We keep wading into the tunnel in silence, accompanied only by the trickle of water rising at our heels and the snap of the fire in his hand.
When we arrive at the place Castian promised, I breathe a little easier. The cave widens all around. There’s a small iridescent pool of water surrounded by sharp rock formations, like we’re inside the mouth of a giant shark.
Castian finally comes to a stop at a smooth groove in the cave where there’s a cot, weapons, and crates of food. I don’t know what’s worse, my hunger or my exhaustion.
“Sit,” he says. “I’ll take the floor.”
I don’t argue. I pull off the stolen doublet, and even the smallest movement hurts. I sit on the cot with my back against the wall. Castian slides to the floor beside me. This is worse than the Gray. Worse than remembrance, because it isn’t like I’m in someone else’s life. I am very much here and very much not.
He tosses an apple and a waterskin to me. I drink from it hungrily, and I’m glad he has one for himself because I don’t know how I would tear myself away from this.
“Easy, you’ll make yourself sick.”
“I’ve spent my entire life on the run,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I know how to drink water.”
He shrugs. “Thank you for coming back for me.”
“Castian,” I say. “Castian. Are you really Castian?”
He brushes his hair away from his face. It makes him look younger. Just a boy trying very hard to be a cruel man.
“I am Castian, son of Fernando the Righteous, Prince of Andalucía, commander of the five fleets, rightful heir to the kingdom of Puerto Leones.” He turns his face to avoid my eye and drinks. “And I’m an Illusionári.”
“You remembered me. From when we were kids,” I say.
I think of the boy who begged me to leave the palace. That same memory is stomped on by the prince I met in the woods, on the executioner’s block before a sea of his own people. I can still feel how the bile rose to my throat as I ran faster and harder than I ever had before across those rooftops.
Too late, I was too late. I breathe short and fast, ball my hands into fists to stop my wretched body from betraying me by trembling.
“Did you kill Dez?” The words nearly choke me.
The beginning of a sad smile quirks at his lips but dies just as quickly. One of his eyes is swollen more than before and ringed with black. It makes it harder to meet his gaze without wanting to feel pity for him.
“This might pain you to hear, as you’ve wanted nothing more than to murder me ever since we saw each other again, but I’ve never killed anyone.”
I’m either too tired to make sense of his words or he’s taking advantage of my exhausted state to get away with a lie. “What?”
“I should say, I’ve never executed anyone innocent, and that includes Moria.”
I shake my head. “No. I saw you. I saw you with my own—”
He hits his head against the wall behind us. “I’m an Illusionári, Nati.”
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper.
“I create illusions. The way Margo created that smoke.”
“Your power can’t be that strong,” I counter, because I can’t believe it. I can’t. But I have seen it in my newly surfaced memories. The way Méndez’s memory of the prince faded into color because he was talking to an illusion of Castian. The way Cebrián saw him make dice vanish and reappear, just like when we were kids.
And yet, it’s strange hearing it come from his lips. It is even stranger having to accept that he is telling the truth.
Now he actually smiles, all straight teeth and cunning blue eyes. “What is my crown made out of?”
“Gold.” The metal catalyst that strengthens Illusionári. “That was you at the Sun Festival. When I felt sick. And when I was running to get to Dez. I thought it was Margo both times.”
He rakes his hair with his fingers. “It was foolish on my part. I needed to follow you, so I created an illusion of me standing in a corner alone. I’ve done that more times than I should be proud of.”
I lean forward, practically crawling to him for an answer. “Did you kill Dez?”
“I admit,” Castian says as he stands, though I take note of how he cradles his side as he limps to the blue pool of water, “that one was the most challenging illusion I have ever done. Dez was—is—the leader of the Whispers, and the king and the justice needed to feel like they were winning. I had to use a gold-hilt sword as well. It helps if some of it is true. It makes the illusion stronger. I even had to cut off Dez’s ear to fool the thousands who were witnessing.”
The guard’s memory hits me like a brutal, cold wave. Dez standing on the bow of that ship, missing his left ear. Tears spring to my eyes. A hurt I didn’t think I was capable of feeling gnaws at my heart, leaving me breathless.
“Dez is alive?”
“Yes.”
This single word echoes in the cave. I hear it over and over, and it still doesn’t feel true.
Dez is alive.
My elation at this discovery is like the start of a flame—a light stretching across a match. If Dez were alive, why didn’t he try to find me? If he is alive, why didn’t I feel him? The more questions I ask myself, the more I stomp on that happiness, extinguishing that spark of fire.
I push to my knees. Every step I take to Castian is like walking across jagged glass. He takes off his tunic, hissing as the cloth sticks to his broken, bloody skin. How can he tell me this and then do something so normal as clean his wounds? How can he watch me stagger to him as if he hadn’t shattered my world more than once in a single turn of the sun?
My name vanishes from his lips as I punch him. He doesn’t expect it but grabs me around the wrist and pulls me into the pool of salt water with him. I wrench myself free. I make the mistake of panicking, attempting to breathe, and getting a mouthful of salt water instead. My feet find purchase on soft white sand, and then I’m breaking the surface and coughing so hard it burns.
The water reaches my waist when I stand and face him. “You’ve been pretending while your kingdom suffers? You broke my— You broke me.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, wincing as he touches the cuts on his ribs and shoulder. “I am. You don’t understand.”
“Make me understand.”
Water drips down both our faces. In this light, his eyes take on the blue incandescence of the pool. He lowers himself in front of me, his breath warm and sweet like apples gone bad.
“I will explain—if you’ll stop trying to attack me.”
Salt burns the inner corners of my eyes. I raise my chin. “I should’ve let Margo kill you.”
He winces, from my words or the pain or both, I’m not sure. “You don’t mean that.”
I’ve begun to shiver as the water turns cold around us. He’s right. I don’t mean that. But I wish I did.
“Get out of those clothes or you’ll freeze to death,” he says, and wades out of the pool and back to his makeshift room.
I hate that he’s right. He grabs a deep blue tunic stitched with bright-green embroidery in the shape of ivy and throws it at me. Then he builds a fire while I strip down and put it on. I wrap my arms around my body because the tunic only falls to my thighs. I sit at the edge of the cot and hold my hands out to the fire.
Castian looks up and this time puts more distance between us. “I will continue to answer your questions, Nati. But do not put your hands on me again.”
“I will refrain from hitting you if you stop calling me that.” I wait for his begrudging nod and continue. “How does your father not know of your power?”
Castian holds his hand up to the crackling fire. He turns it over and over, then makes a fist. “After my mother accused me of drowning my brother, I was relegated to nursemaids. Davida was the only one who knew and cautioned me never to speak of it. I understood why as I got older. That is why she still tends to me and is under my protection.”
The memory plays out in my
head, colors washed gray, but I see the moment Illan stole the baby from the bassinet. I want to cut out the sympathy that swells in my chest.
“You didn’t try to drown him.”
“How do you know that?” There’s a melancholy to his words I don’t want to feel.
“Illan gave me the memory before he died.”
Castian quirks an eyebrow. His nostrils flare, like he’s breathing deep to restrain his anger. “Did he? So you know that it was his deception that kept me alive and in my father’s favor. Well, Celeste and my own mother deserve some credit. Their lie was the foundation of the Matahermano. The boy murderer. Ruthless like his father. My mother tried to tell me before she died, I believe, but I wouldn’t go to her sickbed.”
I think of the woman tortured by her decision. The portrait in his room. He still loves her, even after what she made him believe.
I think of the wooden box he held before Dez in Lozar’s memory. The one Dez recoiled from with such disgust I thought it had to contain the weapon. But the box I found in Castian’s secret study. The box contained only a portrait of two young boys.
Two brothers.
C & A.
Castian and Andrés.
Andrés? Don’t tell anyone.
“You didn’t drown your brother,” I say slowly. There is something dangerous in these words, as if speaking them aloud will lead to our end. “Because Illan took him. Raised him as his own.”
The words scrape my throat.
Dez, my beloved Dez. Illan’s son.
Not his son, though. Only raised by him. Kidnapped just like I was.
“Where’s Dez? What have you done with him?”
“He boarded a ship to Luzou not long ago.”
I shake my head. “He wouldn’t have left. He would have come back to the Whispers.”
To me.
But I saw it. In the guard’s memory, I saw Dez standing at the bow of the ship watching his kingdom fade away.
“Why would he leave?” My mind is reeling with the thought of it, the hurt of it.
Castian stares at the dying fire. It must be night outside, because there’s a chill permeating the cave I didn’t feel before. He finds his knife, the one I retrieved from the Duque’s house. He toys with it, like he might use it to carve out a new truth, a new world for us.
“Andrés ran away because he was scared.”
Andrés? Don’t tell anyone.
“Take that back.” I reach for him, but he presses the tip of the blade to my throat.
“Believe me. If I could have made him stay, I would have.”
“You don’t know him.” I hate the cry in my voice and the nearness of him.
We stay like this for a long time, neither of us wanting to back down, but his hand gets tired and I can’t look at him anymore. The pressure of the blade falls, and he returns to stoking the flames instead.
I am alive, but I feel defeated. For the first time, I am away from the Whispers, Méndez, the king, but this uncertainty that Castian brings with him is not what I wanted. What do I want? Freedom from my past. A kingdom without bloodshed. Dez.
When Illan took Dez to raise as his own, did he think that same boy would run when he discovered the truth of his birth?
“I don’t know my brother, but you do. I need your help.” Castian brushes his golden hair back. I don’t know how to feel toward him anymore. Friendship and hatred can live side by side in your heart. “There’s a way to win this war, and I believe Dez has gone after it.”
“What is it?”
“The Knife of Memory.”
I scoff. “Dez is a skeptic.”
“My brother is many things, apparently. I would like to find out.”
There it is again. Brother. I still can’t quite believe it.
“Whether he wants it or not, Dez is going to need our help. If he sees me, he’ll run. But if you’re with me—”
“I won’t let you use me to get to him.”
Castian gives a single nod. “I’m not asking you to do that. Convincing Dez to return to his rightful place in the palace is something I have to do on my own. But if we could find a way to stop the next war and bring peace to Puerto Leones—if we could heal even a fraction of the rift in this world—I’m asking you, Renata, would you help me?”
I stare at the hand that he extends. This prince I’ve hated for so long. This prince who tells me that Dez is alive. That they’re brothers. He remembered me when I wanted to forget.
I was wrong. He didn’t give me the answers I wanted, only more questions. I am a different girl from the one he helped escape the palace. Fate has brought us back together in the worst of ways, but here we are.
“We go after Dez and the Knife,” I say, lifting my gaze to his face. “At the end of all this, your father dies.”
His sea-blue eyes are bright, determined. “As long as I get to be the one to drive a sword through his heart.”
I take Castian’s hand in mine.
Acknowledgments
Thirteen gets a bad rap. But because Incendiary is my thirteenth published novel, I’m reclaiming it for the lucky ones.
The first people I thank are my family. My grandmother Alejandrina Guerrero. Your last name means warrior, and that’s what you had to be. Because of you we immigrated to a new country where we didn’t speak the language and learned to be new people. This is a book that made me think and rethink identity, borderlines, and who we choose to be. I am this person, this lucky, hopeful, and hopelessly romantic person, because my family allowed me to dream.
To the rest of my family. My incredibly hardworking mother and stepdad. The best brother, Danny Córdova. Caco & Tío Robert. My beautiful cousins Adriana, Ginelle, Adrian, Alan, Denise, Steven, Gastonsito. My aunts and uncles, Roman, Milton, Jackie. The entirety of my Ecuadorian clan. Gracias por todo.
To my wonderful agent, Victoria Marini, and the team at Irene Goodman Literary. To Hyperion for taking a chance on me. I never even let myself dream that I would be part of the Hyperion publishing family, but here we are. Laura Schreiber, who deserves her own Moria power branch. Visionári, maybe? Jody Corbett and Jacqueline Hornberger. The wonderful production team. Marci Senders for the incredible design, Billelis for the gorgeous artwork. Seale Ballenger, Melissa Lee, and Lyssa Hurvitz for being publicity rock stars.
To Glasstown Entertainment for the opportunity, especially Lauren Oliver, Lexa Hillyer, Emily Berge, and Stephen Barbara.
I’m eternally grateful to Kamilla Benko, Rhoda Belleza, and Kat Cho. This book wouldn’t be what it is without your magic.
My incredible friends. Adam Silvera for believing that I was the right person for this project. Natalie C. Parker, Tessa Gratton, Justina Ireland, the Goodies, Victoria Schwab, Mark Oshiro for watching me in various stages of my deadline process and not judging me. Well, maybe a little.
Dhonielle Clayton for being a cheerleader, my work wife, and for always saying yes when I go, “Hey, we should have a writing retreat in this random country we’ve never been to.” #DeadlineCityForever.
To the YA book community, online and off, for being voracious readers and uplifting literature.
To Latinxs. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Incendiary (Hollow Crown) Page 40