by Maya Motayne
Xiomara kicked at the man as his bloody hand wrapped around her neck.
“We have to help her!” Alfie heard himself say, annoyed at his own words. But as Alfie made to race back down the stairs, the mob poured into the fork between the stairs and the hallway, their hands reaching for Alfie. For a moment, he could see Xiomara struggling beneath the man who had leaped at her. Her arms were extended, holding him back by the shoulders as he squeezed her neck with his bleeding hand. She met Alfie’s eyes, looking as if she desperately wanted to tell him something. Then she quickly gripped at the ground behind her and pulled something up over her head. She disappeared beneath the vanishing cloak.
“Let’s go!” Finn shouted, gripping him by his shirt and pulling him up the stairs. “She’s done for!”
“No!” he shouted, fighting Finn’s pull. What was the point of any of this if they lost her? But Finn would not release him. She dragged him up the stairs as the mob began to squeeze its way into the tight stairwell, their mass squirming forward as they trampled over one another, fighting to get to them first.
Together they reached a wooden door at the top of the stairs. Finn shoved Alfie through it. A sweltering breeze hit Alfie’s face. They were on the roof of the towering prison, the hot sun nearly disappearing beneath the horizon. Finn stood before the stairwell’s doorway. She spread her arms wide, and with shaking fingers she made a pulling motion, drawing her elbows toward her sides. Then, with a grunt of effort, her hands met before her in a clap. The stone stairwell collapsed in on itself, becoming nothing but a blockade of rock.
Alfie dropped to his knees before it, his chest heaving.
“We have to find her,” he heard himself say, his voice frayed, broken. “We can’t leave without her, we can’t. Finn—”
“No,” she said, gripping him hard by the shoulders. “We need to get out of here.”
Alfie pushed against her, but her resolute stare stopped him. He hung his head.
“Prince. Prince, look at me.” Alfie raised his head, his throat burning. What would they do now? How would they trap the magic without that girl?
“Do you think we could use the dragon to transport the two of us?” she asked.
Alfie wasn’t sure. The dragon had wrung him dry, taking nearly every drop of strength he had to offer, but they didn’t have much of a choice, did they?
“I can try.” He held out his hand. It would likely kill him, but he had to try. “Give it to me.”
Finn froze, her eyes wide.
The realization struck him square in the chest. “The dragon was in the cloak pocket, wasn’t it?”
Finn nodded. Xiomara had it. If she was still alive, that is. In the silence he could hear the rock shifting in the collapsed stairwell. Those creatures were still coming, and they had no way off this forsaken tower.
Alfie ran a shaking hand through his hair before walking to the edge of the roof. A staggering drop and a boiling moat stared up at him.
He’d been foolish enough to wonder if he could become a king who would change his kingdom for the better, a king who would be different from the way Finn had described them—a foot hovering overhead to stamp her into dust. Instead, he’d destroyed Castallan with his carelessness, and maybe the rest of the world too.
Alfie crouched down and sat at the edge, his legs swinging over the open air. Before him the sky was a spill of pink and orange as the sun set. He would find the view beautiful if not for the circumstances. Soon night would fall, the ball would begin, and he would be here, waiting to die. “Well, that’s it, then.”
It was over. The horde was going to dig through the rubble Finn had made. It was only a matter of time, and there was no way out of here. No way home. No way to stop the magic from destroying everything he knew.
“I could try to make a bridge of rock to walk down or something, but . . .” Finn plopped herself down next to him. “But collapsing a hall of stone is one thing; holding things up for us to walk on all the way down is another. I don’t think I could hold it. And you haven’t got the energy to do some fancy magic, do you?”
Alfie shook his head.
“Prince.” She looked at him as if she had already resigned herself to her fate, as if the decision had been made ages ago but she was only just letting him know now. He knew what she would say.
He shook his aching head. “No.”
“You should try to transport yourself home. The regular way. With your doorknob.”
Alfie looked at her, shame welling up inside him like sap from a tree. “You think I would leave you here to die?”
Finn shrugged. “It’s the smart thing to do.”
Alfie desperately wanted to go home, to run to his family and hide from what he’d done. But his mouth would never move to say those words of magic.
“It’s the wrong thing to do. I won’t leave you here, Finn.”
“People leave each other behind all the time,” she said, her gaze pointed ahead at the horizon.
“Not me,” Alfie said. If this dark magic took the world and everything he knew, it wouldn’t take who he was as well. “Not today.”
Finn’s eyes flashed at the sound of her own words coming from his mouth. “I give you permission to go. I absolve you of whatever guilt you’re building in your head. Ignacio wants me, then he’s going to head to the palace for the stone hands. I can stall him. You’ve got to go warn them. You have to go home, with or without me.”
There was truth in her words, but still, Alfie could not move. “I won’t leave you.”
“I’m not your family!” Finn shouted at him, her eyes shining as she rounded on him. “Don’t be stupid. Protect them while you still can! If I had mine, if they were still here, if Ignacio hadn’t—” She turned away from him then, her chest heaving. They’d never spoken about her family, about who beyond Ignacio had called her their kin, and Alfie had a feeling that she’d lost them in the worst way—early and painfully. His heart ached at the thought. He’d lost Dez and he still couldn’t fathom losing more. “Just go. Leave me here.”
He knew not to reach for her even though her body seemed to beg for comfort. So he hoped his words could replace touch, could double as a warm arm about the shoulders, a hand cradling the back of her head. “I love my family with all my heart,” he said. “But they would scarcely forgive me for leaving someone behind for my own gain. For leaving behind a friend,” he corrected himself. “I’m not going anywhere.”
First her face held nothing but confusion and surprise, as if she’d stepped outside expecting a summer day only to find a snowstorm, but swimming beneath the surface was something more.
“You’re an idiot.” The sharpness of her words clashed with the softness of her voice.
He couldn’t help but smile at that. “So you’ve said.”
Silence fell between them, smooth as silk, but Alfie did not want his final moments to be spent in silence, inside his own head. He’d spent too much of his life there, wrapped up in tangles of worries.
Instead, he asked the first question that popped into his head. “Is your last name really Voy?”
She gave a snort. “No. I used to be Finn Santiago. After my parents died I wanted a fresh start. And I wanted to go everywhere, see everything. So I settled on Voy.”
Voy, the very word for travel in magic’s tongue. The word he used to move through the magic that bound this world.
It was strange to think that he’d been saying her name each time he used his propio. As if he’d been carrying her with him, or maybe she’d been carrying him forward, the same way she did today when her words had spurred him on when he stood before Xiomara’s door. It felt as if there was a strange string of destiny that had been tugging him toward her. He was only sorry that it would end this way.
“You still have that flask on you?” she asked, her eyes back on the horizon.
Alfie grabbed the flask from his hip and took a stinging sip of the tequila before passing it to her. She took a swig, and his eyes were d
rawn to the subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed. He remembered when she’d held his palm to her chest, just over her beating heart, and how his thumb fell to the soft dip at the base of her throat. Drops spilled when she pulled the flask away.
Alfie told himself that it was the alcohol and the inevitability of their deaths that made him do it, but when a drop of tequila clung to her upper lip, Alfie reached out and swiped his thumb across it, his finger skimming the soft of her lip. He brought his thumb to his lips, tasting that final lingering drop of tequila. She watched him with a look that tracked heat down his body to chase the burn of the alcohol. It stung his tongue and for a fleeting moment he wished it was the taste of her on his lips instead of the drink.
That sudden bravery dissipated in a puff of smoke. His face grew warm. “Tequila mustache,” he joked. “Waste not, want not.”
She tilted her head. Her eyes spoke of mischief, of knowing exactly what he hoped to hide and shining a beam of sunlight on it. Alfie knew that from now on, the taste of tequila would not simply be a drink or a salve to rub over his wounds. It would forever be colored by the sharp intake of breath she took when his thumb grazed her lip.
A shrill whistle rang out beneath them, startling them both.
They jumped apart at the sound. It was only then that Alfie realized how close they’d gotten in the first place. They stared out over the prison grounds and there, across the boiling moat, was one of the horse-drawn carriages that ferried dueños to and from the prison. A lone figure stood behind it, waving both hands.
Alfie squinted, shock zipping through him. “Is that—”
“The prisoner!”
Xiomara had somehow made it out. The vanishing cloak must’ve saved her. Like bile rising up his throat, Alfie felt a sour, unclean version of gratitude well up within him. She could’ve just left, taken her freedom and started a new life elsewhere, but instead she’d stayed. His mind battled within him once more, sharp tugs pulling him taut between hatred and compassion, gratitude and fury.
“We’ve got to find a way down to her.” Finn grimaced as she stared down the drop. “You don’t suppose we could survive that jump, do you?”
Alfie shot her a look. “Define ‘survive.’”
“Well!” Finn threw up her hands. “Have you got any bright ideas, then?” The rubble of the stairwell shifted and rumbled behind them. She winced at the sound. “And make it quick.”
Alfie looked around the roof. There were a few swords and other weapons discarded on the ground along with old bottles of cerveza and tequila. The roof must’ve been a training ground for the guards that, apparently, was also used for social purposes. A thick coil of rope sat at the far end of the roof, collecting dust in the blistering sun.
“I’ve got one, but I’m not sure I would call it bright.”
As the prince explained quickly, Finn nodded along, chewing on her fingernail.
This could work. Maybe.
On his knees, the prince tied one end of the rope tight around the hilt of one blade. He handed it up to her.
“Drive it into the ground with all your strength. Use your stone carving to make it secure. It’ll have to hold our weight.”
Finn nodded and raised the sword high, her fingers twitching to manipulate the steel of the blade and the stone of the ceiling. With both hands, she plunged the blade downward, and at her command the stone ceiling parted to accept it before closing tight around the blade. With a curl of her wrist, the adobe brick of the ceiling rose in a mound to encompass the hilt of the blade, looking much like an oversized anthill. The knot of rope was beneath the stone now. She tugged on the rope with all her might, leaning back on her heels. It didn’t budge.
“Done,” she said.
The prince had already tied the other end of the rope to the hilt of the second blade. He handed it to her with a nod.
Finn gripped the blade and stepped to the very edge of the roof. She would control the blade’s descent just as she controlled those quilbear quills in the palace. But instead of sending fine quills to burrow into the necks of guards, she would be guiding the blade to the waiting carriage and driving it through the roof. Then they would each use part of Alfie’s dueño costume to slide down the rope and to safety.
If she drove the blade into the ground beside the carriage, there was a chance that they would dip too close to the water as they zipped down and be boiled bloody before they could make it to land. The carriage would have to do. Finn just hoped the prisoner stayed out of the way. Finn could see her standing beside the carriage, still waving at them with both hands.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered. With a pull of her hand, the blade rose. She punched her fist forward and the blade sailed through the air, the rope tied at its hilt zooming with it. She curled her fingers forward and the blade followed her command, flying in a sharp arc before burying itself in the roof of the carriage with a distant thud.
“Wépa!” Finn punched the air in victory. The prisoner jumped in fright next to the carriage, but then she seemed to understand. She climbed onto the carriage roof and Finn could see her gripping the hilt of the blade, keeping it secure. Finn turned to look at Alfie triumphantly, but his eyes were half closed. A new trickle of blood oozed from his nose. Guilt wormed through her and she thought of each time she’d called upon the dark magic, how each time had struck him like a blow, and yet when they’d reunited and she’d explained herself, his face had changed, as if the pain from the magic had been worth it because it brought her back to him, safe.
Finn felt a spark of something within her, something that had been there for some time, but was only just waking from its slumber—something lush that raised its head and asked to be seen.
Finn buried it deep inside her and vowed to forget its face.
She crouched beside him. “Prince, we’re ready to go.”
Alfie nodded before wiping at his nose and slowly standing.
When he met her gaze he murmured, “I’m fine.”
She didn’t know what bothered her more, the fact that she’d looked concerned enough to warrant that sentence or that he was clearly lying through his teeth.
“You first.”
Alfie shuffled to the edge of the roof where the rope flew down over the edge in a steep slope, taut with tension. He took a layer of his dueño disguise and wrapped it around the rope, holding it on either side.
He gulped as he peered at the sharp drop. The steam from the boiling moat sizzled beneath them. “If this fails, we’ll be boiled alive.”
Finn stared down at the bubbling water, a trickle of sweat rolling down her temple to hang on her chin. “Well, I’ve always been a fan of dumplings.”
That stopped him short. After a beat of silence, a broken laugh parted his lips, and Finn was glad to hear it.
He did it so rarely that it felt hard-earned, sending a surge of pride through her. With her crouching beside him, she could feel his breath ghosting over her face and she was drawn back to the swipe of his thumb across her skin, of how such a quick touch had stopped her cold.
He tilted his face up to look at her, his gold eyes glinting. “That joke was so bad that now I actually want to jump.”
Behind them the blockade of collapsed rock burst outward, pelting them with gravel. The black-eyed prisoners poured through its opening, crawling over one another to try to reach them.
“Then I’ve got great comic timing! Go!”
The prince pushed off from the roof and zoomed down the rope. They were supposed to go one at a time in case the rope couldn’t take their combined weight, but there was no time now. No time to even sit and push off like the prince had done.
Finn leaped after him, her legs pumping through the air as if she could run the distance if she tried hard enough. Her stomach twisted as her feet left the safety of the roof. She raised the cloth from the prince’s robes over her head, a flood of doubt pouring through her mind.
What if the cloth rips?
What if the rop
e isn’t secure enough to hold the two of us?
Am I about to be boiled alive?
Time sped up. Finn fell forward, looping the cloth of the robes over the rope at the last possible moment. The cloth held, her wrists twinging with pain as the rope brought her fall to a jerking halt. She slid down the rope, following after the prince, relief running through her.
An unnatural shriek tore through the air behind her. Finn looked over her shoulder in time to see a black-eyed woman leap from the roof toward her at terrifying speed, her outstretched hands clawing through the air.
The prisoner wrapped her arms around Finn’s waist, dragging the rope down.
“Shit!” Finn wriggled, trying to shake the woman off, but her grip was too tight. Her hands were slipping on the cloth as they zoomed on, picking up speed thanks to the extra weight.
“Fuerza!” she heard the prince shout.
The infected woman at her waist was blown back, nearly taking Finn with her. With a grimace Finn watched the woman careen down, slamming into the ground just beside the moat. She didn’t have time to shout a thank-you to the prince. That woman’s weight had done its damage. She could feel the rope dipping and sagging; the extra weight had likely pulled too much on the sword embedded in the carriage roof. Finn could see Xiomara leaning all her weight on it to keep it still, but it wasn’t working. The rope was still sagging.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Finn cursed. The rope was going to dip too low and send them straight into the boiling water just before landing.
The prince seemed to notice the problem. Before her, he swung his legs forward, like a child on a swing, and just before the rope dipped too close to the water, he let go of his cloth and let the momentum carry him that final distance to safe, solid ground. He rolled onto the ground in a heap of red dueño’s robes.
Finn followed his lead, swinging herself forward with all her might and letting go just before her toes skimmed the water.
She flew through the air, but she didn’t have the prince’s long limbs. She didn’t know if her momentum would be enough.