by Maya Motayne
When Englass invaded Castallan generations ago, they’d sought to snuff Castallan’s language, like a candlewick between wet fingertips, destroying their connection to magic along with it.
The Englassen regime destroyed all of Castallan’s books of magic, forbidding them from speaking their mother tongue or using spoken and written spellwork. Generations of being forced to speak only Englass’s language passed until Castallanos had forgotten their language entirely. Their connection to spoken and written magic had been severed. They knew nothing beyond the little they were allowed to do with elemental magic when doing farmwork for their Englassen masters.
Then a Castallano slave had stolen this very vanishing cloak and used it to sneak into the libraries where he found a secret cache of books of Castallan’s language. With each word he learned, he discovered the marvelous breadth of magic once more and taught it to his people in secret. His teachings spread, and Castallan finally rebelled and overthrew their colonizers. This cloak had returned magic to her ancestors and, in turn, had given them their freedom.
She walked in small circles, feeling the cloak swish around her heels. She was wearing history about her shoulders. Her shadow zoomed around her excitedly, visible on the floor. She’d have to keep it curled beneath the cloak to stay out of sight.
With the cloak to keep her hidden, she made her way back to the ornate filigree doors of the vault. She turned back and stared wistfully at the gold that could buy her a maldito ship instead of passage on one. But she needed to get out unnoticed, not alert the guards that someone had ransacked the vault. The pesos in her pockets would have to be enough.
She crept out of the vault and pulled the great doors shut. The two guards were still asleep. Finn had to keep herself from snorting. With the cloak on, she walked away from the guards, not bothering to duck back into the secret passages. She had what she came for, and now she was going to enjoy it. She was going to walk around these royals with her head held high.
And maybe she’d finesse a few things here and there. If the mood struck.
Who was she kidding? The mood always struck.
Luka took another long swig of the bottle as he leaned against a shelf in the wine cellar.
With every gulp he drowned out the memory of Alfie’s empty apologies and seeing Tiago looking so characteristically smug at the dinner party. After he’d finished a bottle he grabbed another for his trek to his rooms. He was in a much better mood than he had been when he’d left Alfie standing in the hall looking so lost. So guilty and sorry.
Luka guzzled the wine to blur that thought. After a few loud gulps, it grew murkier and murkier, until he couldn’t remember why he’d started downing the wine in the first place. But he was no quitter, so he finished the bottle regardless. As he made his way to the grand staircase, Luka handed the empty bottle to the nearest guard with a wink.
Whenever Luka was drunk, he made a point of looking at the patterned tiles on the stairs as he stumbled up to his rooms. The designs wiggled and escaped the bordered squares they’d been caged in, mingling with each other until new patterns emerged.
Sure, this method of walking made Luka fall multiple times. But it was entertaining, and Luka lived to be entertained.
When what felt like the millionth guard tried to help him to his rooms, Luka stared at him in disbelief. “Gods, how many of you are in this place? I can walk myself to my rooms, guard number three thousand and one. You ought to be guarding something more important, like innocent bystanders from Alfie’s awkward dancing.”
Then Luka laughed so hard that he almost vomited onto the tiled floor he so admired.
When he made it to the sweeping corridor to his bedchambers, he paused. Alfie’s words rang in his head like the most annoying of bells: Please just go to your room and sleep it off.
“Pendejo,” Luka sniffed before leaning against his door, contemplating. At this moment, it was very important to do the exact opposite of what Alfie said. Very important. He pushed off the door and promptly stumbled to the ground, catching himself with a palm against the floor.
“Opposite, opposite,” he mused as he shakily stood. What was the opposite of going to his room and sleeping? Luka snapped his fingers as he cracked the code. “Going to Alfie’s room and staying awake!” He stumbled down the corridor and burst into Alfie’s room. He flopped onto the bed and watched the canopy spin over his head. On the bedside set of drawers sat a bottle of tonic Alfie drank to calm him when he was nervous. Alfie always seemed to be nervous.
Except when he was disappearing for months at a time without a single word, getting into trouble without asking Luka to come along, or even telling him. He seemed more than calm then.
“Stupid abandoning jerk,” Luka muttered before reaching for the bottle. It felt cool in his hand. Luka laid it against his forehead. It rolled onto his nose and balanced precariously on the bridge.
Luka plucked the bottle off his face, twisted the cork free, and took a long swig before throwing the bottle across the room, letting it roll toward the double doors to the balcony.
He rose from the bed, too annoyed to fall asleep. His mind fuzzy from wine and the tonic, Luka stumbled out of Alfie’s room. Drunk or not, he would give Alfie a piece of his mind.
11
The Blue Room
Her steps as silent as the rest of her was invisible, Finn took a tour of the palace.
She sampled the pork that she’d snuck in through and could confirm that it was worth all the praise. She bet her sweat improved the flavor. She walked in through the banquet hall’s open doors and watched the nobles dance, which proved to be less entertaining than expected. She listened in on conversations and mimicked the nobles’ scandalized expressions as they traded gossip.
“Did you hear he was caught with his mistress?”
“No.”
“Truly! And she gave him an ultimatum.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
When she grew tired of pantomiming gasps and looks of shock, Finn sauntered out of the banquet hall and went back to exploring. She knew she ought to leave, but she wanted to take her time out of spite. After all, she had nothing to fear, not with the vanishing cloak around her shoulders.
Finn walked through a wing of fine art, the library she’d peeked into earlier, and more parlors than she could count when she found herself in a quiet wing of the castle where there were no guards, no guests.
It was strangely empty and unkempt. Where the tiled floors gleamed throughout the palace, these were dull, as if they hadn’t been trod on or scrubbed for months. The curtains were drawn over ceiling-high stained glass windows. At the end of the corridor was a set of double doors. Curiosity gnawed at her. Why was this wing so deserted? What had happened here?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she pushed open the doors, walked in, and shut them behind her. The room was a sweeping parlor with a blue tiled floor and swaths of darker blue fabric draping across the octagonal ceiling. Much of the furniture was covered in white sheets, like petrified ghosts unable to move or speak.
Creepy, she thought, wrapping her arms around herself.
Musty nets of cobwebs hung from the curtains. A thick film of dust lay stagnant on the one table where the white sheet had slid off, like moss over a pond. She ran her fingers over it and marveled at how she could feel her fingertips traveling through the grime, but couldn’t see them. She made a tangle of intersecting lines in the dust and a little star with her pinkie. It looked like a phantom trying to scrawl a message. Finn the Phantom. She smiled. She liked that.
With a creak, the doors opened behind her.
Finn jumped, nearly forgetting she was invisible. Standing in the doorway was a boy, tall and a bit nervous-looking. He looked strangely familiar.
“Luka?” he called into the room. “Have you passed out in here?” He hovered at the door, looking too uncomfortable to walk in, as if something within this room had haunted him for far too long. His eyes were shining
. He hurriedly rubbed them with the back of his hand.
He took a deep breath in and let it flow slowly from his mouth until his shoulders relaxed. His movements still unsure, he stepped in.
It was well past midnight now. What was he doing here? He was slim built, and from the little she saw of him thus far, she knew that every step he took was weighed and measured twice over in his head. There was a thoughtfulness to him and his furrowed brow. He looked delicate, even. Breakable. He was attractive, she thought, with his large gold eyes and the way his slim body tapered at his waist. He was endearing in his obvious weakness, like a puppy with a limp. Not quite guapo, but he was cute.
He scanned the room before he approached the table Finn was standing at. He ducked his head beneath it as if accustomed to finding someone sleeping under a table. His shadow zigzagged around him searchingly. She nearly snorted at the sight. What could the propio of some pampered palace boy be? The ability to make nice flower arrangements?
When the boy stepped closer, Finn held her breath. He was only a step or two away from her and had no idea.
He drummed his fingers on the table, then he paused, his eyes narrowing. Finn followed his gaze. He was staring at the marks she’d made on the table. Finn took a step back. Through the thin cloak, her hip grazed the edge of the table. The pesos in her pocket chimed.
His eyes snapped up, his shadow stilling in suspicion like a dog at the sound of unknown footsteps. Finn held still and willed her heart to stop hammering in her chest. It wasn’t as if he could see her. He would decide he’d imagined a noise and move on. It’d be fine.
He reached out and nearly skimmed her nose with his fingertips. Then he dropped his hand and breathed sharply through his nose, clearly chiding himself for thinking someone was there.
That was close.
But then he looked back at the table and suspicion etched itself onto his face once more. His eyes locked on where she was standing. This time he squinted, focusing, as if that would help. She wanted to snort and tell him not to give himself a nosebleed. His gold eyes widened, and his hand shot forward, quick as a cobra, to grip her by the arm.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
12
The Prince, the Thief, and the Drunk
“Are you following me?” Alfie asked as the somehow-invisible arm struggled in his grip.
He could see magic flowing through her. It was that same shifting wine red that he’d seen at the cambió game. “Who are you?” he demanded. “I can see you—answer me!”
The answer he got was a punch to the jaw. The girl wrenched her arm from his grip. Alfie lunged forward and grabbed her around her middle, holding her so that her back was pressed to his chest. She bucked against him.
“You heard me! Who are you? Take off the invisibility enchantment you’ve got on.”
The girl threw away her elbow, hitting him in the face. He lurched back, his hands clamping over his sore nose. His eyes focused, he watched her figure, outlined in that familiar red magic, make a mad dash for the door.
Alfie locked his eyes on her red silhouette. “Paralizar!”
She froze. He could see the magic reverberating through her, buzzing with anger like a kicked beehive. Her shadow still surged around her, snapping at him like a threatened dog. This magic wouldn’t hold long. He needed to act fast.
Alfie held her by the arm. When he raised his other hand it brushed against a hood he couldn’t see. It fell off her head and she appeared before him, no longer invisible. She was frozen, her body leaning forward, a hand reaching for the doorknob. He knew her immediately—the dark eyes, the curly hair that fell just below her shoulders, the snarl that curved her lips. His propio hadn’t been wrong. This really was the girl in the dragon mask, the one with the shifting red magic.
Alfie brushed his hand along her arm again and felt the fabric of whatever she was wearing that he couldn’t see. His fingers skimmed a patchwork of feather-light scales, and he gasped. His father had let him hold it only a few times, but he would never mistake the feel of it for anything else. Vanishing cloaks were too rare to be owned by a common thief; this had to be the one kept in the palace vault. She’d stolen the single most treasured item in the entire palace, maybe the entire kingdom.
How had she done it? Had she changed her face into a guard’s and sauntered in?
Then something else clicked in his mind, the journal of faces that she’d dropped. Of course he’d seen one of them on a wanted poster. The sketches in her journal were of the faces she’d worn while committing crimes.
He looked at her pointedly. “I am going to unfreeze you and you are not going to run. If you run, I will freeze you again and have you thrown in the dungeons, entiendes?”
She couldn’t answer, but Alfie watched the magic thrumming through her slow and calm.
Alfie let his magic fall away. The girl’s arm dropped. She paused for a long moment, seeming to think of what to say. Then she shrugged, as if giving up the search for a clever retort.
“I’m here to steal this cloak.” He must’ve looked confused at her honesty because she walked back to the table, sat on it, and crossed her arms. “I’m leveling with you. I’m tired. It’s been a hell of a week, and I came in here through a maldito pig. I don’t have the energy to lie.”
Alfie wondered if “coming in through a pig” was some form of slang he had yet to hear.
“You do know what that cloak is, don’t you? Vanishing cloaks are extremely rare, but this one is not just any cloak. It’s—”
“Sí, I know.” She shot him a silencing look, the heat of her gaze a visual swear. “The cloak passed from king to king. The cloak that sparked a rebellion. The cloak that bought us our freedom. Not all of us have to sit at a polished desk to learn things.”
“And you still want to take it? You’re not at all concerned with what it means to people?”
“No,” she said without pause. Alfie cocked his head at her. He didn’t want to feel refreshed by how little she cared about the legacy, the weight of history, as his parents called it. But he was. Sore jaw aside, he was.
“I need it to get a job done,” she said. She raised her arm and regarded the cloak thoughtfully. “And it’d be useful to have in my line of work.”
“And what is that exactly? Your line of work.”
She gestured at herself, as if she were wearing a sign. “What do you think?”
“Thieving identities, I would think.”
The girl’s brows rose. “Among other things. . . . How would you know that?”
Alfie stared at her, annoyed. “You don’t recognize me?”
She looked at him blankly. “No.”
“You encased your fist with stone and punched me in the face.”
“Stone Fist is sort of my signature.” She shrugged.
“It happened two days ago.” When she only squinted at him, Alfie ground his teeth. Surely she recognized his voice. He couldn’t be that forgettable. “We’ve met before.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “You’ve got me confused with someone else.”
“I do not,” he said. “It’s not possible for me to misrecognize you.”
She snorted. “That confident in your eyesight?”
“Yes,” he said, insistent. “I can see magic. I know yours. You were the one impersonating the woman at Rayan’s house. We fought after the cambió game.”
Her jaw went slack. Then her face pinched tight with anger. “If you hadn’t done whatever the hell you did to knock me out, I wouldn’t even be here! You pampered little son of a—”
“You might want to keep your voice down, if you want the cloak,” Alfie lied, knowing full well that they were too far into the closed wing of the palace for anyone to hear. Within the space of a breath, she closed the distance between them and held a dagger under his chin.
“How’d you do it?” she asked. “How did you magic my trump card in the alley?” Then she stared at him in disbelief, her shadow stilling.
“Wait, you’re gonna let me have the cloak?”
Alfie sidestepped the question of his propio, raising his chin defiantly over the knife. “I will lend you the cloak—”
“Smartest thing you’ve said all day, I’m sure.” She lowered the dagger slightly. “How do you have the maldito authority to give it to me?”
“Lend,” Alfie corrected her tersely, his shadow snapping forward in annoyance. “It’s mine to lend.” He was lying through his teeth. His parents would have his hide if they knew about this.
She snorted at his words. “Yours to lend.” Then she cocked her head and scanned his face. “Wait, you’re the maldito prince, aren’t you?”
Alfie resisted the urge to press the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Yes.”
“I punched a prince in the face,” she said, amused. “Never thought I’d say that.”
Alfie pressed on, his voice clipped. “I will lend you the cloak under one condition.”
The girl rubbed her temples with her free hand, looking too exhausted to appreciate the ease of the situation. “I’m getting really tired of conditions, Prince. Aren’t you supposed to be forgiving and obliging to maidens? Isn’t that what being a prince is all about?”
“You punched me in the face with a stone fist.”
“I repeat, forgiving and obliging to ladies.”
“Are you going to let me tell you my condition?”
She threw her hands up. “Yes, fine, what is it? What would you like, Prince? How may I serve you?” she said with a mocking caricature of a bow.
He’d never heard someone say prince in a way that made it sound like such an insult. At least not to his face. “You have the power to change your face and your whole body, yes? You can change everything.”
“Yes.”