by Maya Motayne
At that, his servants loped out of the room, running after the scent of prey.
The ballroom was swaddled in silence. Ignacio cocked his head at Finn, amused. A shiver rolled up her spine, and she didn’t know if she’d be able to move. But then the prince’s voice sounded at her side.
“I’m right behind you,” he said.
She looked at him. His face was resolute. Fear burned beneath it all, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from stepping forward. She wouldn’t let it stop her either.
“Give me some cover,” she said to him.
He nodded. “It’s yours.”
Then she was running forward, straight for Ignacio. The prince pulled water from every vase, every glass of wine, every bead of sweat in the room. With a wave of his hands the water turned into a heavy, thick mist. Finn closed the distance to Ignacio and pulled stones from the palace ground, sending them at the spot where he had stood as the mist closed around him. She could hear him gasp as the stones made contact. Had she done it? Had she somehow landed a blow?
The mist cleared around her. Ignacio stood before her, his chest bleeding through his shirt from the stones. He grinned at her before disappearing in a puff of black mist. Some sort of illusion?
He was toying with them.
Frustration twisted through her, painful and familiar. Why were things always like this when it came to him? She was forever a step behind, thinking she’d finally rid herself of him only to find him smiling down at her once more, readying to strike her with another blow, another command, another collar around her neck. Why was she even fighting anymore? What was the point?
“Prince!” she called, turning to find him. But Alfie was not there.
Behind her stood a little girl. She looked exactly as Finn remembered, just as Finn saw her in her nightmares.
It was the girl she’d killed—the very first life she’d ever taken.
The ballroom was empty. It was just her and the girl. The girl’s eyes softened as she gazed at her, her hair ruffled by a warm, heady breeze that passed between them.
Then the air turned cold as her brown eyes darkened. Her veins thickened and grew black, standing out against her skin like spiderwebs spun from shadows. She lunged forward, and tackled Finn to the ground. She wrapped her callused hands around Finn’s throat and squeezed with all her might. Finn couldn’t take in a wisp of a breath. Her eyes watered. Her heart beat wildly in her throat.
“You deserve this,” the girl was saying over and over. Her voice carried like an echo, eerie and resonant. “You deserve to die for what you did.”
And though Finn clawed at the girl’s hands, trying desperately to break free, part of her still believed that her words were true. A life for a life.
Then the face changed. One dimple became two, dark eyes became gold. It wasn’t the little girl choking her.
It was Alfie.
He snapped out of it just after she did. Alfie wrenched backward, panic in his eyes.
“I don’t know how—I—I wasn’t hurting you it was—I—” he sputtered.
She rubbed her throat, breathing deep through her mouth. “It’s okay,” she croaked. “It’s okay. You haven’t crossed the line, Prince. It wasn’t you.”
His eyes wet, Alfie nodded at her words, clinging to them as he looked down at his hands in unabashed fear. She looked at him and wanted to say what she’d wished someone had said to her each time Ignacio had made her end a life with her bare hands.
It wasn’t you, it was never you, she wanted to shout. It was your body, but it wasn’t your own. It was your hands, but they aren’t stained. His are.
Without asking, she knew who Alfie had been imagining—Xiomara. Guilt written in his features, the prince pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Why did Ignacio have the power to cultivate darkness in everyone and everything?
“So this is the muchacho you left me for?” Ignacio tutted from behind them. Finn and Alfie started, scrambling to their feet. “This boy who would wrap his hands around your throat? You know I’m the only one who knows the real you and still loves you. How many times do I have to tell you that? The only person you have is me.”
Alfie stepped forward, eyes aflame. “That’s not true, she—”
Ignacio raised a hand and Alfie’s mouth shut, his lips mashing together as he struggled to open his mouth.
“I know who you are, boy. I can see into your head the way this magic did when you set it free.” When Alfie raised a hand to charm water, Ignacio gave another cutting gesture and Alfie’s hands fell still.
“Leave him be!” Finn made to stand in front of the prince, but Ignacio shot her a dark look.
“You move and he dies, do you understand me?”
Finn froze where she stood; when he spoke to her that way she was a helpless child again. She could barely breathe.
From behind her came a skittering sound and Finn feared that he would bind her with his strings once more, but it wasn’t strings. A pair of stone hands scuttled across the ground on their fingers—Sombra’s hands, the ones she’d seen in the palace vault. Once Ignacio had them he would become stronger than ever and they could barely handle him now. And where was the prince’s teacher? Alfie had asked her to protect the hands. Had Ignacio’s minions killed her before she had the chance?
“Prince!” Finn shouted as she made to dash for the hands. Alfie opened his mouth to speak a word of magic.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Ignacio tutted, and with a swipe of his hand Alfie and Finn were flung sideways against the nearest wall. Her ribs rang with pain as her side hit the wall. She heard the prince cry out beside her as they slid down to the ground.
“Not so fast. This is what I’ve come for, Finny. This is the beginning of my reign. Our reign, if you choose. If you listen to your father.”
Ignacio knelt down and the stone hands aligned themselves with his, opening and curling around his flesh, like sleeves and gloves of rock. Ignacio hunched over, his eyes flying wide as the stone encased his arms. His whole body shook in what looked like rapture and Finn could feel a prickle of power in the air. This, she thought, must be how the air felt just before one was struck by lightning—charged with an energy so palpable that it felt like it was pressing down on her shoulders. For a moment, there was only the sound of Ignacio’s ragged breaths.
Finn reached to her side and gripped the prince’s shirt, her fingers shaking on his sleeve. She didn’t know what else to do or say. They’d lost. He pinned her gaze beneath his and she knew he was thinking the same thing.
Ignacio straightened. With a twist of his fingers Alfie and Finn were pulled up from the ground and made to stand before him once more. A shudder skittered down Finn’s spine as he puppeted them. She would never forget the pure violation of these moments. Of feeling his will crawl under her skin and claim her as her own. He released them from his hold then, as if daring them to try to run. Neither did. What use would it be to run now?
“Now,” Ignacio said. “Where was I?” But his voice was no longer fully his own; beneath it was a timbre, low and strong, that made the hairs on Finn’s neck raise.
There beneath Ignacio’s voice, she knew, was the echo of a god.
Ignacio circled the prince predatorily. “You may look like a king, but you certainly aren’t. We both know that, don’t we? Pathetic and simpering, clinging to that little dragon like a child.” He looked at Finn with a feral grin. “Perhaps you’d like to see a real one.”
Before their eyes Ignacio began to shift. Finn could hear his bones cracking and rearranging, lengthening. He hunched his back and fell forward on all fours with a growl that belonged to a beast, not a man. His body began to stretch. In the blink of an eye the empty ballroom was taken up by the hulking body of a black dragon. Tendrils of smoke streamed from its nose, the promise of a barrage of fire to come.
“Coño,” Finn breathed.
37
The Ultimatum
Finn flung her arms forward, and a wall of earth shot up from the ground to
guard them, but the dragon’s tail swung down and cut through the rock wall as if it were warm butter, whacking them in the process. Finn and Alfie skidded down the tiled floor to the far side of the ballroom.
“We’ve got to use the dragon!” Finn shouted at him. There was no choice. Before them the black dragon inhaled, smoke surging from its flared nostrils. A wound over Alfie’s left eye was gushing with blood. He must’ve been hit by debris.
“Every time we use it things get worse!” he said back as they scrambled to their feet. “We try our best to hold him off. If we can’t manage, then we use it.”
Finn tackled him out of the way as the dragon blew a blistering stream of blue fire, scorching the spot they stood at.
“If!” Finn shouted at him as she pulled him to his feet. “You still think this is an ‘if’ situation?!”
Alfie’s eyes flew wide with panic as he looked over her shoulder at the dragon. Finn looked behind her to see another stream of fire surging their way. She raised another wall of earth and Alfie pulled her against it. Fire rushed all around them, singeing the rock. It felt like they were in an oven, the gargantuan ballroom filling with an oppressive heat.
“Charm water!” Finn shouted over the roar of the flames. She pulled more and more stone from the ground to replace the pieces that were melting from the dragon’s heat.
Alfie skimmed his fingers through the sweltering air. Only a dribble of water trailed his fingers. “The air is too dry!”
“Then use the dragon! Make some!”
The fire stopped surging around them, and the dragon’s hulking footsteps shook the palace to its bones. The rock shield Finn had pulled up collapsed into smoking rubble.
“Prince! We have to!” she said. Alfie gave her a sober look before finally pulling the figurine out from beneath his shirt.
The beast reared its head back and blew another blue jet of fire so hot that it felt as if it’d caught the sun in its mouth. Alfie held the silver dragon high, and a gargantuan wave of water rose out of thin air around him to counter the flame. It was a wave that could swallow the palace whole.
Finn looked at him. There was blood pouring from his nose and the corners of his lips now. His face was ashen. His shadow was lightening at a terrible speed. She shouldn’t have asked him to use the dragon. What he was doing was too much.
And yet it wasn’t enough.
The dragon’s flames intensified, turning nearly white. Alfie’s wave rushed forward to encompass the creature, but in an explosion of mist, the fire evaporated the wave in a mere moment.
As the prince swayed on his feet, Ignacio’s voice boomed all around them. This is a family affair, muchacho. Perhaps you ought to sit this one out.
Finn heard the whirring of strings before she saw them. They soared through the air, wrapping around Alfie’s wrists and ankles. They lurched him backward, slamming him against the wall. His body hit the wall with such a force that she feared for his life. The strings held him against the wall suspended, his feet dangling over the tiled floor.
“Stop!” she shouted at Ignacio. “Stop it.”
The dragon only swung its tail back and forth, excited. More strings flew in from every direction until the prince was trapped in a spiderweb of sharp twine.
The dragon sat comfortably, wrapping its tail about itself. Ignacio’s voice sounded once again.
I could pull him apart, you know. It would take only a moment. Unless you’d like to convince me otherwise. . . .
Sweat trickled down her temples. Ignacio had taken her parents from her, had taken her life into his hands and broken it. She would rather die where she stood than beg Ignacio for his mercy, than bargain with him. She had no life anymore, only this anger to hold on to; it burned and sustained her all at once and she could not let it go.
But then the prince’s voice sounded in her head, just as it had before. When they’d faced the first infected man in the pub, she’d asked him if he was foolish enough to give his life to stop Sombra’s magic, and with fear trembling through his words, he’d said:
Is there nothing you would give yours for?
She’d had no answer to his question then, but now she did. If her anger for Ignacio was her life, she would give it for a moment, for the prince, for hope of ending this. With her jaw working, Finn raised her hands in surrender to the monster before her.
“Don’t hurt him,” she said. “Let’s keep this between you and me.” The dragon gave a content purr.
Good girl.
Slowly the dragon shrank and turned back into the man she’d once called Father. He sauntered across the ballroom.
From behind her, the prince groaned in pain.
“No,” Alfie said, his voice quiet but resolute. “Let me go.”
Anger sparked in Ignacio’s eyes. He raised a hand and all the strings wrapped around the prince’s extremities began to pull in opposite directions, jerking his legs and arms as he screamed in agony.
Finn held her hands up in surrender again; it was a motion she knew he loved to see her do. “Let him go and I stay. I’ll do whatever you want. We’ll do this your way.”
“Finn, don’t.” Alfie’s broken voice sounded from behind, but she couldn’t turn to look at him when his face might make her change her mind.
Ignacio cocked his head. “You do what I want and I’ll think of letting him go, how’s that?”
The prince started another protest but Finn had already nodded. If he had her he might lose interest in the prince. Maybe. What else could she do?
She stole a glance behind her and met Alfie’s gold-eyed gaze. The heartbreak on his face struck her like a blow. She looked away. “Tell me what you want.”
Ignacio smiled at that and she knew that what he asked would be much worse than what she imagined. “I want the prince to take the magic he’s trapped in that little toy of his and give it a new home—you.”
Her blood froze in her veins. Ignacio wanted the prince to infect her with the magic.
Alfie made a sound of protest behind her and then his voice was rough, strained with an anger unleashed. “You’ll have to kill me first, you monster!”
Finn’s heart sputtered in her chest. She knew Ignacio wanted her to fall into line. He wanted to remind her that the only friend and family she could have was him. Yet she hadn’t expected this. It was so typical of Ignacio to use those close to her to hurt her. Still, his words cracked across her face like a slap.
“I’m not dark-hearted enough for the magic, Ignacio,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. The magic had avoided taking her before. She certainly wasn’t the type to properly house it. It would just burn her to ash. To kill her so quickly hardly seemed his style. Maybe she could talk him out of it. “It’ll only kill me. Is that what you want?”
Ignacio shook his head at her with the look of a parent helping a child with her schoolwork. “You need only accept yourself as the killer that you are, Mija. Then you will be the finest home this dark magic could find. I wonder if perhaps you require the proper motivation to embrace your truth.” He pointed at the prince. “He will pass the magic into your body, and you will either turn to the darkness within yourself or you will cling to this foolish idea of who you wish you were and the magic will singe you into nothing. Either I’ll have you as my own or you perish. And if the boy refuses to do it, he dies.”
Finn could barely hear the prince swearing behind her. All sounds were muffled. This was it, then. Live as a dark-eyed demon or die at his hands. The choices ahead of her weren’t choices at all, but the very same fate dressed as differing options—whether she became one of Ignacio’s black-eyed minions or turned to dust, either way she’d be dead.
The only real choice left was to end her life believing what the prince had believed—that she could be better, if given the chance.
“I’ll do it,” Finn heard herself say.
The look of sheer satisfaction on Ignacio’s face made her stomach twist. “Very good girl.”
Finn
walked to where Alfie was pinned to the wall, each step tearing at her heart. When she stood before him, the prince looked like he could barely breathe.
“Finn, I don’t know what will happen to you if—”
“I don’t know either,” she said. “But he might let you go and maybe you’ll have the chance to end this.” It was a silly hope, but hope was all they had left now.
“No.” His whole body was rigid with refusal. “I’m the one who started this. We’ll fight him, we’ll die together. But I won’t let you take this alone.” His eyes met hers, and they were such a rich gold that you would expect them to leak honey instead of tears. “You don’t have to do this,” he pleaded. “You don’t owe me, or anyone.”
For a moment, Finn could only look at him. A smile curved her lips. “Alfie,” she said. It was the first time she’d said his name, and she was struck by the wish that she’d spent the last day saying it over and over again. “All my life I’ve been made to do things I didn’t want to do. This isn’t one of them. I’m doing this because a friend got stuck in my door and asked for help.”
A sound parted his lips, one that spoke of something already broken shattering even smaller. He fought against his restraints and leaned closer to her. His warm breath ghosted across her face as he tipped his forehead against hers. “I won’t be able to save you if you do this.”
She offered him a wry smile, a meager gift in the face of what was to come. “We’ve already almost died a couple of times today. What’s one more?”
Alfie closed his eyes. “One more could be all that’s left.”
Ignacio sighed. “You know I’m not a patient man, Finny.”
Finn wished she would never have to hear his voice again. One way or another, tonight that wish would come true.
Alfie looked at her, his eyes moving over her face the way a child’s fingers ran over a flower’s petals, slow and careful. He looked at her as if to memorize Finn as she was now, as she would no longer be as soon as this magic took her. With the dragon figurine around his neck, he needed only give the command.
“Take her,” he said, his voice breaking around the words. The magic poured out of the dragon in a tendril of black.