Incendiary Series, Book 1

by Zoraida Cordova

  She pulls on the door and weaves through his strange rooms. How can someone as bright as Lady Nuria spend her days in this miserable place? The royal mausoleums have more mirth. Well, now the lady won’t have to…

  Jacinta’s eyes adjust to the dimly lit living room. The curtains are shut, and there are two oil lamps on the parlor table. Their hazy yellowed light makes the tapestries hanging on the walls appear to be moving: Stallions saddled by men at war. Ships breaking through waves.

  Her cheeks burn at the sight of a lady’s glove on the prince’s plush couch. Two glasses on the table with a dozen bottles of wine and aguadulce knocked over. The stench of liquor hits her on her next step, and that’s when she sees the pile of clothes. Definitely more than one lady was here—though surely no ladies at all. The girls in the laundry will never believe her when she tells them of this.

  Jacinta freezes at a flurry of movement. There he stands at the doorway to his bedroom. Prince Castian pulls his robe over nothing at all. His taut muscles flex as he staggers and grabs for another bottle on the parlor table. She can see the moon-shaped scar left behind by that monstrous Moria. Though she’d never admit it makes him even more beautiful.

  “Your Highness,” Jacinta says, finding the will to bend her body into a curtsy.

  He grunts, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His hair is pure gold haloing his face. “Who in the hells are you?”

  Alarms play against her eardrums. No, not alarms. Her heart. She can hear her own blood pumping through her, every single beat an answer to the hard blue stare of the royal boy.

  “Begging your pardon, Your Grace. Um. Lord Commander. I’m to fetch your—erm—unwanted garbs for my mistress. I’m so sorry about all of this. You don’t deserve any heartache, my l-lord.”

  He is staring at her now, arms crossed like the statue of the angel San Márcos in the center garden. An angel waiting to pronounce judgment. It’s like he comes awake. He sees the wreckage of the room. The bottles. The cigars. The clothes.

  Those blue eyes dart a path back to his bedchamber. For a moment, his body softens, arms coming down to his sides to rest. He takes a deep breath, as if to brace himself. The kind of breath she’d take if she were plunging into the cold common pools in the capital center. He rubs his lips together, and for the first time she realizes that she has never seen the prince this close-up before. His mouth is the shape of a bow and the pale sort of pink she has never seen on a man before.

  Then she realizes she is still standing and still staring and, oh—Father of Worlds—she needs to move. But as ruined and terrible as he is, she’s loved Prince Castian since the first day she saw him.

  “I don’t deserve heartache?” Castian says, tortured, hard. “You don’t know what I deserve.”

  She shakes her head. Has she said the wrong thing? She always says the wrong thing.

  He picks up the wine bottle and drinks. Wine spills down his chest. He makes a strangled sound. Is he crying? She hates to see him this way.

  “Get out,” he says to her, so low she takes a step closer.

  She can’t leave without his wedding garments. “My lord—”

  He throws the bottle across the room and it shatters. “You want my things? Here.” He runs into the bedroom. He is a magnet, and she follows despite her fear.

  On his bed are two women rousing from sleep. They shrink back in terror at the screaming prince, who tears through his dressing closet. He gathers his groom’s clothes and throws them at Jacinta’s feet.

  “There! Take it. Take all of it.”

  She gathers up his clothes. They smell like him. Like woodsmoke and salt of the sea. He’s worn them. He’d gotten dressed and worn them.

  Castian retreats to the farthest corner of the bedroom and turns his back on them all. He is still as marble, the angel at a temple she would always worship.

  “Please leave me,” he says.

  And they leave.

  Movement in the halls alerts me to let go. I relinquish my hold on Jacinta’s mind and slink back through the laundry room, past the kitchens, my heart racing. No one in the Whispers had heard of this engagement. But one thing is for sure: I have to get inside the prince’s chambers. Music spills into the smaller workrooms. If there were ever a time I could take my chance, it would be tonight.

  I quickly retrieve my alman stone from my pocket. Using trembling sweaty fingers to do the clasp, I think of the drunken prince in Jacinta’s memory. Memories can’t be changed, even when someone wants them to be. She worships the prince, and all of her feelings thread into my skin. I want to tear at it until the sickening longing fades.

  The moment I step into the corridor, a body shoves me against the wall. Fragrant holy oils suffocate me. A hand slaps over my mouth to keep me from screaming. I kick out hard and my attacker staggers. It’s Alessandro.

  “I saw you,” he says, grunting as he recovers. “What were you doing to that servant girl, bestae?”

  My heart rate spikes. I grab for the closest thing I can get my hands on. A wooden slat used to stir the lye.

  “You must be confused, Judge Alessandro,” I say. “Her friends asked me to check on her.”

  He keeps his distance, but I see his mind working, going through each of his options. “You’re all deceivers. Your hand works perfectly fine.”

  I grip the slat tighter. If I hit him, it would be as good as treason. If I let him go to Méndez, all this will be over.

  “There you are!” Leo shouts. His flop of black curls is disheveled from dancing and his cheeks are flushed. Has it truly been an hour? I have never been more glad to see anyone in my life. He takes in Alessandro and then me. “What’s happening?”

  “She’s lying about her injury. I saw her preying on a sleeping girl to devour her memories. I’m taking her to Justice Méndez now,” he says.

  Leo pauses, looking Alessandro up and down. Then his forehead draws together with mild concern.

  “I’ll accompany you,” Leo says gravely as he stands between us. An icy feeling cuts through me. I told myself I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, I am. “Now, just so I can help you back up your story for Justice Méndez, what is your proof? I only want to be certain, Judge Alessandro, so we do not disturb the justice unnecessarily.”

  What is Leo doing?

  “What do you mean, proof? I don’t have to prove anything. I will tell Justice Méndez, and he will believe me because my word is truth.”

  Leo nods like he’s eating up the other man’s claim. “Of course, Judge Alessandro! But”—he glances at my chest as if he’s just noticed the stone resting there—“what will the alman stone show?”

  Alessandro takes in the stone, then dismisses Leo. “The Ventári expired, no one can verify it until we find another one.” I see the moment he understands his mistake. The alman stone will show Alessandro attacking me and Leo stepping in to calm the erratic judge. Anger cuts his features into a terrible scowl. “It won’t matter. My word is higher than yours.”

  “I do not deny that,” I say, setting the slat down. I am sure I no longer need it. “There are, of course, hundreds of judges like you in the Arm of Justice, and I am but one Robári.”

  Leo turns to the side, but I catch the way his mouth twitches.

  Alessandro whirls between me and Leo. If he were a stray animal, he’d be frothing at the mouth with anger. He shoves a finger in my chest, on the scab where King Fernando cut me. I bite down so I won’t wince. “I will be there when you make a mistake, bestae.”

  As he sweeps away, Leo and I stand and listen to the music. He saved me from Alessandro. He has to be the Magpie. But when I open my mouth, he shakes his head. He covers my alman stone.

  “We will not speak of this,” he says.

  I want to argue, but I can’t risk getting Leo in trouble. Especially if he is the spy the justice is searching for. For now, I am content in knowing that I can trust him. I don’t protest as we return to my room, and my mind returns to Jacinta’s memory.

  Casti
an had been engaged. Justice Méndez did say that Leo had started off as Lady Nuria’s attendant. Is it a coincidence that I’m in her old apartments? Surely out of every guest room in the palace… She’s married to Alessandro now but was engaged to Castian. My stomach sickens at what they might have done in the same place where I sleep.

  The palace at night takes on an eerie stillness. Shadows feel longer, and even the statues along the halls give me the sensation we’re being watched. But I memorize every turn we take and every step back to my room because I will have to get myself back there. Leo goes on about how a shipment of wine for the festival met a sorry end in a ditch on the way into the capital, setting the royal vintner into a frenzy. I pocket the alman stone.

  “Leo, I heard a rumor tonight,” I say, letting my eyes slide conspiratorially from corner to corner. I’ve seen Sayida do this when she wants to be coy about a subject. I, however, am far from coy and fear he’s going to shut me down after what we just went through.

  “There are as many rumors as there are citizens in the capital, my dear lady.”

  “Not a lady,” I mumble.

  Leo loops his arm around mine and gives the halls a quick glance before stepping onto an open sky bridge. I realize we haven’t walked it at night before. It feels like we’re walking across a stretch of long black shadow. Each glittering arch and pillar reflects the half-moon’s light.

  “Pray tell, what is this rumor? Did you spend your hour of party chatting up a scullery maid?”

  I laugh, trying to keep my voice light. By the sound of him, the confrontation with Alessandro never happened. “I heard that Prince Castian was engaged once to your former lady.”

  Leo’s face brightens with his usual smile. I wonder how many things he hides with the turn of his lips. “Ah, Lady Nuria Graciella, Duquesa of Citadela Tresoros, was indeed set to wed the prince once upon a time.”

  Tresoros.

  “As in, the family that once ruled Tresoros?” I ask.

  Over a century ago, the kingdom of Tresoros had the richest earth of the continent before beginning a tenuous alliance with the Fajardo family. Now that Puerto Leones has conquered most of the continent, it’s hard to imagine that it was once a fraction of what it is today. When the royals of Tresoros surrendered, they did so under the condition that the royal family be given titles and a place at court. Now those lands are just another provincia where there was once a nation.

  “The very same,” Leo says. “Lady Nuria is the wealthiest woman in all of Puerto Leones. She owns most of the western provincia, because of the treaty her grandfather negotiated when they abdicated their throne to the Fajardos. I suppose the Whispers wouldn’t have known about her scandal with Prince Castian in those mountain hovels you call homes.”

  And just like that, my doubt about Leo returns. Coming from him, that hurts more than any of the terrible things Alessandro said to me. How could he risk his reputation for me one moment, and then say something like this the next?

  “The Whispers are disconnected from the rest of the world,” I say. “That is why their rebellion failed.” The words feel empty, but the lies now roll off my tongue.

  “Perhaps,” Leo says. He stops halfway across the bridge. From here we can see the yellow glow of streetlamps that line the Andalucían streets. It’s a pretty sight when the dark can hide the filth and violence of the day.

  “Who called it off?” I ask.

  “It’s a complicated affair,” Leo says. “Lady Nuria was betrothed to Prince Castian since before they were born.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Jústo Fajardo, the king’s father, was having a hard time holding the annexed Tresoros territory.”

  “Tresoros was half the size of Puerto Leones at that time,” I say. “How could they hold off the Fajardo attacks?”

  “For every man enlisted to the Fajardo army, the Tresoros family could afford to match it with hired soldiers.”

  “Mercenaries,” I say. I bet my life that there is not a single book in the library in this hall, or in the entire country, that details this.

  “From Luzou, Dauphinique, even the Icelands in the northern seas,” Leo says, his eyes glittering with story. What an enigma he is to have wound up here. Loyal to the crown. Keeper of salacious stories. Tentative friend to someone like me. “The Duquesa’s family sits on the largest and most plentiful mines of gems and gold.”

  “So, what? They sold their descendants off to stop a war?”

  “You have no sense of romance.” Leo turns on his heel and keeps walking. “I do not know who brought the agreement to the table, but an accord bound the families together. Their children were already promised to others, and so the next best thing was their first grandchildren.”

  “And how did Nuria feel being betrothed to such a man?” The last word comes out as a curse. I think of all the words the servant girls used to describe the prince the days I helped in the courtyard, even the thoughts from the courtier whose memory I stole. “A devastating man.”

  “He wasn’t so as a child. Lady Nuria and Castian were friends from infancy. They were always together in the palace, or so the stories go. There was a brief period, about a year, when the prince was sent to the Islas del Rey in the south. For his health. That was the only time they were apart.”

  “No wonder I never saw him during my time here,” I say.

  Leo racks his brain. “I believe it was before you would have arrived. When he was five or six, perhaps? It was right after the death of…” Leo trails off, remembering himself before he finishes the sentence, but I finish it for him.

  “The death of the younger prince, his brother,” I say, thankful the cover of dark hides the horror I feel. Some say the Matahermano was destined to become as ruthless as his father. A boy who loves pain and death. A man who will die by my hand.

  Leo nods. “As for why their engagement ended… Rumors flew. Some say he couldn’t keep Nuria away from other eligible men at court. Vicious lies, of course. Only that could have stopped a union decades in the making. And mere days before the wedding!”

  I make a sour face. “Castian might be a prince, but that wouldn’t have made him a good husband.”

  “And what do you know of husbands, young Renata?”

  “You are not more than two years my elder, Leo. I might ask what you know of husbands.”

  “Only but the one that I had and lost.”

  My heart immediately breaks for him, but he won’t have it.

  “Now, don’t make that face, I can’t stand any sadness today. Let me finish my story.”

  We’re nearing my apartments and both slow down. “Go on. I suspect you know how to parse the lies from the truth.”

  “Naturally. Yes, it was Prince Castian who broke off their engagement,” Leo says. “They went away on a voyage together and when they returned, it was over.”

  A year ago? “Was it before or after the Battle of Riomar?”

  Leo’s dark brow jolts up. “After. It was meant to be a celebration for the prince’s victory.”

  That was the first time he almost killed Dez. I replay fragments of the memory. The Príncipe Dorado and the rebel. My throat constricts with the need to cry, but Leo’s voice guides me out of that darkness.

  “Until that voyage, they’d loved each other deeply. Everyone envied them for so long. It was a romance for the ages. There are cantina songs about them, you know.”

  “I don’t.” I resist the urge to gag. “What could have been so terrible as to break off a century-old arrangement and true love?”

  “They say that Prince Castian caught Lady Nuria with someone else in her bed. When it came to light, the ladies of court wanted to have her tried for treason. A royal priest wanted to excommunicate her. But the lady is faithful, loyal above anything else. Who would take the prince’s word over hers?”

  Doubting the prince’s word, even in private, is dangerous. But it has been a dangerous night. Perhaps I’m wrong about Leo in many ways. He might
not be the Magpie, but now I know his true master. Lady Nuria.

  “Doesn’t that negate the treaty with their grandparents? Could Tresoros reclaim its independence?”

  Leo makes a whistling sound, as if even he can’t believe what he’s going to say. “That’s the thing. She was allowed to keep her family lands and title. The prince fought his own father for her to have them. The compromise was that she was to marry one of the judges of the Arm of Justice.”

  “But—”

  “May I ask why your interest in old royal gossip?” He cuts me off, and I take this as a sign that I’ve pushed him to his limit. We turn down a dark corridor and for the first time I’m relieved to see the guard posted outside of my room.

  I shrug and keep my voice light. Airy. The way I’ve heard the girls at court speak. “You can’t blame me if gossip is all I have for entertainment at the moment. I’ve been gone too long.”

  Leo’s smile is full of mischief, but if he suspects I have other intentions, he betrays nothing. With a friendly wave, he calls out. “Hector! Where have you been all night? We had to go take a turn around the sky bridge while we waited for you.”

  The way that Leo lies fascinates me. The name sounds familiar, but after the night’s excitement I can’t recall why.

  The guard leans against the wall directly across my door. His face remains in shadow, but I catch the crop of a dark beard and brown skin.

  “Sure you did,” Hector mutters. “How was the half-moon revel?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Leo says, walking backward to the door. He draws out a slender skeleton key and unlocks the door. “Good night, Hector.”

  That’s when it hits me. Hector. I think of Davida sitting in the kitchen peeling potatoes.

  “Parties are for children,” he mutters.

  Leo makes a face for my benefit, then walks into my room. I’m at his heels when I stop and turn to Hector. If there is a chance, I have to take it.

  “Davida’s in the kitchens,” I say.

  Even though his body is cast in shadow, I see it go rigid. “What business is that of yours?”