“If that’s true, then why didn’t he use it to complete his murder of the Moria?”
“Moria legend does say that once used, the Knife of Memory returns to the Lady of Shadows’s resting place,” I answer.
Castian holds up Admiral Arias’s logbook. “And my father no longer has the coordinates. The island detailed in these pages doesn’t exist on any known map. The charts are unknown, even to me.”
“I want to believe. I do,” Leo says doubtfully. “I hope this Knife can sever King Fernando’s link from the world. But what if this expedition was one of those soul-searching journeys noblemen take to find their true purpose in life? As you said, he was meant to be married. I’ve heard all the royals take them for their constitution. Not to mention learn the ways of romance at seaside brothels. Did you not go on one?”
“Mine were a little different,” Castian says through gritted teeth.
“Leo,” I warn.
Raising his hands in defense, Leo says, “I’m only repeating what my lady Nuria told me.”
“I’ve been searching for years, reading every tome in the royal libraries and halls, and even traveling as far as Dauphinique and Luzou. But there was one ship that was supposed to be lost at sea that caught my attention. The Leon del Mar. I found the manifest, but there was no information about where it had traveled, only that Admiral Arias was there. The admiral died long ago, but when I was at the Arias estate I began my search. To Duque Arias, it’s a keepsake from his grandfather’s last voyage that he likes to show off when he’s drunk. And now, my father knows I’m in possession of it…” Castian trails off, watching the fire’s embers. I add another broken piece of wood.
He tugs on the scruff on his chin. “Time is of the essence. We have to risk taking the main roads to the port of Salinas and meet this Queen of Little Luzou.”
I think of the way I used to travel with the Whispers. We took risks every time we left the safety of our borders. “I have an idea. But it’ll take up most of the coin we have, and neither of you is going to like it.”
“I trust you,” Leo says, then curls up on his side.
I grin, sinking into the weight of the days to come. “Remember you said that tomorrow.”
“IF WE MEET IN THE SIX HELLS, I SWEAR, RENATA CONVIDA,” LEO WARNS, HIS nostrils flaring.
“Be quiet, you’ll scare the geese,” I hiss.
This cart of geese is being delivered half a day along the southern road to Vahía Caña, in the direction we need to go. Laying down between crates of the noisy fowl shitting and pecking is the least of our worries. We pass through several checkpoints, with only one close encounter. A zealous soldier wanted to unload and inventory the crates, when by providence the first goose bit him hard enough to draw blood. The farmer gave the bird to the soldier for his troubles.
From Vahía Caña we bribe a desperate farmer to sell us his horse and cart. He’d had a bad crop, and what he had he’d handed over to the tax collectors. Cas and I lie on the bed of the cart covered in itchy hay while Leo sings the entire time as he drives. We ride through the night until the wheel breaks, and we leave the wreckage in a gulch. The ancient horse trots away, back toward the road we came from.
We are covered in filth down to every pore and rarely in the mood to talk. But we don’t stop, and little by little, we make our way to the southernmost point of the kingdom, where we will be one step closer to the Knife of Memory. We sleep in a stable, a pumpkin patch, and a vineyard. That’s where we overhear that a large shipment of wine is headed to the Cliffs of Jura. We split up and sneak onto the wagons. From there comes the true nightmare. The last cart is full of fertilizer, which is dropping us about ten miles outside Salinas. Only a small mountain stands between us and the port.
We climb out of the cart, caked in manure, and make our way up the rocky slope. There is not a single cloud in the sky or trees to seek cover from the sun. Clad in fertilizer and undergarments—to make less of a mess we stowed our clothes in our packs—every part of me itches. I can hardly stand the stench of myself, but I keep pushing until we reach the mountain peak for a rest. Leo nearly weeps as he slaps at the clouds of stinging flies that follow our trail.
Castian unshoulders his pack, grabs a scarf to protect his eyes, and climbs atop a boulder. Past an outcrop of trees and rock formations is a long road that leads to Citadela Salinas and a pristine ocean that appears the palest turquoise along the shore and the deepest cobalt where the horizon meets the sky.
“It’s so colorful,” I say, surprised.
“That’s what I love most about port citadelas,” Leo says, breathing through his mouth. “We should make camp at the hot springs and wash up. We cannot, will not, meet the Queen of Little Luzou in this state.”
Castian laughs quietly, but retrieves his pack and mine, and carefully maneuvers the rocky terrain downslope. Leo and I eagerly follow the promise of a bath. Tufts of emerald-green plants and a copse of spindly trees give way to a network of steaming pools hidden by shady trees. I shut my eyes at the reprieve from the sun. A breeze carries the echo of birds and stench of sulfur. Suddenly, a numbing sensation creeps up along my hairline. I whirl around but I see nothing but trees. Castian and Leo watch me carefully, reaching for their knives.
“Nati, what’s wrong?”
I shake my head, and the feeling ebbs. “This place feels familiar.”
Castian’s brows knit, forming cracks in the dried muck on his face. “The Gray?”
“I’m not sure. My mind has been quiet.” Too quiet perhaps, but until we’ve secured our passage to hunt for the Knife, I can’t worry about myself. “Come on. You smell dreadful.”
His body shakes with laughter, his teeth a white strip between mud and manure. Leo and Cas set down our packs and undress in moments. Leo wades into the closest spring with an exaggerated sigh but Cas throws himself right in, scrubbing muck from his face.
On the stone lip of the spring, I cut our only bar of soap into three rectangles and toss two at the boys. Then I peel off my undergarments and step into the steaming water. It’s hot at first, but my muscles unwind and my itchy skin is relieved. I lather the soap on my body as if I’ll never be quite clean, rubbing my skin raw. I wash my hair and finger comb the tangles free, inhaling the scents of sulfur and soap as if they’re my final breaths.
When I’m as clean as I’ll get in the woods, I wade in the shallow water into one of the bigger spring basins. Green lichen clings to the rock and soft steam rises on the surface.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” Leo purrs, after a while. “Three friends taking a moonlit dip.”
“The moon isn’t out yet.” Castian rolls his eyes skyward. The wet ends of his hair look like tarnished gold curling against the broad span of his shoulders.
“Give it a minute, my prince.” Leo is clearly delighting in this situation. He reaches down to the muddy bottom of the spring and scoops up the white clay, dragging it across his cheeks and down the bridge of his nose. “You can’t rush the moon.”
“If I didn’t know better,” Cas says, wrinkling his forehead, “I’d say you enjoy making your prince angry.”
“Pardon me, but I thought there was no prince from here on out, but a Will Otsoa.” Leo beams at me. “Lady, is your husband always like this?”
A wave of water crashes over Leo’s head, the clay streaking down his cheeks. “All right, I deserve that.”
Ripples dance around me. I try to suppress my laughter but I can’t, and soon the three of us are joined together in the delirium of exhaustion, and the reckless hope of what is waiting for us. Castian and Leo sit side by side, their elbows resting against rocks, faces tipped to the light dancing between the trees. As they talk about lords and ladies of the court, I sink below the warm blue waters. I search the Gray, dig through the faces that rest there for someone who walked through these trees. There must be a reason these hidden springs feels so familiar, but nothing jumps out.
“How are you feeling?” Castian asks when I surf
ace.
“Never better.” I force a smile. I know that we made a promise of honesty to each other back in Acesteña, but this isn’t exactly a lie. I feel fine in this moment.
Leo bites on his lip the way he does when he’s afraid to ask a question. “Would you tell us if something were wrong?”
I sit up, crossing my arms over my chest. “What do you mean?”
Leo and Castian share a conspiratorial glance. What is this nonverbal conversation I’m not privy to?
Leo raises his brows. “Do you remember talking to us in the middle of the night?”
“No, but I talk in my sleep,” I assert. By the worry on their features I wonder if this was different from my usual muttering. “What did I say?”
“You were asking us when your husband was coming home,” Castian says. “I tried to wake you, but I realized you were already awake. At least, your eyes were open. You called me your justice.”
I rack my mind for memories of last night. I don’t dream, not truly. Sometimes there is a pitch-black of the void. Other times, I relive the memories I’ve taken.
“I feel fine, Cas,” I say softly. I’m too tired to argue. “I told you my power feels different. Perhaps I took one memory too many, and this is the consequence. Justice Méndez was the first Hollow I’d created in so long.”
Castian doesn’t push, but I can see the strain there. He presses the heart of his palm where our twin scars are.
“Leo,” I say tentatively. There is one thing I haven’t asked. “Méndez—”
“I did not want to bring it up until you were ready, Lady Ren.” Leo sighs. “King Fernando gave him mercy.”
“Mercy he didn’t deserve,” Castian says darkly.
Steam rises, cloaking us in warmth, and the three of us drift closer. I have an overwhelming sense of safety, more than I’ve had in a long time. That is the only reason, I think, that I allow myself to speak.
“When I was a girl, I would have denied that Méndez was an evil man. He was the closest thing I had to a father after I’d been kept from my real one for so long. But I see it now—men like King Fernando, like Justice Méndez, they show kindness when they need power in return.”
Leo takes a tiny bit of clay and taps it on my nose. My smile is weary, but my heart gives a squeeze. “I am sorry,” Leo says. “I never knew my appa. He was a soldier. All I have are the stories my sweet amma told me. He was very charming and unbearably handsome, naturally. I am my father’s son.”
I gently splash him. But when we stop laughing, I add, “He must have been brave, I’m positive.”
We both turn to Castian, who’s creating illusions on the water, bright fish that leap from the surface and fade away with the cascade of his fingers.
“I suppose it’s to no one’s surprise that my father was cruel,” Castian confesses. “I was never studious enough, fast enough, strong enough. Yes, I’d displayed potential in bloodshed, but he never relented. Still, there were days when he’d dote on my mother in the gardens or when he’d take me on a trip to the Islas del Rey. I wasn’t old enough to realize that there were foreign emissaries in the gardens watching us be a perfect family. Or that our sailing expeditions were an excuse to execute his enemies at sea without a trial.”
Castian stands abruptly, water falling off him in rivulets. His body looks carved from marble. Deep scars crosshatch along his shoulders, his ribs, beneath the golden trail of hair that starts from his belly button, down to parts where I avert my eyes. I am slammed with the memory of those girls from Acesteña who lusted after him while he chopped wood. The feel of him pressed against me when I threatened a kiss out of him. Then before that, the memories I stole from Lady Nuria of very intimate moments between her and Castian. The way he touched her, like he was learning how to recognize her with his eyes closed.
I swallow the utterly ridiculous knot in my throat. Except my eyes meet Leo’s, who is beaming with amusement. I swim away from them.
“I’m going to set a few traps before we lose the light,” Castian announces. For a moment, he watches me watch him, and there’s the flicker of a rueful smile. It’s like trying to find the same star in a field of blinking ones—there and then gone.
“Would it be so terrible?” Leo asks once we’re alone. He washes the dried clay from his face.
I wring out water from my hair and tie it back. “What?”
“You are dense sometimes,” he says, exasperated. “I mean, would it be so terrible to let yourself admit that you care for him?”
“Stop.”
“Ren, you’re my friend. And I might go so far as to say I am your best and only friend in the world at the moment. It is my duty, nay, my mission to tell you the truth. The way you two look at each other could incinerate entire forests.” Doubt quirks his eyebrow. “If you don’t destroy each other first, that is.”
Preposterous. That’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever said to me. My entire body crackles with energy at the thought. “Yes, we’re finally getting along. But I could never—I won’t.”
I splash out of the spring, leaving him behind muttering something that sounds an awful lot like “Could have fooled me.”
I am not naive enough to deny that there is something between us. Castian and I are connected in a way I never expected. But my feelings for him are so tangled with hate, with bitterness, with the worst memories I carry. He is strong and beautiful and has shown more kindness than I ever thought he was capable of. But he’s also mercurial, with a well of untapped rage. Castian is a trick of the light. Not to mention, Dez’s brother.
I find my way to our packs and hurry to dress. I’ve barely finished tying the drawstring of my trousers when I feel another presence beside me. I whirl around to tell Leo to never speak another word about Castian and me, but it isn’t Leo at all.
Three strangers are in our camp. My body flashes hot with panic, and then I’m lashing out. I block a punch that flies at my face. I do not call for help because I can’t endanger Leo and Castian. Instead I run, and the intruders give chase through the downward slope of bare trees.
The terrain is difficult in the setting sun, and I hear one of them fall and cry out. My heart thunders as I find a rock. I stop, counting on my attacker’s momentum, and crush it against his face.
“I’ll help Uri,” one of them shouts. “You grab her!”
“I’m trying!” the one I just hit snaps.
I freeze at the familiar voice. He lands a punch between my shoulder blades, and I stumble forward. I throw myself into the fall and land in a crouch, sweeping my leg across his feet. He rolls into a standing position, fists up. Dressed in deep greens and browns, and sporting a red gash across the otherwise smooth brown skin of his cheek, is a boy I never thought I’d see again.
“Esteban?”
His wide brown eyes take me in. Panting, he staggers back a couple of paces. “Ren! What are you doing here?”
“I should ask you the same thing.”
Esteban glances nervously over his shoulder. “This is a Whispers’ camp. You know this.”
I think of the sense of familiarity I felt coming up here. It was from a memory. One of mine.
“Where are the others?” I ask. Margo. Sayida. Dez. I should tell him that Dez is alive!
He grabs me hard by my shoulder, frantically whispering in my ear. “You have to run. If the others see you, we’d have to bring you in.”
“We want the same thing. Implore Margo that we are on the same side.”
“It isn’t Margo that we have to worry about,” he says darkly.
“If not Margo, who?”
Then I feel the buzz of magic along my skin. As if someone has walked on my grave. I look at his hand on my shoulder. Of course—he’s using his Ventári magics to peer in my head. I shove him, and the whorls of magic on my palms ignite. He groans and cradles his abdomen. I remember putting pressure on his wound when the rebel stronghold was attacked. Even with the best Moria healers, his injury isn’t fully healed. It
is unlike Margo to send out patrols that are compromised. But do I have the right to question what the Whispers do anymore?
“What have you done to yourself, Ren?” Esteban watches me with a fear I remember too well. “I can’t read you—”
Before he can finish, his two companions catch up to us.
“Robári!” The youngest boy cradles an injured arm. His gaze falls on my marks, still glowing. “We’re to bring them in!”
“What have you done to yourself?” Esteban asks again, and this time his words are heavy with lament. It frightens me.
“I didn’t do anything,” I whisper. But I know I’m wrong. I let Cebrián tinker in my brain. I used my power one too many times.
I close my glowing hands into fists, ready to fight all three of them if I have to. Then heavy boots come clamoring down the mountain. Torchlight. Red uniforms. I count six of them, but only one steps forward and hooks an arm around my throat.
“What have we here?” he says, cupping his fist over my mouth. He leans in close, murmuring at my ear. “It’s me.”
I never thought I’d be so relieved to hear Castian’s voice. I feel his damp hair against my face beneath the illusion.
“Run,” I shout at Esteban.
He begins to shake his head, but the others have already left him. Cowards. No matter what, none of us left our unit behind. We always went back for one another.
“Go!” I shout. I hope he knows me well enough to hear the certainty in my voice. “I’ll be fine. You know I will.”
“I’m sorry, Ren. For all of it,” he whimpers before he turns and bolts. Something has shattered him and left only fear. What has happened to the Whispers?
I release a terrified breath and fall against Castian. His illusion flickers, then vanishes as he brushes my hair back to make sure I’m unharmed. The five guards with torches become Leo holding two oil lamps.
We hurry back to our camp. I stepped on a jagged rock and lean on Castian for support. When the pain grows too strong, and I can’t bite down on the splintering sensation shooting up my foot, Castian gathers me into his arms despite my protest.
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