ascends the steps. “Your father sent me to take the prisoner to her cell.”

  “As you can see, I am already doing that. Dismissed.”

  “I cannot obey, Your Highness. The order came from your father. H-he w-wants to see you straightaway.”

  He doesn’t move for what feels like ages, the flicker of fire burning through the torch. Then Prince Castian hands me over to the guard, who tightens the belt around my hands before grabbing the back of my shirt and pushing me along. My hands are numb, and a prickling sensation runs up and down my arm that has nothing to do with magic.

  We get down to the cells. The stench of waste and rot hits my nose, making my head spin. The guard nervously twists the cylinder lock, messes up the first time and tries again. Even with my hands bound, he’s afraid of me. This time, it feels good to be feared.

  Finally, there’s a click and the rusty groan of the door opening. He shoves me in. The floor is slick, and I fall on my side.

  A soft, dark laugh comes from the corner. I push myself up, try to stand, but only manage to get to my knees.

  A girl with matted blond hair and a purple eye swollen shut stands over me. I see past her cuts and welts. One open blue eye. A red dress. Margo.

  “Get up, traitor,” she says, and spits in my face. “I wasn’t aiming for you, but I’m going to finish what I started.”

  Chapter 25

  “You don’t understand,” I say, pushing myself up to my feet.

  Margo is lighter than me, but she’s clawed herself out of more scrapes than I can count. There’s a fire burning within her. She needs to let it out. I can see it in the way she paces back and forth, sizing up my legs, the cut in my arm, the belt tying my hands together.

  “I’m tired of trying to understand you,” Margo says. She lashes out with her fists and pushes me. The floor is so slick I slip and hit my head on the dirty sack in the corner. “You’re the reason we’re here!”

  I crawl to a stand. “You never tried. I’ve spent years listening to you telling me how worthless and untrustworthy I am.” I get in her space, poking at her chest as she slaps my hands away. “But there is nothing you have ever said, nothing you could ever say, that would make me hate myself more than I already do. So yes. This is my fault. And yes, I was part of this, one of them, but I was a child, Margo. I don’t want to be forgiven
. Everything I’ve done since Dez saved me from this nightmare, and since I came back, has been to try to fix what I am, what I did. I’m trying to make this curse worthwhile! At least let me tell you what I’ve discovered.”

  She steps to me, and I snap back. But she isn’t trying to hurt me. Instead, she undoes the belt around my hands. The buckle hits the floor with a heavy thud. Margo resumes her pacing, stopping every time she completes a full circle to grab the bars in the narrow window. There, she sticks her arm through and tries to fiddle with the cylinder lock, trying random codes.

  “That’s a one in a million,” I say.

  “But it’s still a shot.”

  “Why did you come here, Margo? Where are the others?”

  Margo lets the lock go and settles on the cold floor. She shivers, pressing her hands together and rubbing them for warmth.

  “The others are waiting for me outside the capital. After we parted ways with you, we went to the safe house in the town of Galicia until we could come up with a plan.”

  “Why didn’t you return to Ángeles?”

  She rolls her eyes, and I flinch, noticing again the bloodied bruise covering her left eye almost completely. “Because after—after what happened, the inspections at the bridges and tollhouses were doubled. We needed to wait, but we were not alone.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Half the Whispers. Mostly scavengers and cooks. After a week they began the night journey back to Ángeles. Esteban wanted to go to keep things in order, but we had to see this through.”

  “What do you mean, keep things in order?” I ask, though my chest is already tight with what she’s going to say.

  “Illan is a broken man. You wouldn’t recognize him, wasting away in his bed. It’s as if he’s lost the will to live. Nothing we say or do snaps him out of it. He mostly drinks broth when he remembers and drinks a fifth of aguardiente until he falls asleep, muttering things we cannot make sense of. He believes we’re lost without Dez.”

  We remain silent, the unspoken thing between us so heavy that I also find my way down to the floor. The cold seeps through my hose, and I kick off my shoes. If we get out of here, they would fetch a good price, even as filthy as they are now.

  “Without Dez—it’s like everyone has lost all hope. They’ve only managed to get one ship of refugees to Luzou since that day. No one knows what to do. Where to go. All safe houses are compromised. Many won’t even take us in anymore because of the pamphlets the justice released, Dez’s picture with a red painted X over his face. The leader of the rebellion is dead. They circulated so quickly that Illan found out that way before we could tell him in person.”

  I try to picture Illan in the forest the night before everything went terribly wrong. The thrill in his old features. How clever he thought he was finding out about the weapon that controlled Moria—used them—destroyed their magics. I imagine picking up that flyer. Seeing the likeness of his son’s face covered in what could be blood. The proud boy, the handsome boy who would charm the stars into shining in the middle of the day if he wanted to. The dead boy.

  You were born serious, Dez told me, and I don’t know why out of all the things he ever said to me, that’s the one that keeps repeating in my thoughts when I least expect it.

  I stare at my hands, one gloved, the other bare and more scarred than ever. These hands stole the lives of hundreds, including my own parents, but were rendered useless against Castian. How?

  “How can they be finished?” I ask. “Illan is the one who sent us on the mission to find Celeste’s alman stone. He’s the reason we confirmed the weapon’s existence in the first place!”

  “Black protocol is still in effect across all the Whispers’ channels,” Margo tells me. “The Moria in hiding will stay hidden. There’s nothing we can do. Not while the king and the justice have dispatched troops to all ports. Even if we wanted to sail to Luzou, or take our chances in the frozen Icelands, we can’t. Ships are being searched top to bottom. Even the empress’s ship. We are being chased to the ends of the world, and now we can’t even turn to the sea.”

  I’ve never heard her sound so despondent, but I know I have to let her talk through this. I know when I’ve been the one like this, nothing anyone could say would make me feel better. After a long silence, I work up the nerve to speak.

  “I haven’t given up, Margo. You haven’t either.”

  “I thought that. When we were in the market,” Margo says, “we watched an olive vendor get arrested. All he was doing was resting with his cart on the corner of a street. I watched him beg for his life, but the guards simply rattled off what they usually say. That’s what they’re doing. Creating panic. It felt the same as the first King’s Wrath. I’ve spent most of my life fighting, but the only time I ever felt that helpless was when my family was killed.”

  “How did you get into the palace?” I ask.

  She looks with steady eyes that unnerve me. “A week ago. One of Illan’s informants sent word they needed new entertainment for the festival night.”

  “You always were the best dancer.” Weariness aches deep in my marrow, but I remember how beautiful she looked in her festival dress. Even if she didn’t wear her true face. “Did you know the informant?”

  “In a way.” Margo shakes her head. “It was the Magpie, though they only communicated through messages of where to go and the songs the king preferred.”

  The Magpie who was supposed to help Dez escape. Someone with access to the prince, to the hidden places of the grounds, the court, the king. She has the freedom to come and go from the palace. My dear husband let slip . . . I breathe a sigh of certainty.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve been here for weeks and I’ve just realized who the Magpie is.”

  Margo cocks her eyebrow. “Well, they knew you. Asked us to come help you.”

  “What?” Tears spring to my eyes. She knew all along. The shame of underestimating her hits me.

  “Keep the spy’s name to yourself. I would not trust myself not to betray it under the right circumstance.”

  She means torture. But I know that Margo would never reveal the name. Still, I will keep Nuria’s secret.

  “It was risky, using my magics,” Margo continues, picking at a strand of hay in the mud. “But as long as the illusion is on me and not on others, it wouldn’t have such a strong effect.”

  “That was reckless,” I tell her. That was something Dez would do.

  “That was the only thing I could do to put an end to this. That man is responsible for thousands of lives. His entire family has destroyed our homes, destroyed everything. Why does he get to live?” She juts an accusatory finger in my face, voice escalating. “Why did you save him?”

  “Because anything you did would only befall the Moria tenfold. Even if I was killed immediately after. It would be worse for everyone else. The weapon would have been deployed before I could find it. We were trained to think of the bigger picture, Margo.”

  Margo sits back. Shivers again. I wonder just how bad things have become to make her this rash, to act without thinking.

  “What landed you down here after being the Moria hero?” she spits petulantly.

  “I attacked Prince Castian. After Dez was executed—”

  “Murdered,” she says.

  “After that, a prisoner gave me a memory. The prince was taunting Dez with what was in this box. I believed it was the weapon.”

  “Did you find it?”

  I make a growling sound of frustration. “If I had, I wouldn’t be here with you.”

  I think back to the move that caused me to slip up. I tried to steal Castian’s memories. I felt his thoughts slipping into my mind, but then there was nothing. I couldn’t break through those walls. How did he do it? I tremble from the cold and the anger of having Castian speak my name. Nati. How did he know that name?

  “It must have been hard to focus on the weapon while living in the lap of luxury.”

  I meet her gaze. �
��Are you serious? I ate and I bathed and I smiled at the man who took me from my family when I was a child. I bled for the king who killed my parents. Could you have done the same?”

  She turns away, but I don’t let it drop. “Answer me, Margo!”

  “Leave it alone, Renata,” she snarls like a wolf.

  “You’ve always hated me. I could never tell if it was because of what I am or because Dez chose me for the unit despite your protest.”

  She grabs a handful of dirt and throws it at me. “Do you think so little of me that I would hate you because of Dez? Dez was my unit leader. And the bravest of us all. You’re weak, Renata. Consumed with your past, living in it and rejecting the people around you. That’s why I hated you.”

  I’m breathing fast and hard, and I want to hit her, but her words weigh me down.

  “You even managed to hurt Sayida, every time you chose to be alone rather than with the rest of us.”

  “The Whispers had no love for me, which you reminded me of daily,” I respond, kneeling forward so she’s forced to look at me.

  Her voice is hard and jagged. “Illan disciplined every single person who hurt you. He even separated units to make life easier for you. I hated watching you act as if the fate of our world was yours alone to bear and the rest of us were simply there to torment you. You had to get the alman stone and you had to be the one to find the weapon. Have you even considered that if you trusted us we would have done the same? But no. Dez is dead. You should have been on that executioner’s block. Not Dez. You, Renata.”

  I want to hit her. Scream at her until I’m blue in the face. Punch the wall because it won’t hit me back but it’ll still hurt. I want to tell her that I wish it had been me instead of Dez, too, but just then, footsteps echo down the corridor. In this end of the dungeon, the prisoners are not visited and somehow, I’ve already been here twice in my lifetime.

  Just like that, we stop fighting with each other and focus on waiting for the guard to come to the door. We revert to our old unit hand signals because we still have to survive.