We Set the Dark on Fire

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “Dani?”

  Hurried movements will always betray the emotions beneath them, said the maestra’s voice in her head as she slid the paper smoothly into the neck of her dress and turned to face Carmen.

  “If you’re looking for Mama Garcia, she’s already gone,” Dani said.

  Carmen’s eyebrows drew together. “Mama Garcia? What are you talking about? And why do you look so pale? What happened?”

  With the mystery fading, and Carmen seeing more than she should, the reality of Dani’s night came crashing back down. This time, she didn’t rein it in. Maybe she was just exhausted, or tired of pretending. Maybe she wanted to see what Carmen would do with a little honesty.

  Whatever the reason, she let her shoulders fall under the weight of Mateo’s behavior the night before. Jasmín being taken. The secrets she’d whispered. The fear that she’d be next. She let her face move in response to the memories, the feelings. Her mouth crumpled in distress, and she didn’t stop it.

  Carmen moved closer, though she still left a yard of space between them. “Dani, are you okay? Seriously, you look awful.” For once, it didn’t sound like an insult. She sounded concerned.

  “It was . . . Mateo,” Dani said, still not sure how much she was ready to confess. “A girl at the party was accused of rebel sympathizing. He came with police and arrested her in front of everyone. And the way he did it . . . It was terrifying.”

  “Sun and skies,” Carmen said. “That must have been awful.” She paused, and the only sound was the crackling of the flames. The darkness swallowed Dani’s fear, and her curiosity about the letter, and everything but the fact that Carmen’s heart was beating just a few feet away. They stood in silence for much longer than was appropriate for either of them, but tonight, Dani didn’t care.

  “Dani . . . ,” Carmen said at last, looking down, looking back up.

  “Yeah?”

  “It was because I was afraid.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I told people where you were from . . . why I made fun of you. I know it doesn’t excuse it, but I wanted you to know. I just needed them to target someone else.”

  “But why would anyone have made fun of you? You were already perfect.”

  Carmen smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I was on the bus from the capital, and not in some fancy car from a house in the government complex?”

  Dani hadn’t. But a tiny, hopeful sun was rising in her chest. “You’re not from here?”

  “Not even the capital.”

  “But then . . . where?”

  Carmen took a deep breath, like she was steeling herself. For once she wasn’t polished and shining, looking down from her pedestal. She’d never looked so much like the girl Dani met on the bus five years ago.

  “Mar de Sal,” she almost whispered, and Dani’s jaw dropped.

  “But that’s almost to the border! So you . . .”

  “I pretended,” she said with a shrug. “I was young and afraid, and when they started looking at us like we didn’t belong, I panicked. I was selfish and stupid, and I always wanted to take it back, but by then it was too late.”

  “So you didn’t hate me?” Dani asked in a small voice. She should have been furious that Carmen had used her that way, but hadn’t she been twelve and scared, too? Wouldn’t she have done anything to make her parents proud?

  “You were the only real friend I ever made,” Carmen said, her voice just as small. “The rest of them knew the lie. You were the only one who saw the real me. Even for a minute.”

  Dani didn’t know what to say. She was relieved. She was scared. She was looking right into Carmen’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Dani,” she said. “I’ve been waiting five years to say it. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” It was barely a whisper, but she meant it. She understood. “I forgive you.”

  Was Dani just dizzy? Or was the space between them closing? She blinked, hard, but Carmen didn’t stop until they were less than an arm’s distance apart. Until they could have reached out and touched each other.

  Dani knew she should pull away, leave this room, but after Mateo’s threatening presence, there was something healing about inviting someone to share her space. Someone she wanted there, even if she shouldn’t. Didn’t she deserve that feeling?

  Carmen’s eyes were still on hers. She could feel the gaze in the tips of her toes. Something was happening to her breath; it was shallow and strange in her throat. The air between them was charged, and Carmen’s eyes darted down, sending goose bumps across Dani’s skin like a wildfire.

  Without thinking, for once, Dani stepped closer, so close that her breath stirred Carmen’s hair when she exhaled, and she could see the flickering of the fire in her eyes.

  What are you doing? asked a shrill voice in her head, but it was a million miles away as Carmen’s breath hitched in her throat and she reached out, brushing a wayward strand of hair out of Dani’s eye where it had fallen as she bent over the flames. Was this what the goddess of hearts did when she wasn’t tending to steady beats? Dani had never known her, the rosy-cheeked girl from her mama’s stories, but she felt her in the room tonight.

  The darkness and the quiet had cast a spell, and Dani felt like she was moving through a dream as she let her gaze flicker downward to Carmen’s full lips, then back to her eyes.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, a maestra’s voice was screaming. Alarm bells were ringing. But Dani couldn’t bring herself to care. The heat building in her chest began to spread beneath her skin, and her thoughts licked like flames against every wall of ice she’d been trained to put up.

  Between them, the moment hung until it grew ripe and full, and Dani thought she’d burst into bloom with wondering. But just as it swelled to its peak, to a point when the only options would be dive or retreat, a door closed deep in the house and footfalls echoed down the hallway.

  Their closeness seemed suddenly dangerous, stupid, the spell the darkness and firelight had woven unraveling with the presence of someone who would draw their own conclusions from what they saw.

  “Go,” Dani whispered, and Carmen opened her mouth to argue. “Go!” she said again, and this time Carmen did as she asked, not looking up before whirling in a cloud of perfumed silk and hair and running out the patio door.

  Dani had to remember how to breathe. The room was airless without Carmen, the letter in the fire and Mateo’s cruelty and this strange fizzing in her bloodstream forming a wave inside her that crested and crashed. But the footsteps faded, going in the direction of the kitchen, probably just a member of the staff setting the fire in Mateo’s room before his return.

  When the house had gone silent again, the tension fizzled out in Dani’s blood, leaving exhaustion, deep and dark, in its wake. It was all she could do to drag herself and her secrets to her room, but when she pulled the letter out of her dress at last, she’d never felt more awake.

  At the bottom of Mama Garcia’s letter, two incomplete sentences spelled out Dani’s fate in bold script:

  . . . have proof she’s been in contact. It’s time to neutralize the threa . . .

  14

  Though a wife must obey her husband, a husband must respect his wife. In this way, they remain equals in the household, and peace is kept.

  —Medio School for Girls Handbook, 14th edition

  DANI SPENT THE DAY BEFORE Mateo’s trip to the border watching everyone very closely, sleeping little, and thinking about death.

  Whoever she had been talking to, Mama Garcia suspected Dani, and it sounded like she was ready to take drastic measures to make sure she couldn’t harm the family.

  What had given her away? Dani wondered for the hundredth time. It was the morning of the trip, and Dani was on her way to catch up on reading in the library, thankful to avoid the breakfast table for once.

  In the hush of her favorite room in the house, she sank into an armchair and tried to quiet her thoughts with the hea
vy volume in her hands: A Hundred Years of Faith—Religion and Culture in Medio. But her mind wouldn’t stay put.

  Had it been the unlocked cabinet door in the office? she asked herself. If so, Mateo knew, too, and Dani couldn’t imagine him keeping quiet about it. But a full day had passed, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. So maybe it had been something else. . . .

  Whatever it had been, there were a hundred ways to dispose of a girl who’d committed treason, and as a Garcia, Mateo’s mama must have known them all. So why wait? Why leave Dani to her own devices, run the risk that she might be gathering more information, or passing it?

  She thumped her pillow against her mattress in frustration, for once aware of the gaps her training had left in her view of the world. To want to eliminate a threat to one’s family was logical, to seek help in doing it even more so. But to be aware of a threat? To identify it and plan to eliminate it and then . . . do nothing?

  It was outside the realm of logic, and illogical things were hard to predict.

  On her way down to breakfast, Dani busied herself with the arduous task of forgetting her dreams. The stomping of military boots always welcomed her to sleep, followed by Jasmín’s wind-chime voice screaming as Dani pounded against a locked door. But those visions were only half the problem.

  There was also the dream where Carmen moved closer to her across a ballroom with a lacquered floor, removing clothing until she revealed a glittering serpent’s tail, her forked tongue flickering as she leaned in closer to Dani. . . .

  “Good morning, Daniela,” came a voice much too close to Dani’s chair. She jumped a little, the open book in her lap closing with a thump.

  Dani’s heart kicked into a gallop when she looked up to find Mama Garcia, half in shadow and holding a tea tray. Had she been wrong to expect her to strike at night? Dani wondered hysterically. Why not the middle of the day? Why not now? She forced herself to take even, measured breaths.

  “Good morning, Mama Garcia,” she said, pleased with her voice for remaining steady. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Oh, it’s just been a while since you and I got a chance to chat,” she said, sitting down in the chair opposite Dani without being invited and pouring tea for them both. Was it her dreams spilling into waking, or was there a sharper gleam in Mama Garcia’s eye than usual?

  “Well, I appreciate the company with Mateo gone,” Dani said, careful not to avoid eye contact or to watch her too closely. The letter seemed to emit a faint alarm bell from its new hiding place in her desk, but Dani was trapped.

  “Agosta mentioned some unpleasantness at the last Primera salon,” the elder Segunda said, using the señora’s given name in an attempt to seem casual, Dani supposed. But beneath her tone, Dani sensed tension. This was the reason she had come, and she’d just given it away too early.

  It was a mistake that would have earned her bad marks in year one of Primera training.

  “Yes, so regrettable,” Dani said, stirring agave nectar into her cup. She faked a sip before setting it down. Poison wouldn’t be very subtle, but it was easy to play off as an illness, and Dani wasn’t about to let her get away with something that simple. “I’m just so glad Mateo is taking his duties so seriously,” she continued. “I’m sure it will take us all some time to recover from the shock.” Dani paused to shake her head. “To think, she was just walking among us all this time . . .”

  “Yes,” said Mama Garcia. “And from what I hear, she was walking rather close to you.”

  Dani let the silence grow teeth between them. Mama Garcia didn’t drop her gaze, but Dani didn’t look away, either. “Was there a question you wanted to ask me, Mama?” she asked, her tone light but her words warning. She was new to the house, but she was still a Primera. She needed to show Mateo’s mama that she couldn’t be intimidated.

  “No need to get defensive, Daniela,” she said. “I merely wanted to convey that it would be a pity for a member of this family to be tainted with any . . . questionable associations. Especially considering the roles my husband, and yours, fill in our government.”

  “It seems Jasmín Flores has been fooling a lot of people for a long time,” Dani said, still careful to keep her voice even, though she wasn’t sure her knees would hold her if she stood. “I assure you that I, like everyone else, have seen her for what she really is and count myself lucky that she’s behind bars, where she belongs.” The lie had sharp edges, and Dani felt it cutting her tongue to ribbons on the way out.

  Abruptly, she remembered Sota’s words in the closet on the first night she met him:

  Think about the crimes your precious government condones, not just the ones they punish. Then you can talk to me about who the real criminals are.

  Mama Garcia laughed, though her eyes stayed cold. “Well, I certainly wasn’t looking for a blood oath, Daniela, but I’m glad to see you’re taking the matter seriously. We can’t be too careful who we trust, after all.”

  “That’s true,” Dani said, raising her cup in a salute and setting it down without even the pretense of a sip. It was insulting, to toast without drinking, and Mama Garcia’s eyes flashed.

  With a last, lingering look, Mama Garcia drained her teacup. “Well, I’m expected at home for lunch,” she said, as if they’d been discussing the weather and not Dani’s loyalties. She smiled, but the gesture wasn’t kind, and Dani felt as though an ice cube had been dropped down the back of her dress.

  Whatever she had said today, Dani knew things weren’t over between them.

  In fact, they had probably just begun.

  “Thank you again for coming by,” Dani said, standing to kiss the air beside each of Mama Garcia’s cheeks. Her smell was strange up close, floral perfume too thick over something metallic.

  “Enjoy your day,” she replied.

  “You as well.”

  She left the tea tray, with Dani’s untouched cup growing cold beside a bowl of figs. Dani had never been less hungry. As the fear subsided, she turned her thoughts to La Voz, the border trip, and the fierce hope that some obstacle was being placed in Mateo’s path—not to mention his family’s.

  Giving up on her reading, Dani wandered back into the hallway at loose ends, craving a distraction from everything outside her control. She didn’t realize she was heading for Carmen’s rooms until she was already in the south section of the house, and by then, she reasoned, it was too late to turn around.

  Had it really been so short a time ago that Dani had considered Carmen to be the worst thing that had ever happened to her? So short a time since she’d been free of the preoccupation caused by hair and curves, her sleep unbothered by dreams of serpent girls? Primeras didn’t think in terms of bodies. Of dreams. These were dangerous thoughts even with a husband at their center. But a Segunda?

  It was unthinkable. Unheard-of.

  More unheard-of than passing information to La Voz? Dani asked herself, pleased when the disapproving maestra’s voice in her head seemed to have no answer.

  Dani knocked on Carmen’s door before she could talk herself out of it. She needed to quiet her thoughts, that was all. And hadn’t Carmen once said Dani could consider her a friend?

  “Come in!” she called, and Dani hesitated. Was she really doing this? And what did it mean if she was? Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door, leaving her train of thought mercifully unfinished.

  Carmen’s suite was the same as it had been the last time Dani had been here, the gilded mirror still reflecting every part of the scene back at her. The only thing that had changed was Dani, who felt much different about the idea of Carmen’s reflection than she had that day.

  You’re here as a friend, she reminded herself sharply.

  In front of the window, in a silk wrapper that slipped off one shoulder, Carmen was deep in concentration over a flower arrangement, clipping the stems of plate-sized scarlet blossoms with curling indigo tongues, taming them into a glass vase like she was a magician from a story, the blossoms some unruly f
lame.

  “Dani!” said Carmen, her scissors slipping on the flower stem. She hissed in pain and Dani crossed the room before she could give herself permission, bending over Carmen’s thumb, where a bead of too-red blood was just welling up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you need anything? A bandage?”

  Carmen stuck the wounded digit in her mouth and pulled it out again with a satisfied smacking sound. “Nope,” she said. “All better.”

  Great, Dani thought, now I’m hovering this close for no reason at all.

  “So,” Carmen said, returning to her flowers, increasing the space between them with predictable grace. “What brings you to my humble abode?” Her lips quirked on the word humble, and Dani found herself laughing.

  She should have expected the question, but somehow, she didn’t have an answer. What was she doing here? “Honestly?” she said, when too much time had passed. “I don’t know. Primera social season shut down after Jasmín’s arrest, and having only Mateo to talk to for days is just . . .” She trailed off, realizing she was rambling, and looked at her hands as she waited for Carmen to say something. Anything.

  But for a minute or more, she didn’t say a word. Dani regretted everything in that minute. Coming here, being so cavalier about wanting to spend time with her, ever being born. She prayed to the gods in the clockwork to take her back ten minutes, even though she knew it was impossible.

  But after a moment, Carmen smiled, a mischievous thing that showed her sharpest teeth. “If I have to hear him go on about the dawn of Medio’s new, Mateo-centric era for one more minute, sometimes I think I’ll scream just to stop him.”

  They were shocking words from the mouth of a high-society wife, but Dani found she wasn’t shocked at all. In fact, she was nodding in agreement before she could think better of it.

  “How lucky we are,” she deadpanned. “To be the simple dogs of the world, and he our benevolent kennel master.”