Nocturna

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Nocturna Page 25

by Maya Motayne


  “The cart will be arriving soon. We should get to the roadside to wait. Are you ready?”

  “I just spent the last ten minutes making sure you were ready,” she said. “I’ve been ready.”

  The prince frowned at her. He opened his mouth as if to say something but forced himself to swallow it. She was more comfortable when he looked at her this way—with a contempt that slanted his eyes instead of a worry that rounded them. This look, she understood.

  “You’re certain that this will work?” Alfie asked her as they huddled under the vanishing cloak, watching as the canopied cart pulled by two horses made its way down the road to them.

  Alfie had provided the information about when carts came to deliver supplies to the prison. He’d done his research on the Clock Tower months ago in preparation for the last time he’d come. Finn had come up with the plan to sneak onto the carriage without breaking a sweat. He’d agreed to it but was doubtful. Then again, he didn’t have a better idea, and there was no time to waste. The ride to the prison and this cart they’d been waiting for had taken longer than Alfie had expected; soon it would be afternoon. Time seemed to dart onward, leaving them struggling to keep up. The ball would begin tonight and Alfie could only hope that this would all be under control by then, that he’d somehow get back in time to relieve Luka and present himself as Castallan’s next king.

  “Relax, old man,” Finn said, grinning when he glared down at her. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that horses don’t like snakes.” She took the sock she’d borrowed from him and stuffed it with small rocks. She set it on the ground at the edge of the road.

  Alfie hoped she was right. They did not have time for mistakes. The ball was five hours away and this magic trapped in Ignacio’s body still wreaked havoc wherever it was.

  The cart curved through the road between the sugarcane fields, drawing ever closer to the barren land that stood before them, an island of dust in a sea of sugarcane. The cart’s horses trotted in unison as the two drivers chatted. Finn raised her hand and curved it back and forth in rolling, serpentine motions. The rocks in the black sock responded as the sock slithered forward across the road toward the horses’ stamping feet.

  She held up three fingers and counted down. “Tres, dos, uno—”

  One horse gave a shrill neigh, rearing back on its hind legs at the sight of the pseudo snake. The other followed suit before stomping on the sock as the drivers shouted in alarm. They pulled the cart to a stop before one hopped off his perch to calm the horses.

  “Now!” Finn whispered.

  Together beneath the cloak, they dashed to the back of the cart and crawled in. It was full of food for the prison. Sacks of flour, potatoes, and purple onions were piled on the cart’s floor. Alfie pulled Finn to the back corner. They crouched against the adjoining walls of the cart. Alfie could hear the drivers arguing as they steadied the horses.

  “Check the back,” one man said. “Make sure everything’s in order.”

  Alfie pressed his back harder against the corner and hoped the man wouldn’t crawl into the cart to investigate.

  A man appeared at the rear and eyed its contents, a look of boredom slackening his face. Then his eyes sharpened. His gaze locked on the ground just before Alfie.

  Alfie looked down to see that his shoe was sticking out from beneath the cloak. He pulled his foot in, accidentally knocking his knee against a sack of potatoes. The sack fell sideways and hit the ground with a clunk. The man stared, rubbing his eyes in confusion.

  Finn reached for a dagger in her belt loop, but Alfie grabbed her hand and shook his head. He would not let this go awry. They had no time for mistakes now, but enough people had been hurt already. His heart in his throat, Alfie grabbed the dragon on his chest. Finn watched him uneasily as he fervently thought, Forget you saw me. Forget you saw me.

  A wave of pain tore through him, as if needles were slicing through every patch of his skin. His head swam.

  The man’s eyes glazed over before clearing again. He blinked, as if trying to hold tight to a memory as it slipped through his fingers. He shook his head. “Todo bien back here!”

  The man walked back to the head of the cart and the cart rolled on. His mind hazy with pain, Alfie startled at the trickle of something warm flowing over his lip. His nose was bleeding. With shaking fingers he pinched his nose and tilted his head back.

  This magic was ravaging him from the inside out.

  “That bad, huh?” Finn muttered.

  “Worse,” he said, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

  The pain blooming in his bones aside, Alfie couldn’t help but be astounded by the magic’s reach. How could it easily erase a single memory from a man’s head? There was spellwork that could wipe a man’s mind clean, but there was no magic that worked so selectively, plucking one memory like a petal from a stem. The price of that magic tore through Alfie as he blinked away his spotty vision, his hands trembling. If this was a mere echo of the magic, how strong would it be if it reunited with Sombra’s body?

  Then a thought sprouted in his mind, thorny and prickly. The words of the Englassen book echoed in his mind:

  The longer that the being is sealed, the more it will draw upon the sealer’s energy, his very life force.

  Even if he banished the magic away, it would still be attached to him, drawing upon his life until there was nothing left to feast on. A prickling chill swept over his body. The reality of his death formed, hard and unignorable. Yet there was also something freeing to it. He’d worried about what legacy he would leave behind for his kingdom. Now the answer was simple—his life. The magic would sap him of it with time and when he died the seal would break. But hidden in the void, it would not be able to return and hurt anyone else. His life was worth that, he knew, but the thought of losing it sapped him of hope even more than this foul magic could.

  They rode in the cart in silence until the wheels began rumbling on new, uneven ground; they’d crossed from the dirt road surrounded by sugarcane into the prison’s clearing, where the ground sat dry and cracked beneath the cart. Then a wave of terrible heat swept over them.

  “What the hell is that?” Finn said, wiping her brow.

  “We’re riding across the drawbridge over the boiling moat.” He released his nose and gingerly leaned forward. It had stopped bleeding. Now sweat gathered on his upper lip instead.

  Finn’s eyebrows rose. “I thought that was just a story.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Alfie said. There were rumors that if a grown man fell in the moat, he would be cooked alive before he even had the chance to scream, steamed from the inside out.

  The cart gave a bump as they moved off the bridge and back onto land. The wave of heat abated slightly as the cart rolled to a stop. Alfie and Finn scurried out before the prison guards stepped forward to retrieve the goods. Before them stood the Clock Tower.

  Alfie had been here before, yet the prison still looked shockingly wide and impossibly tall, like a stone telescope jutting from the earth, its edges perfectly rounded. Not a single window adorned it. Its adobe bricks baked in the sun. The spit of land between the moat and the tower was minuscule, only a strip of parched dirt between them and a torturous, steaming death.

  But there was no time to dwell on that. His head still swimming from using the magic, Alfie nodded toward the prison guards carrying the sacks of food into a side entrance of the tower, a small door to the left of the prison’s main entrance—a pair of foreboding double doors that towered over all who entered. They followed quickly behind the guardsmen down a tight hall of sandy stone walls, scarcely lit by enchanted flames hovering in sconces. They were walking toward what Alfie knew to be a food cellar. On the way Alfie spotted a closet door; he cocked his head toward it. They ducked into it as the men walked on.

  With the door shut, the closet was dark as night. Alfie was grateful for the cover as he wrenched the cloak off, his body screaming in pain and exhaustion. He slid down the wall and sat against i
t, his head between his knees.

  He heard the scratch of a struck match. A small bud of a flame hovered between them, and Finn’s face loomed out of the dark. She was squatting in front of him, scanning him. He was glad they’d decided not to use the dark magic to transport them here. He couldn’t imagine the pain if they’d tried to travel such a distance on the back of this magic.

  He closed his eyes and focused on taking in breaths instead of choking on them. Finn said nothing, only kept the flame glowing between them. She did not tell him he was a fool. She did not tell him that this magic was going to destroy him and that this was all his fault in the first place. She just let him breathe. It was a comfort he couldn’t verbalize.

  “Can you stand?” she whispered.

  Alfie braced his palms against the cold floor. “Let’s find out.”

  She stepped away to give him room. Alfie slowly rose, his back supported by the wall. He moved forward, righting himself, but as soon as he did his vision swam. It felt as if the world beneath his feet was spinning on its toes. A faraway voice told him that he was falling. Finn extinguished the match. As the closet fell dark she caught him in her arms, his forehead falling to the soft juncture where her neck curved into her shoulder. She leaned him back against the wall, holding him there.

  When he raised his head their cheeks brushed past each other, a shock of warmth. The darkness of the closet heightened his senses, and he could feel so keenly the heat of her through his dueño’s robes, smell the sweat that trailed down her skin from their journey here. With her fingers splayed against his collarbone, Alfie hoped she couldn’t feel his pulse quickening.

  “Luz,” he murmured, his voice hushed. A globe of white light the size of an apple hovered over his palm, casting a glow over her face. He’d hoped the return of his sight would calm the rest of his senses, but it did no such thing. He saw now that wishing for such a thing would be like coaxing a blooming flower to fall into a tight bud once more. It couldn’t be taken back.

  “If you faint this often, do you even need to sleep at night?” she asked.

  With that insult, his pulse came down easily.

  “It’s just the magic,” he said. Usually magic flowed through him, blooming at his fingertips. But this magic didn’t flow, it burned, leaving his whole body singed. It wrung him dry. Just when he thought it had taken everything from him, it only twisted him tighter.

  But Alfie refused to let his fear of the magic ruin this accomplishment. He couldn’t help but relish the moment. They’d done it. They’d snuck into the Clock Tower.

  “We made it,” Alfie said.

  “We did,” she said, her lips quirking at the corners. For a moment that was all there was, their smiles and the soft light that traced them in the dark.

  “You do know that getting out is always harder than getting in, right?” she said.

  “Just let me have this one victory, thief.”

  “Fine, Prince.”

  For a long moment, she let him have it.

  “All right,” she said. “We should get going.”

  Alfie nodded, his throat dry. “You’re right.” He reached for the doorknob, but he couldn’t will himself to turn it. He was here again, for almost the same reason, but with the twist of breaking the prisoner out of jail instead of killing her. He didn’t know what would’ve happened if Paloma hadn’t stopped him last time. He didn’t know if he would be able to stop himself today.

  “I’m behind you.”

  Alfie didn’t know if she meant that literally or figuratively, but his shoulders relaxed at those words. He turned to look at her, but she’d disappeared under the cloak again.

  Alfie tucked the dragon back beneath his robes and turned to the door. “Thank you, Finn.”

  “You say that too much.”

  Alfie shook his head before turning the knob and peering out the door. The tight hall was empty, the men long finished bringing in the food from the cart.

  His true face hidden by Finn’s magic, he stepped out the door and shut it after he felt Finn move past him beneath the cloak. The corridor was empty, no dueños to look at him and wonder who he might be, no guards to avoid. A stroke of luck.

  Alfie lifted a foot to take a step when a voice barked, “You there!”

  Alfie froze. Finn cursed under her breath beside him.

  The prince turned and regarded the guard with his most dueño-like expression. “Yes.”

  “Did you get lost? You’re the one they sent to perform the service, yes?” he asked.

  Alfie stared at him, frozen in panic. Finn elbowed him in the side.

  “Sí, of course. The service,” Alfie said. “In old age one becomes forgetful.”

  The guard regarded Alfie strangely before saying, “Follow me.”

  Alfie swallowed thickly before following the guard down the stone corridor. He would do what this man said quickly, then he and Finn would get back to the plan.

  Alfie started when her breath tickled his ear.

  “Shall I knock him out and stuff him in a closet?”

  “Do. Not,” Alfie murmured. “And stay close.”

  In the silence, Alfie could swear that he heard Finn roll her eyes.

  27

  The Service

  Alfie internally cursed as the guard led him down a path of twists and turns through the prison’s ground floor. It was difficult to keep track of where they were going.

  If only he’d waited an extra moment in the closet with Finn, then maybe this guard wouldn’t have spotted him. Now they were wasting time going to whatever “service” this guard thought Alfie was supposed to perform. They were supposed to be headed to the center of the tower to lay the distraction and then to Xiomara’s cell on the eighth floor, but now the guard was leading them through the outermost ring of the ground floor. They didn’t have time for this.

  Alfie walked stiffly, the pain of the magic sinking deeper as the day wore on. He felt Finn following beside him, the vanishing cloak brushing him as she moved. He knew she was doing that on purpose, to remind him that she was still with him. With every flick of the cloak he felt a burst of comfort. He wasn’t alone.

  The guard led them up a wide flight of stairs, through a pair of double doors and into a sweeping chamber that was well lit with ensconced, enchanted flames. At the chamber’s center was a dais. A man was lying on it. A group of people dressed in black stood below the raised dais. Alfie swallowed.

  A funeral. He’d agreed to officiate a funeral.

  When Alfie stood at the foot of the dais, his shadow fell still at his feet, his whole being coming to a halt at what he saw before him.

  He knew this man.

  An anger fierce and unyielding singed him from the inside out. He ground his heels into the floor to stop himself from lunging at the corpse.

  “Marco Zelas.” Alfie stared at the face that he remembered as the young and vibrant son of a noble family. He’d laughed loudly and taught Alfie his first swear word. Then he’d helped plan the coup that had taken Dez from him. Alfie’s fingers curled into fists, his nails biting into his skin. The graze of Finn’s shoulder against him pulled him back to the present, and he wondered if she’d done that by accident or because she knew he needed someone to remind him to keep himself in check.

  “Sí, Marco Zelas,” the guard said, impatient. The guard motioned at the group of people standing beyond the dais. Alfie recognized each one. Marco’s mother, father, and two brothers. Their faces were drawn and somber. “You’re to perform the service for the family, as ordered by Queen Amada.”

  Alfie flinched at his mother’s name. Prisoners did not receive proper blessings, but Marco’s mother and his mother had been friends. Alfie could imagine his mother offering her friend this one piece of solace, but he did not want to bless this body and ready it for the afterlife. He wanted to let it rot in the sun. How dare Marco Zelas lie there peacefully when Alfie was left alive to twist and writhe under the grief of all he’d lost? Alfie was afraid to even
open his mouth. He might curse this maldito body and ruin his disguise.

  Alfie couldn’t look away from Marco’s blank, gaunt face. He still couldn’t understand why he’d been a part of the coup. What had he had to gain? Marco had been wealthy beyond most people’s wildest dreams. Why did he need more power so badly that he would have Dez killed to get it? There had to be something else going on. Something bigger.

  As Alfie asked that question over and over again in his mind, and as his desperation to know grew within him, he felt the dragon burn hot beneath his robes. Pain tore through him.

  In Alfie’s mind’s eye flashed the image of a tattoo on the inside of a man’s wrist—the menacing face of a bull, its sharp horns jutting forward.

  With a sharp intake of breath, Alfie resurfaced, awash with pain. He’d asked, and so the magic began to answer him. What had the black magic shown him? Someone with a tattoo of horns on his inner wrist? Who was he? Why did he want his brother dead?

  A pair of gentle hands on his arm startled him. It was Marco Zelas’s mother, grief hanging over her like a veil. Her ink-black dress swallowed her spindly frame. Alfie hadn’t remembered her being so frail.

  “Thank you so much for doing this for our family,” she said, her eyes wet at the corners. She bowed and brought Alfie’s hands to her forehead, a greeting of respect for dueños. “My boy did things that weren’t right. He deserved to die here, but he is still mi hijo. Please, send him on as you would anyone else.” Her hands were shaking, and Alfie felt the billowing flame of anger within him flicker and dwindle. He hated when that happened. He wanted so badly to hold on to his fury, to stoke it. Why did it feel like he was betraying Dez whenever he tried to let go?

  “Of course, señora,” Alfie said, making his voice as low and soft as the dueños he’d heard. She started sobbing outright then. Alfie knew it was inappropriate for a dueño to hug someone, so he stood, stiff backed, his throat burning at the sound of a mother grieving her son. It sounded too much like his own mother. One of her sons stepped forward to the dais and took her by the shoulders.

 

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