I recognize that emotion—being dragged so far down that nothing will ever be good again.
“I know what it’s like to be used for your power,” I tell him. “When Fernando’s done with you, there will be nothing left. What was done to you is unspeakable. But it was done to you. It wasn’t your fault. Please, let me help you with this burden, Cebrián.”
He shakes his head, releasing one hand to wind a thread around his finger. A painful tug jerks me forward. “No. I will help you with yours. After today, there will be hundreds like me.”
“No,” I say. “There won’t.”
You were born to be a weapon. If I do this, Justice Méndez will have been right, and I accept that if it means saving the people I love.
Cebrián thrusts the crystal blade at me, but I duck, and he slices through air. I catch his arm and twist, and he bellows. I don’t stop, don’t hesitate. With the Knife of Memory in my hand, I ram it into his throat. Blood sprays across my face as I lower him onto the floor. His final breath is gurgled, and then the light in his silver eyes goes out.
“May you rest in her everlasting shadow,” I pray.
Then I feel the hum, the spark, the heat, of the ancient power in my grasp. I am an extension of the blade and it me. I hurry back into the throne room, where I find the new Hand of Moria on the ground. King Fernando is on his knees, shouting for guards who do not come, his crown tossed to the side. Castian and Dez, covered in fresh cuts and bruises, point their swords at his throat.
When he sees me, Castian releases a sigh of relief.
“Hold him still,” I say.
The brothers grip their father, who screams as I press my fingertips to his temples. My magics race through me, connecting with his mind. The terrible things he did at Isla Sombras are in the Knife, but I realize, with his confession of killing Penelope, there must be more locked in his past. I pluck his secrets like rotten stone fruit, and it tastes bitter.
When I let go, Fernando slumps to the ground. Castian hands Dez his sword and approaches the throne with me.
“Are you ready?” he asks.
I have to be. I am.
I take his hand in mine and raise the Knife of Memory with the other. The light of the alman stone grows brighter and brighter until Castian and I are standing in a white space without ceiling or floor.
Argi’s last words echo through my mind again. Reveal Fernando’s sins to the land, and then let go.
The release is the hardest. How do you let go of a life before it’s barely begun? My heart swells. One day I will have to stop saying good-bye to Cas and Dez. I won’t say it at all.
It starts with her first death.
Galatea is a princess, a bride, a girl in love. Three arrows pierce her back, and her light is gone. But when has the world cared about another dead Moria, another dead girl?
Fernando holds his young wife in his arms.
It follows with her second death.
Galatea is a body growing colder and colder in the belly of a ship. The crew is lost at sea for so long, the only thing that keeps them afloat is fear of a furious, mad prince. When they reach the Isla Sombras, Fernando and his faithful crew carry Galatea into the cave while Admiral Arias remains aboard. Cebrián swims across the blue lake to retrieve the Knife. For a moment, he is drowning. The cave rains shards of crystals. Fernando shields Galatea with his body.
The Robári returns with the Knife of Memory, and he calls its ancient power to him. But the blade will not be used to violate the laws of life, and the girl remains dead. The power blasts through the cave, rattling the water into waves, and the crystals fall and knock Argiñe and two other Moria soldiers unconscious.
Fernando crawls away from Galatea’s lifeless body. He sees the Knife of Memory glowing in the sand. Argiñe bleeds from her forehead and comes in and out of consciousness, begging the king to stop.
Cebrián sees the Knife, too, but Fernando wraps his fist around the hilt first. They tussle in the sand until Fernando forces Cebrián into a chokehold. Fernando whispers, “Your power is mine. You will bend to my will.”
Ribbons of light spill from the crystal blade, and then Fernando pierces Cebrián’s chest, again and again. There is so much blood, and light cracks out of each wound. Fernando slashes the throat of the Illusionári. Stabs the Persuári through the heart.
He crawls back to Galatea, and while he holds her, he doesn’t hear the girl’s footsteps. When he looks up, Argiñe bludgeons him with the hilt of her sword.
He wakes. He is on a ship. He is on the sea, and everything is gone. The island is gone. She is gone. There is a part of him that has been carved out.
He slaughters his traitorous parents and crowns himself king. She should have been his queen. The taste of blood becomes a hunger.
He remembers Galatea every moment of every day and realizes that the rest of the world doesn’t share his grief. He searches for her face in his mind, but when he sees her, it is like standing at the mouth of a precipice. He cannot, will not, fall. He finds those who witnessed his voyage and failure and slaughters them. When he draws blood, when he fights, when the world is on fire, he has control. He will never be powerless again.
After many months, he unlocks the cell. The face that stares at him is skeletal gray, but something is there that wasn’t before. Life. Power. Magics.
King Fernando has work to do.
It will never truly end.
The life and memory of Galatea is severed, but the soul of the world leaves impressions. She is the susurration of the wind. The lyric of a song that strikes a chord. The myth of a saint who fell to earth. The dregs of a love that was doomed before it started.
When we begin to fall under the pressure of our illusion, Dez appears between us and shoulders our weight.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers, black waves falling over his eyes.
Pain and surprise passes through Castian’s eyes at the sight of his brother looping his arms around our torsos. The heat between us radiates, emanating in waves of magics. Though the world is changing, I have never been more at peace. Selfishly, I want to hold this forever.
The palace trembles, and chandeliers fall to the ground and splinter. Images gather like storm clouds. Fernando drowning a boy. Fernando poisoning Queen Penelope. Fernando slaying Admiral Arias. Each additional memory I gathered from him is refracted, magnified through the light of the Knife of Memory.
Everywhere in Puerto Leones people will turn to the illusions cast in the sky, in their kitchens, in their common rooms. They will call them ghosts. Miracles. They will call themselves witnesses.
When it is over, and the throne room returns to focus, I hear our heartbeats racing at different speeds—mine slow and steady, Castian’s like hummingbird wings, Dez’s heavy with a new burden, even Fernando’s, erratic with the knowledge of what is coming next.
Fernando, barely strong enough to stand from his knees, croaks out, “Son—”
Cas takes sure steps toward his father and picks up his sword.
“Mercy,” the king begs.
“You took my mother from me,” Cas says, his golden hair wild, his blue-green eyes bright with unshed tears.
Dez holds their father by his arms, and Castian drives the sword deep into Fernando’s heart.
Blood runs from the dead king’s slumped form. I watch the scarlet river snake toward my feet.
“Ren?”
There’s the clatter of metal.
The cold of the floor.
The red behind my eyes.
Castian pulls me onto his lap, and he says my name over and over. The Knife of Memory vanishes from my grasp, and I feel its pull, taking me with it.
There is so much I want to say to him, to the world, to myself. So much more on the tip of my tongue. But first, there is a place I must go.
“Nati,” he cries.
And I ask, “Is that who I am?”
“YOU ARE,” SHE TELLS ME.
We are back in the cave beneath Isla Sombras.
The crystals above me wink at the sapphire water below my feet. I walk across, my toes pressing against the ripples without breaking the surface.
“I am?”
The woman stands upon the column, holding the Knife of Memory. I have never met her, but I know her all the same. She is the voice of hope that refuses to be snuffed out. She is the dream I keep chasing.
What had Argi known her as? The name comes to me. “Our Lady of Whispers, Mother of Shadows and the Eternal Moon.”
Her face is somber, but her skin shimmers as though she is made of stardust. Her dress is like a rippling sea swathed around her waist and shoulders, and her hair, a curtain of twilight. “You have returned my blade.”
“Why are you here? You became mortal. You—”
She turns the Knife of Memory point side down. “I created the Knife of Memory to sever my immortality. I fell to the world for some time, but it did not take. Now I am a memory. After my mortal life was over, I returned here, forever tied to the weapon that was supposed to give me peace. The Knife is the one thing I can’t sever—some veins are buried so deep nothing can excavate them.”
I think of the fable I heard in Acesteña about the woman who sacrificed herself for rain. I wonder if, somehow, its origins can be traced back to the Lady of Whispers.
“Why not destroy the weapon?”
“I’ve tried,” she says, her voice like the crush of waves. “Believe me. That’s why I hid it here and tasked the guardians of this temple with it. But so much has been corrupted.”
“Then fix it,” I snap. The jagged crystals above me flicker like distant stars mocking my existence. “Make it right.”
The goddess looks at me, and when she smiles, all I want is her forgiveness. “I can’t. I have done my part, and I failed when Fernando perverted my magics with his violent actions. He attempted to wield a power that was not his to claim and so erased Galatea’s life. Twisted the power of the Moria in a way I’d never imagined.”
“But it’s over now,” I say.
“It will never be over. Men like Fernando exist and will continue to exist.”
“Then we do nothing?”
She smiles again, that tragic smile that says everything I need to know. “You do nothing. Your work is done, Renata. All you have to do is choose.”
“Choose what?” I don’t understand. “Did Cebrián have a choice?”
“Cebrián’s path is different from yours.”
Is it, truly? “Tell me what to do.”
“Don’t you hear them?”
I listen closely. Murmurs rise from down below. My feet, for the first time, feel wet and cold across the soles.
You promised, Leo says. You can’t leave her like this.
Please. Give me a few more days. Castian.
It’s been two weeks, Leyre whispers.
Leave us, Dez says.
I can’t do it.
Then I will. If you won’t, then I will.
Castian laughs darkly. We both know, brother, that you don’t have it in you.
Then the silence returns, and I find myself alone. “What do I have to choose?”
My words echo. The Knife of Memory hovers in the air over the column.
A part of me wants nothing more than to sleep. My work is done, she said. Let go, Argi once told me.
I hear his voice again. Please. Please come back to me.
So I let go, and sink into the cold blue water, to the fathomless depths of the cave.
WHO AM I?
I try to swim and realize I am on a bed, tangled and thrashing underneath blankets. After a moment, the name comes to me. I am Renata Convida, and I have no idea what this place is. I am in a bedroom, for certain. But whose?
Every inch is a deep blue, somber like the colors of the bottom of the lake in my dream. I slip out of the soft sheets and pull on a heavy robe far too large for me. These are men’s clothes, and by the looks of it, a very wealthy man at that. I wash my face, and because the clothes are far too big, I go in search of something else to wear and to discover more about this place.
Finding only men’s clothes, I remain in my sleeping tunic and robe. The bedchamber is decorated with oil paintings of ships and wallpaper that looks like the sea itself. When I sense I am being watched, I turn and startle at the enormous portrait of a queen with golden hair and skin. She peers down at me, and my first thought is that she looks so very sad. My second thought is that I have been here before.
I step out the door and into a living area. There’s a couch with a blanket that looks like someone might have slept there uneasily. I pick it up and inhale the ocean scent. I look down at my hands and notice pale, pearl markings. They carry up my arms, and as I lift my sleeping tunic up, I discover they also run across my chest and belly. I tighten the dressing robe around my waist, and leave the room, bumping into a servant girl who waits just outside.
“Hello,” I say. “Can you tell me where I am?”
Her doe eyes blink rapidly. “Yer awake!”
She runs, and I chase after her. “Wait!”
A feeling pulses against my eyes. Remembrance. Recollection. The sensation of walking across someone else’s life. My breathing becomes labored, and my bones feel like hollow reeds ready to bend.
“Please,” I shout. “My legs are about to give out under me!”
My thighs cramp when I reach the landing at the bottom of the stairs. A new mystery is solved—I am in a palace. Servants and ladies in dresses gape at me as I descend. I am suddenly very aware that I am practically naked beneath my dressing robe, and perhaps that is not permitted at a palace. After I catch my breath, I follow the brown-haired girl through a garden made of hedges. Cypress hedges, the name pops into my mind. When the breeze winds around me, I catch the floral whiff of wisteria and the harried cries of the servant girl.
“She’s here! She’s… she’s—”
“Calm yourself,” a pleasant voice rumbles.
When I step into a small clearing, I find the girl who ran away from me. Perhaps I’m some sort of prisoner, as she has clearly come to alert someone of my presence. Two young men of roughly the same tall height and broad build stand in the garden near the statue of a weeping angel. When they see me, shock stills their features. I note their fine silk and brocade and take several steps back. I am certainly not dressed to be wandering around a palace.
The dark-haired one breaks into a deep smile. His tangle of black waves is tied back, and the scar tissue where his ear used to be startles me. He’s got the shadow of a beard, tanned skin, and eyes the clearest shade of honey. The golden-haired boy seems to see a phantom. His eyes are blue-green, filling with tears. He reaches for my hand, and I flinch.
“Ren,” the dark-haired boy says.
“Do you know me?” I ask.
Something must dawn on him, because he sighs and extends his palm in a greeting. “I’m Andrés, but you call me Dez.”
“Pleased to meet you, Dez. Where am I?” I ask, and turn to the quiet golden boy. “And who are you? I just woke up, and I’m starving. I—I don’t think I’m supposed to be here. I don’t even remember how I got here or what day it is.”
Dez smiles and says, “It is the tenth day in the month of Primanocte. And you are our guest, and very much supposed to be here.”
“Oh.” I sigh, relieved. “Very good.”
Dez slaps the other young man on his back. He hisses, “Don’t be rude, brother.”
“I’m Cas,” he says, clearing his throat. “I live here.”
Dez makes a sound of frustration, then gives instructions to the servant girl while Cas retreats and vanishes into the gardens. From Dez, I learn I have been sick for two weeks, but he doesn’t tell me what my illness was or how I came to be with them. He reassures me that food will be brought to the chambers I was sleeping in and a bath will be drawn. He tells me that everything will be clearer soon, but did not suggest how soon, and the entire time I walk back to my room I feel as though he should be speaking to someone
else.
While I wait for my food and bath, I explore the rooms in my apartment. Everything is beautiful, carved from fine wood and inlaid with precious metals and rare gems. But something small on the bedside table catches my attention. An alfaro. The copper has turquoise flecks on it and a dozen holes punched in the surface. Inside is a stump of a candle. I light it, shut the drapes, and watch the constellation illuminate the ceiling.
I think of the two handsome young men downstairs. They knew me. I knew them. But I struggle to conjure memories of them, or anything, before I woke.
I’m Cas, he said. I live here.
I drift off, staring at the flicker of stars on the ceiling. When I close my eyes, I feel something tug loose. It is a thread that unspools and unspools.
A little boy with dirty clothes and bright blue-green eyes.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m Cas,” he says. “I live here.”
“I’m Renata Clara Convida. I live here, too.”
And then I remember everything. Everything.
I AM RENATA CONVIDA, AND I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I AM. I’M IN ANDALUCÍA, the capital of Puerto Leones. I rush to the curtains and throw open the large windows. I feel the moonlight against my marked skin and listen to the cacophony of the city. There’s music and shouting from the brothels and taverns, bartering from the night market, and then the acute sound of arguing at the gates and the crash of bottles. I watch soldiers break up the fights, and the evening resumes.
I’m tempted to go outside, but fear takes root in my gut and keeps me planted indoors. What if nothing has changed? What if everything has changed? Maybe this is my chance to get what I always wanted—a chance to start over.
After my memories return, I speak to no one for two days and stay in what I’ve realized is Castian’s room. I’ve broken into these chambers before, but they feel different now. I wait for him or Dez to find me, but they keep their distance. The only person that comes in or out is a shy servant girl who runs my bath and brings trays of food three times a day. The blanket on the couch tells me Cas must have slept there while I was gone. I carry it into bed with me, inhale the scent of leather and salt, and sleep.
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