Nocturna

by Maya Motayne

  “Pendejo,” she muttered, nearly tripping over her own feet as she stumbled toward him. The drunkening card still had her head abuzz. It’d made her so tipsy that she’d tried to steal a dress before realizing she should just change her face. But then she was too drunk to get it to stick. But she’d still bested him. Drunk as hell and still unbeatable. Not too bad, if she said so herself.

  She made to dig through his pockets before pausing in surprise. He had a holstered flask at his hip. She wouldn’t have expected that from someone so soft. Finn opened it, letting it spill onto the ground. Served him right for being such a pain. She searched his pockets, taking what she found before standing and tipping his head back with the toe of her boot. His head flopped back against the ground, jaw slack, lips parted. The blood from his nose ran into his mouth.

  He obviously didn’t know how to fight with elemental magic, but he didn’t have to carry a water flask; he was talented enough to pull it from the air. A bruxo for sure. He probably spent his days lounging in some sprawling hacienda learning complicated magic instead of working odd jobs in the poorer rings. He definitely knew his way around a desk, but fancy desk magic wasn’t enough here. This was the street, not a dueling ground.

  “Home advantage,” she said to his still body. “Nothing personal.”

  She thought of unmasking him, but she knew better than anyone the importance of a good mask. What right did she have to take that comfort from someone else? She turned away from him and stumbled to his bag, which had fallen away from him when he’d flown backward. She rummaged through it. Inside was the book she’d given him and more gold pesos.

  She wished the boy’s satchel had some tonic to cure the headache hammering behind her eyes. Her shadow swayed like a docked ship. Damn that stupid card and this stupid boy. From behind her, he moaned in pain. She turned to see him pushing himself onto his hands and knees.

  “You don’t play fair,” he grunted, adjusting what remained of his mask before it slipped off his face. She watched him place his hand over his nose, probably doing some healing magic. It’d be nice to be able to do that herself instead of having to pay some back-alley, fake bruxo in the Pinch who swore they’d passed their bruxo examinations to heal her.

  “Don’t kid yourself. I was never playing,” she said, dropping his bag as she stood.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” The boy raised his hand, and between his fingers was the card she’d used to knock out the players at the cambió game.

  She shook her head, the movement making her nauseous. “You are a strange little fox.”

  With a flick of his fingers the card flew through the air to her. She caught it reflexively.

  Then she noticed something odd.

  She herself had magicked the card, so it could only be controlled by her, no one else. She’d charmed it to expel that knockout smoke once in Rayan’s parlor. That was all. Yet she could feel the card pulsing with her own magic, as if she herself had commanded it to release the smoke again, right now, to attack her. But that was impossible; it had to be a trick.

  “You said you wanted to be in bed at a decent hour,” the boy said. The card sent out a burst of that sweet smoke. Finn’s head swam. “Sleep tight.”

  A fox would have let her hit the ground without intervention. A doe would have carried her somewhere safe. But Alfie was neither of those things, so he would do neither. As she fell, he spoke a word of magic to cushion her fall. He shakily rose to his feet and doubled over to clutch his stomach where she’d knocked the wind out of him. She really hadn’t been playing.

  He transferred the books from her bag into his own. Then he grasped the thief under her armpits and pulled her into a dark alley between two shops. Alfie propped her against the alley wall. Now if a guard made their rounds they likely would not see her, and if she woke before sunrise she’d have plenty of time to get away. What happened to her would be up to her. He looked up, and the dark of the night sky was muddled with clouds. It looked like it might rain.

  Alfie took off his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, fastening it around her neck. Then he was satisfied.

  He stepped away from the thief and tossed his doorknob at the wall she leaned against. It sank in. He let the doorknob darken to his royal blue. For his propio magic to work for travel, he assigned each location a shade of magic and a special twist of the doorknob.

  He turned it once to the right before murmuring, “Voy.”

  The magic obliged, and the wall opened before him, inviting him into the colorful quiet of its channels. Alfie stole one last glance at the girl, still fast asleep. He thought of waiting for her to wake up. Then he thought of the hit he’d taken to the groin.

  Neither a fox nor a doe, but do not be a fool, he thought.

  He turned away from the girl and walked into the magic as if it were a road well-traveled.

  6

  The Chest

  The tunnel of magic opened into Alfie’s bedroom. He grimaced in pain as he stepped out, then sat on the edge of his bed and took the books out of his bag.

  There were five books instead of the four he’d expected. He must have accidentally grabbed something from the thief when he’d taken the books out of her bag. It was a small, palm-sized journal. He was surprised to find that the pages held fine sketches of more faces than he could count. They were drawn with such care that Alfie couldn’t imagine them coming from the person who’d punched him with a stone-cloaked fist. She must’ve stolen it. Alfie shoved it back in his bag and turned his attention to the four books from the game.

  All but one were Englassen. The last was a slim, old book in traditional Castallano script.

  Alfie thumbed through the pages and smiled at the familiar stories. It was a rare first edition of a famous book of Castallan myths and legends. The book even had his favorite childhood tale—“The Birth of Man and Magic.”

  His exhaustion aside, Alfie couldn’t help but read it, remembering how enthralled he’d been when Paloma had read it to him and Dez when they were boys.

  Before there was man and woman, sand and sea, sun and moon, there were only gods. One sunless day, or perhaps it was a moonless night, the gods grew ill. They sneezed, and through the fingers clasped over their noses, stars shot free, spreading through the sky. When they coughed, puffs of cloud pillowed the cosmos. They picked dirt from their nails and land flourished. They wiped the sweat from their brows and the salted puddles became oceans.

  The gods decreed that the land they had birthed must be tended to. So, from the light of the stars, the silt of the ocean floor, and the breath in the clouds, they made man and woman to be the guardians of the earth. But creating mankind was not like creating oceans and stars. Men had hearts and the gods could not agree on what to fill their hearts with.

  And so Luz took half of mankind in her hands and filled them with light.

  Sombra took the rest and threaded them with only darkness.

  But both the god and the goddess were wrong.

  The tale went on as most children’s tales did—with the creation of a monstrous villain. Sombra, the god who created the dark, grew intertwined with the darkness until he and it were one. As the darkness grew in strength, so did he. He wished to snuff out the light and drench the world in shadow. The world was said to be a strange place then, teetering with an imbalance of light and dark as Luz and Sombra fought for control of man. Rivers ran violet and flowers grew as tall as castles. Creatures of myth roamed the land. But before the corrupted god could darken the globe, a man of dark and a woman of light embraced to become one, the man of dark falling and stretching at her feet to become her shadow. Their embrace created mankind as it was always meant to be—a balance of light and dark. From that balance, magic was born and the world finally found its footing. Rivers ran blue. Flowers were small enough to be plucked between a child’s soft fingers. Dragons shrank down into lizards and all beasts of legend disappeared from sight. Then came Alfie and Dez’s favorite part.

&nbs
p; Sombra demanded that the light be snuffed out. As punishment, he was cast out of the heavens, forbidden to return. When he fell to earth, the darkness rooted within him corrupted all who crossed his path. The world’s finest bruxos parted the god from the dark power he so loved, turning his once immortal body to bones. Learning from Sombra’s faults, the remaining gods and goddesses turned their gazes heavenward. They built the kingdom their children would come to after death and left all matters of earth to mankind.

  He and Dez had had so many questions for Paloma after hearing the tale. How did they trap Sombra? Was it true that if Sombra rose again he would bring about what legends called Nocturna? It was something that Alfie had only ever heard described as a great darkness that Sombra would cast over the world, a dismantling of all things good. But Paloma had shooed those questions away, telling them to pay attention to the moral of the story.

  We all carry good and bad within us, light and dark. That is what makes us human. And remember, no matter how far into the darkness we may fall, it is never too late to seek the light.

  Alfie stroked the book with his thumb. What was good and bad had been so obvious then. Now, as he stared at the illegal books he’d stolen from a thief, the line was not so clear. Alfie smothered those thoughts. For better or worse, he had the books. He may as well learn from them what he could. With that, Alfie grabbed the one on top. The first two books were on Englassen history, useless to him. The next one was about Englassen folklore and legend—another waste of his time. Alfie looked at the final book.

  If this one didn’t hold the knowledge he needed to save Dez, he would have to let this go for good. He’d promised himself before attending the game that this would be his last attempt before committing to being Castallan’s future king like his parents wanted. Swallowing thickly, Alfie picked up the book, willing it to contain what he needed. The book was so old that the gold letters on the spine had faded to barely legible script, but Alfie’s brows shot up as he deciphered the title: Sealing the Damned.

  “Coño! For gods’ sake,” Alfie cursed with a roll of his eyes. Still, he opened it and began to read.

  It quickly became clear that this was an eccentric book. The spellwork within it appeared to be experimental, almost fantastical. Alfie’s brows crept up his forehead as he read chapters that spoke of monsters of dark power and how to seal them with strange magic techniques.

  It spoke of old magic. Magic with soul, magic that colored men with its desires and bent them to its will. Magic born from man’s sin.

  Alfie snorted. What would be next, spellwork to slay dragons? Halt time? Stop death? Men colored magic, that was a universal truth. Fear of sin coloring magic was just something to say to children to make them think twice before dabbling in troublesome spellwork.

  Still, his eyes clung to the crudely drawn images of creatures outlined in black. Monsters made of smoke and darkness that looked as if they’d crept from a child’s nightmares to etch themselves upon the old pages of this book. He turned to the next chapter, its title loosely translated as “The Strength in Circles, of Sealing and Banishment of Dark Entities.” It was utter nonsense, he knew, but he couldn’t stop himself from reading on, couldn’t help but hope that somewhere in its pages there might be something useful.

  The chapter spoke of the circle as a symbol for eternity before describing spellwork that promised to seal spirits, demons, and entities of dark power in objects with a circle of blood and a word of magic. Written magic was an art he’d done in ink and chalk, but the book spoke of magic written in blood. Blood magic was only ever used in works Paloma called “unsavory.”

  If the spellwork you seek requires blood, she’d once tutted, you ought to rethink performing such spellwork in the first place.

  But maybe the magic that could help him find Dez required a little blood and a lot of nerve. Alfie ran his thumb over the dark circle drawn in the book and imagined it splashed red.

  Alfie’s bedroom doors burst open and Paloma stormed in, her red dueña’s robes flowing behind her. When her eyes found him, an anger flared in her that he’d never seen before.

  She strode across the room and stood so close they were nearly nose-to-nose. “Where have you been?”

  Alfie opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Reflexively, he moved his hand to pull the books closer to him, but Paloma wrenched them away. Her lips disappeared into a hard line when she saw what they were.

  “Paloma—I can explain—” Alfie sputtered.

  “Luka came to find you and found an empty bed instead,” Paloma said, her eyes narrowing. “You’re lucky he called upon me first instead of your mother and father.”

  Even while being caught, Alfie couldn’t help but feel a spark of hope knowing that Luka had sought him out. His stomach dropped at the thought of missing it.

  “I know what you’ve been up to. I enlisted a sailor on your ship to report on your doings. I’m glad I did,” she said before he could protest.

  A flush prickled his neck. She’d collared him like a dog too foolish to find its way home.

  “How dare you even think of dabbling in Englassen magic?” she snapped. “I thought you would get it out of your system and return home. But now this! Luka was beside himself—”

  Alfie’s face reddened further. “You told Luka?”

  “He begged me to tell him anything I knew. You hadn’t sent word in months!”

  Luka was loyal enough not to tell his parents a word about his doings, and Alfie couldn’t even send him a letter. Guilt sank into his bones, but he refused to let it smother his anger.

  “What I do is not your concern. Or Luka’s,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Paloma looked at him like she would when he threw mid-lesson tantrums as a child. It was infuriating. “The king and queen don’t know, but if you put one more toe out of line I will tell them. I will not let you trifle with forbidden magic in some fool’s errand to bring back the dead.”

  Alfie closed the distance between them, anger clawing his insides. “Falling into that void doesn’t mean he’s dead. You have no proof! No one has proof!”

  Paloma’s eyes widened with a flash of alarm. It was the same look she’d given him one day soon after Dez’s disappearance, when he’d grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her against the wall in a fit of rage. Shame welled up within him and spilled over, embarrassment sticking to his skin in an oily sheet. It was fear of that anger within him that had led him to drowning himself in the flask at his hip. He would not let himself become that person again, the person whose anger would incite fear in those he cared about. He would much rather be numb than feel himself break open from the heat of his fury again.

  Alfie took a step back. “Perdóname, I didn’t mean—I wasn’t going to—”

  “Alfie,” she said softly. “I know you weren’t. But you must listen to me now as you did on that day. Dez is gone. That girl’s propio was to create voids—endless, dark, empty places with no food, no water, no time, no magic. She disappeared Dez into it. Your father forced her to open that void again under the pain of death, and he sent bruxos into that dark hole to find him. Just as the girl had warned, none of them came back.”

  Alfie shook his head, not wanting to imagine Dez starving to death in the darkness. Men and magic needed each other to survive. This was an undisputed fact. Magic flowed through the air and men took it in like flowers took in sunlight. Without magic, the human body would wither away. And Alfie remembered what it felt like to stand beside the black void that had swallowed his brother. He’d felt no magic coming from it. Since then, he hadn’t been able to even set foot in the Blue Room. It had once been a parlor where they’d played as boys. Now it would forever be the last place Alfie saw Dez. That wing of the palace had since been closed to all, left to sit in the silence of their loss.

  But Alfie refused to let what had happened in that room go. He couldn’t.

  “None of the bruxos my father sent to find him were me. And Dez isn’t just anyone,�
� Alfie said, but his confidence was deflating at the look on Paloma’s face.

  “Dez’s propio was extraordinary, but it cannot bring him back.”

  “You don’t know that,” Alfie seethed. “No one knows that for sure.”

  If anyone could survive this, it would be Dez. As a child, Dez would carve animal figurines out of wood—web-toed water foxes, quilbears, red-bellied wolves. When he finished a carving and held it in his hand, it came to life. There was no other way to describe it. The wolves would chase their tails, the puffer pigs would puff up to twice their size when startled, the quilbears would raise their hackles. Each figure had its own personality, its own will. He’d kept his figures in a glass cupboard in his room where they roamed and slept, pressing their paws to the glass whenever Dez came near.

  The day Dez had been taken from them, all his figurines froze, motionless. Alfie couldn’t help but hope that if Dez could breathe life into the lifeless, then he somehow could survive what had happened. He had to be alive, waiting for Alfie to find him.

  Alfie didn’t notice he was crying until a tear ran down his lip and he tasted salt.

  Paloma touched his shoulder with an awkward hand. She was never the sort to initiate touch. Dueños weren’t the touching type. So Alfie knew he must look pathetic beyond words. He shook her hand off, and she let it hang in the air for a moment before pulling it back to her side.

  “Your mother and father cannot take another loss, Prince Alfehr,” she said, her voice quiet. “This is your last warning, entiendes? If you continue down this path, I will tell them.”

  With that, Paloma took the Englassen books and swept out of his rooms, shutting the doors behind her. Alfie was left with nothing but the bitter taste of anger and pity on his tongue.

  He sat at the edge of his bed, rubbing the back of his hand across his eyes. It was over. Those books had given him nothing and now he had to move on, but he couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving Dez behind, of moving forward toward a throne that had been Dez’s since birth. To do it, he would need to be brave.