Nova won’t look at me. Look at me, I will him with my mind. My power whimpers in response, and so Nova just stands there.
“No matter.” The Devourer walks around us like she’s corralling her prey. “I have this sweet, sweet girl. Her love for you is so strong she threw herself into another galaxy to be with you. That’s the kind of magic I can’t fabricate anymore. Surrender, Alejandra Mortiz, or Rishi dies. I will open her mouth and empty this vial down her throat. Do you know what the Forbidden Canto does?”
Rishi’s eyes are shut. Fat tears carve their way through the dirt on her face. She shakes her head. When she squeezes her lips, the vines get tighter and blood drips from every puncture wound.
“What?” I growl.
“You really should study your cantos, dear,” the Devourer chides me. “The Forbidden Canto breaks the heart. It’s meant as a form of poetic suicide. It’ll attack all her tender human organs, saving the heart for next to last. In those moments, she will endure lifetimes of agony. You see, she will stay alive long enough to watch you watch her die. Then, her brain will give out, and that is the last thing Rishi will ever see.
“Nova’s grandmother wrote this particular canto and created the draught. Your world is full of so many possibilities. I can’t wait to rip a hole through it. Now, surrender your power, or I will pour this down Rishi’s throat.”
With a wave of the Devourer’s hand, the vines around Rishi’s face come undone. Blood drips from the holes around her lips. She cries out once.
“Don’t,” Rishi tells me. Her midnight eyes are locked on mine. “Don’t.”
Nova uncorks the vial. He brings the glass to Rishi’s lips. She tries to keep them closed, but the Devourer forces them open.
“Nova,” I say his name. “You don’t have to do this.”
His voice is hard, and when he looks at me, he says, “Yes I do.”
The red liquid slides down the glass, a red bead pools at the tip. I stop breathing. It’s as if El Corazón has ripped my heart right out of my chest. How can I watch Rishi die?
“I surrender,” I scream.
Nova drops the vial on the ground. It spills into the dirt.
The Devourer raises her hands, and I feel her magic seize me. My chest burns as I struggle to breathe. I kick the air, try to pry the force from around my neck until I feel a terrible pain stab at my heart. Warm liquid drips from my ears, my nose; blurry, dark tears sting my eyes. I’m choking. I’m dying. My heart flutters like the wings of a hummingbird. My mind is heavy as the sea. I feel like I’ve aged a hundred years and now I’m brittle and broken.
I stop struggling.
My arms drop to my sides. The force around my neck releases, then drops me on the ground. A light floods from me and into the Devourer’s palm. My power pulses like a star in her hand. She blows on it, and the orb travels directly to the labyrinth, to the Tree of Souls.
The realization hits me like a gunshot to the heart. Tears spill down my face. She took my light. She took my magic.
33
Sometimes, the Deos choose wrong.
There was an encantrix who broke the laws of nature.
She claimed herself a god. So the Deos
banished her to a land forgotten.
They should have known, wild magic can’t be tamed.
—The writings of Alta Bruja Kristiñe
“Noveno Santiago,” the Devourer says. She takes her nail and drags it across her palm. Scarlet blood bubbles from the wound. “I free you from our contract. From my blood to yours. I bless you with the lives of the banished. Rise, no longer servant, but child of my darkness.”
He stands taller, tilting his face up to the heavens. She squeezes her palm over his head. The blood drips down his forehead, over his closed eyes, down his lips.
The black marks on his chest and arms light up. His chest expands, then shudders. His light is blinding. I force myself to watch. To remember the way this feels, so I can never feel this way again.
When the light fades, Nova stands still. The boy who crossed my path on the street, the boy who found me, the boy who lit up the dark for me is dead to me. I realize he never existed, and I’m just a fool for thinking he did.
You chose well this time, the Devourer said. You’re losing your touch.
How many others has he led down here? Does he think of them now as he looks down at his hands? There is no recognition in his eyes, only awe. They’re unmarked. Perfect. New. He touches his chest where the marks were spreading around the sacred heart of his tattoo. They’re all gone.
As if noticing I’m still standing here, he jumps.
A bit of metal glints in the black grass. My dagger.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warns me.
“Like think I could trust someone like you?”
Hurt flashes across his face briefly.
I try to stand tall and defiant, but I can’t. My muscles cramp and burn until I double over.
“What you’re feeling is going to get worse, Alejandra. If you try to fight me without your powers,” the Devourer tells me, “you will die with the rest of your family. You’re only human now. If you’d like to go home, Nova will create a portal.” She glances at the moon and sun, and a broad smile fills her face. They’re nearly lined up perfectly. Today. The eclipse happens today. “Though I suspect I’ll be seeing you on the other side soon.”
The Devourer presses her hand on her chest. Something is wrong with her. A thin line of blood trickles from her nostril. She wipes the blood away. Licks it off her finger. She starts to glide across the field covered in fog, back into the labyrinth. Then she stops. She turns to look over her shoulder. “Nova.” She says his name the way a mother would, urging her child to come along, to follow.
“If you stay here, I will kill you with my bare hands,” I tell him.
He nods and disappears with her.
When she’s gone, I sink to the ground. I curl into fetal position. I spent so many days and nights in my room like this, begging La Mama to take the power from me. Now that it’s gone, I feel a void. A cold sweat bubbles on my skin. I shiver uncontrollably and dig my fingers into the earth. I can’t hear the pulse of the land or hear the words in the wind. I can’t feel my family anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Alex,” Rishi cries. “Alex, please get up.”
Rishi needs me, I tell myself. The vines are still squeezing her. I hear the crack of a rib, followed by Rishi’s scream. I push myself up and find my dagger. I slice the vines, but it’s a hydra. Everywhere I cut, the vines multiply and grow. I start digging around Rishi’s feet until I find the root. I stab the core of the plant over and over until it lets go of Rishi and dries up.
I catch Rishi as she falls. She wraps her arms around my neck and we cling to each other. The land here is gray and bleak, cast in the shadow of the labyrinth. I search for the magic inside of me but it’s gone.
“I failed them,” I say.
Rishi shakes her head into my shoulder. “You’re still alive.”
“Sh.” I brush her hair out of her face. She’s covered in her own blood. I reach for my power to heal her and come up empty. The void inside me grows bigger by the second. I try to conjure a spark between my fingers, and when I can’t, I pound my fists against the ground. “You know when you want something so badly, but when you get it, it’s not what you expected?”
She nods, stroking her thumb over my cheekbone.
“That’s what it felt like when I gave her my power. Only a thousand times worse. When we were back home, I thought it was the magic that made me do terrible things. I’ve always blamed the magic. I hid behind it. But here, magic was the only thing that made sense. Now it’s gone.”
Alejandra, a voice whispers to me.
Rishi turns to the labyrinth. She heard it too. It’s different fr
om the voice I was hearing in my head. That was the voice of my power guiding me. This voice is different. It sounds like my aunt Rosaria.
“I want you to take the mace,” I tell Rishi. “Find a place to hide.”
She makes a very loud noise that lets me know she’s not going to listen. “I heard that too.”
“I don’t have my power to protect us, but if the Devourer thinks I’m going to turn around and go home, she’s wrong.”
“She can’t feed from the tree until the eclipse,” Rishi says. Her lips are swelling, but she refuses to stay quiet. “You heard her. She’ll have your family’s power. She’ll come into our world.”
I think of what Agosto said. She’s nearly drained Los Lagos dry. She needs somewhere else to go. With our combined power, she could break free of Los Lagos and into my world.
“You were right before when you said the answer is in the Tree of Souls. Nova was just trying to make you second-guess yourself because he was working for her.”
That stings more than it should. I’ll deal with Nova later on.
The tree. The answers lie in the tree.
“We have to get through the labyrinth. What would Lula do? Without my powers, they can’t reach me. I wish I could ask them.”
“Do you know what I ask myself sometimes?” Rishi takes my hand in hers. “What would Alex do?”
I press my forehead to hers. The thing that drew me to Rishi was her happiness, the way she wore it on her sleeve, the way it lit her up like the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Now, in the most hopeless of places, she gives me that light.
We pull each other up. We face the labyrinth. There’s a swirl of black-and-gray clouds directly above it. I take a deep breath and stretch my aching muscles. No power, no recoil.
Rishi takes my dagger, and I sling the mace over my shoulder.
I’m not the encantrix everyone thought I would be. Right now, I’m just a girl, and there is also magic in that.
Part III
The One
34
I search for you in lost fields.
Hear me, my dear. Your loved ones wait here.
—Canto of Spirits, Book of Cantos
We run into the Campo de Almas.
There is no life, only dirt where nothing grows and rain doesn’t fall. The sky is a fiery burst of red, like the top of the sky is on fire while the rest of it sleeps.
The campo is a field of wandering souls. These souls are different than the ones in the river. They’re thin as fog and move slowly, like they’ve forgotten where they’re going. I wonder what’s worse than roaming aimlessly without knowing you’re dead.
A cold hand grabs at me, and I instinctively pull on my magic. Nothing comes. The hand on my shoulder is cold and soft. As soon as it touches my skin, it passes through me. They’re less than ghosts—they’re shells of memory. The soul repeats a word I don’t understand. I realize it’s a girl’s name. He says it over and over in a gruff voice, like it’s the only word he remembers, the only word that matters beyond years and life and death.
“What’s wrong with them?” Rishi asks.
Directly above us is the labyrinth. It hits me. “This is where she throws them away after she drains their energy.”
Rishi takes my hand, and we run through the wandering souls. Their essences make my skin pucker, my heart ache. I can’t let his happen to my family. Rishi squeezes my hand tighter. We’re chain links of desperation attached to one another.
We reach the twisting black arches that mark the entrance of the labyrinth.
“Stay close,” I tell her.
We step inside. The deep-blue darkness surrounds us, and I prick myself on the twisting vines that wrap around the labyrinth wall. The path is narrow and littered with stones. Above me, the sky is a sea of storm clouds. My eyes adjust to the dark. The hedges tremble as they shift. A deep rumble shakes the ground. My heart is in my throat as I tell myself to run. Pick a path. Neither is going to be safe. Leaves and branches change shape.
“The entrance is closing!” Rishi tries to run for it, but the archway disappears and she hits a wall.
There’s no way out.
“You should’ve gone home,” Nova says, appearing in front of us.
“You’re moving on up,” Rishi tells him. “The Devourer got you a new wardrobe and everything. Tell me, who are you wearing?”
“Shut up,” he snaps. His broad torso is covered in a black material that looks as slick as oil but as hard as metal. It’s trim and simple and makes his eyes that much brighter. He says my name.
I pull my arm back and punch him. His head snaps back and blood gushes from his nose. My knuckles throb and my arm hurts like hell, but I want to do it again.
“Don’t,” he tells me.
“Why are you here?” I ask him. “You got what you wanted. You’ve got a power boost and it only took how many sacrifices?”
Nova wipes the blood from his nose. “You act like you’re so much better than me. At the end of the day, you made the same choice I did. You chose yourself. You have no idea what my life has been like.”
“I’m not like you at all, Nova.” I squeeze the mace handle, daring him to make me use it. “I came here to fix my mistakes. You played me. From the very beginning you played me. Did you jump in front of Maks’s car on purpose? Or did it start at Lady’s shop?”
Nova rubs his hands across his head. It’s strange to see them without the marks, but his brown skin is beautiful just the same.
“You don’t want to know,” he tells me.
“I need to know.”
“As you wish,” he says, unable to meet my eyes. “I could hear this energy everywhere I went in the city. It was like a sigh that wanted to be a scream. I thought I could find it. I needed more power to get out of my contract.”
“Contract?” Rishi asks. Her eyes are so dark, I fear she’s going to lunge at Nova with that dagger.
“Sinmagos like to joke that they make deals with the devil. In my case, I really did. The Devourer promised she’d save me. All I had to do was find brujos and brujas. It was the only thing I got from my mother: the ability to charm my way into people’s hearts.”
“I hate you,” I tell him.
“I didn’t want to die, Alex,” Nova says. “The marks started spreading, and I could feel it wrapping around my heart. Haven’t you?”
I hold out my palms, sucking in a breath. Thin, inky marks zigzag around my wrists, up the meaty base of my palm, and finally pool at the center, like two blazing, black stars.
“It happened after you conjured the elements. You were just too”—he looks at Rishi—“preoccupied to see.”
I rub my palms on my pants as if that’s going to get rid of the marks. “Why are you here?”
Nova takes a step toward me, but Rishi gets in the way. Nova smirks, and for a second, I see the boy who traveled alongside us, the boy who shared his magic with me and helped me fly a boat across a river of souls.
“I’m here to tell you to turn back. I’ll make you a portal. I’ll get you home.”
I step around Rishi and get up in Nova’s face. “My home is trapped in that tree. Now, either sound the alarms, or get out of my way.”
I watch his features turn hard. Maybe the marks are gone, but he’s still the same lost boy that wandered the streets of New York.
“If I walk away from you,” he says, “I’m as good as dead.”
But he holds out his hand and disappears into the open path. The hedges change. They ripple, then form into a solid wall that blocks our way.
“Why would he do that?” I ask.
“It’s another trick,” Rishi says.
Maybe Nova is trying to trick me again, or maybe a part of him regrets what he did. I focus on looking for a way out. I need to find the voice again. I close my eyes and listen. Th
e wind stirs and carries with it a whisper.
“Follow the light,” Aunt Rosaria’s voice says.
“I’m not crazy,” I say. “You heard that too?”
Rishi nods. “I heard it.”
The wind whistles as a ball of light appears out of thin air. It bounces in place, then races to the right.
Follow the light.
I follow the ball of light as it travels down the pitch-black path. Creatures hiss and hoot and caw from the shadows, between the leaves, and everywhere, unseen. Something tries to grab my arms. Its flesh is cold. I bash it with my mace and keep running. The earth curves slightly, then becomes a ninety-degree angle that leads left.
The ground beneath me undulates, like a great serpent is traveling beneath it. I lose my footing and fall forward. When I press my hands to the ground here, all I see is black. It wraps around my heart, whispering my deepest nightmares back to me. It is unlike the rest of the earth I’ve touched in Los Lagos. It wants me out.
No, it wants to eat me alive. The dark is moving. I roll over to the side as the ground opens up in a red, red mouth. A black, forked tongue comes up and licks at the air.
The dark has teeth, I think. The dark has teeth.
I roll again and push through the ache in my legs. When I turn around, Rishi is gone. I head back the way I came, but it’s all the same: black hedges and dark earth.
“Rishi!”
The light we were following has disappeared. The labyrinth walls change around me. They retract like curtains to reveal Rishi. She’s on the ground with her hands around her knees.
She whispers, “It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.”
I run to her. Push her head back. Her face is dirty with sweat and tears.
“Rishi, it’s me.”
“No, it’s not!” She pushes me to the ground.
I get up and reach for her, hold her by her shoulders. “Look at me. Remember what Madra said? Look twice. So look at me. What do you see?”
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