I shrug and hum the song that was playing when she was working. It’s been stuck in my head, familiar in a way I can’t explain. “No reason. I thought she was waiting for someone, that’s all.”
I close the door behind me. As I climb into bed after Leo leaves, the weight of today sinks into my skin. Constantino bleeding out at court and the world moving on without him like he didn’t affect it. But he did. Even if he was taken and warped into something unrecognizable, he once belonged to a family.
I get out of bed and rummage through my things until I find the coin Dez gave me. It feels wrong to keep it. I should try to give it back to Illan one day. But for now, it is the only thing I have of Dez to remember that he was real. I close my eyes and think of him haloed by the moon. So beautiful it aches. I press the coin to my lips.
“This would be easier if you were with me,” I whisper to a boy who cannot answer.
I tuck the coin under my mattress. All I can do now is hope that my hunch about Hector and Davida is right. It’s the only way I will be able to sneak into the prince’s quarters.
Hector’s heavy boots pacing in circles begin to lull me to sleep. I stare at the canopy over my bed. Her bed. It’s a strange feeling, living in a room that belonged to someone else, someone who was meant to marry a prince before she was born, before her parents even dreamed her up. A girl whose clothes I wear and bed I sleep in. A girl who was almost charged with treason and might have had dreams of her own. Infidelity among common marriages is bad enough. But she was said to have been unfaithful to the prince. That would have been tantamount to treason. How could she keep her lands and title then? What would be so valuable about their alliance that Castian, ruthless as he is, would have stood for watching her marry another man? Unless… Tresoros is known for their rich earth. Minerals and gems.
I think of the prince standing in the Forest of Lynxes. Dez stopped me from using my magics. Castian said it wouldn’t work on him. I didn’t think of it. So many Leonesse wear their holy wooden wards but they don’t truly understand our power. Maybe something discovered beneath Tresoros counteracts Moria powers, just as metals amplify them? Could the weapon have come from Tresoros and therefore the union with Puerto Leones had to be retained?
I lie in the quiet for a moment, and that’s when I realize—it’s quiet. Utter silence outside my door.
I sit up, my blood buzzing and alert. This may be the only chance I get.
I change into a pair of black riding trousers and a black tunic. After rummaging through a drawer, I find the hidden flower pin I wore the day I met King Fernando. I rip off the cloth petals, leaving behind only the sharp metal clip, and secure it into my waistband. Perhaps I’d dreamed of using its sharp steel tip to stab a prince. But it’ll pick a lock just as well.
As I move across the sky bridge leading back to Castian’s rooms, I feel like the Lady of Shadows herself, in her dress made of night and morning stars. Revelers cry their songs, and the precarious roll of wagon wheels over cobblestones masks my tread.
With Jacinta’s memory, I find the Bloodied Prince’s doors like true north. The room is unmanned, and my fingers remember the familiar tricks of searching the metal organs of the lock.
When the metal gives and I hear the right click, I hold my breath, look over my shoulder once, and pray the Lady of Shadows is on my side.
I heave open the heavy doors and slip inside the empty apartments. For a moment, I let it sink in that I’m inside the room where Castian lives while he’s at the palace. A queasy sensation brings a hot flash across my entire being, because from now until the end of my days I will never be able to think of Dez without thinking of Castian, too.
I let my eyes adjust to the darkness, then cut across the carpeted floor to the window. I part the curtains, letting in waking sky, a strip of pale blue along the horizon. I must hurry. Leo will be appearing at my door soon. He always comes to wake me when the morning bleeds red beneath the lip of the curtains.
There’s an oil lamp and matchsticks on the parlor table. My fingers, though steady while I was breaking in, are now betraying me, and it takes me three matches before I can light the damn thing.
I make my way through the blue parlor with its grand tapestries and plush couches, and hurry into his bedchambers. The walls are covered in deep blue velvet, containing waves of sheen and shadow that make them seem to undulate. I pull back the curtains and am startled by the way the light casts an aura on the walls and floor. It is as if the room was designed to give the inhabitant the feeling of being under the sea, of constant sway and motion.
It is a dream, and I hate myself for feeling at peace in here.
I go to the bookshelf filled with leather- and cloth-bound books. I’ve heard of hidden doors unlocked by pulling a lever disguised as a book. This bookcase is certainly big enough, so I pull nearly every book. Nothing.
I set the lamp on the large dresser in the adjoining closet where Jacinta gathered the prince’s marriage clothing. I rummage through the drawers, but there are only clothes and belts and sashes and caps and tassels.
“Where are you?” I whisper to the room, begging it to speak its secrets back.
I continue to a study with a large wooden desk littered with letters, still-rolled scrolls, pots of sepia ink, and a large conch shell, most common in Citadela Salinas. I make to grab it, but my senses fill with leather and salt, and I can picture Castian sitting here and listening to the sound of waves. Anger bubbles in my throat because he doesn’t deserve this peace he’s engineered.
I move the stacks of parchment to reveal the surface of the painted desk. Solid black with gold lines and stars etched into it—constellations. I can make out the hexagon that marks the Leones constellation, said to have been put there by the Lord of Worlds to mark the new age of the Fajardos’ conquest of Puerto Leones.
I always thought it looked more like a cat than a lion.
When I return the parchment stack to its place, I realize that it’s a map of Puerto Leones. There are two iron winged lions stamped with ink on Sól y Perla, a coastal town in the east, and home to the most barbaric and dreaded prison in our country. Soledad.
Why would Castian mark a prison he’s been to probably dozens of times?
I freeze at the warped creak of a floorboard. The sky is starting to pinken at the edges, and my heart spikes with the distant crow of a rooster. I hold my breath, but no one comes through the doors to discover me. I cut across the room to the wall of painted portraits. There’s none of Castian as a child or even him as a grown man, but there are several of seascapes and ships. I never would have guessed the prince was such a nautical admirer, though he is named after the bluest sea in the world. The one painting that strikes me the most is that of a woman.
If I step back, I can see that all the other paintings surround her, as if she is adrift at sea. I pick up the lamp again and hold it closer. She’s breathtaking, with long blond hair that curls over her shoulders in perfect rings. There’s a golden crown over her head studded with brilliant rubies, fat as blood drops. Something inside me squeezes painfully when I look into the calming blue-green of her eyes, the color of the Castinian Sea. The prince’s eyes.
This must have been Castian’s mother, King Fernando’s second queen of Puerto Leones. Queen Penelope.
I’m mesmerized by the portrait, as much for the beauty as for the questions that now plague my mind. What must she have thought of him? Her oldest son, the heir to the throne, the murderer of her only other child? How far can one mother’s love truly stretch?
It is obvious that he revered her, though, to have given the portrait such prominence in the room. It’s so arresting that for a moment, my whole body tingles with something—some longing I cannot name. Perhaps it is the longing of all orphans. There is nothing like the sweet love of a mother, the safety of a mother, even if that safety is only an illusion.
And that’s when something occurs to me.
Without wasting any more time, I hurriedly dig my f
ingers along the edges of the frame. At first, I feel foolish, silly, desperate. It’s strangely intimate to run my hands along this beautiful portrait.
But then—I find what I’m looking for.
The vulnerable spot.
A hinge.
Moments later, I hear a satisfying click as I lift a latch that releases the portrait’s clasp, revealing a hidden vault.
Thank you, Mother of All.
And thank you, Queen Penelope.
I breathe in the dust inside this vault, large enough to fit a crouched body. I set the lamp at the center and go through its contents.
My heart races when I grab the black box in the hidden compartment. I rip open the lid, electricity coursing through my veins, but this is not the box I saw in Lozar’s memory. This is ornate and not the right size.
I rummage through the trinkets in the velvet lining—iron toy soldiers with drawn swords, dozens of marbles in all sorts of colored glass, and a small wooden sword a child might have trained with. There’re a dozen letters, the wax seals opened and scented with a thick perfume of roses.
I slam the box closed. This is not the weapon!
I rub the sweat from my upper lip and shut the portrait.
Then I can feel the magics before I see the pulse of light. In a decorative bowl full of sea glass, there’s a bit of alman stone. It’s a jagged rectangle, like it was chipped out of a bigger piece. Justice Méndez keeps the stones under lock and key. Could he have placed this here to spy on the prince? The glow within the crystal is strong, which means the memories are still recent.
I pocket it to read in my rooms. The sky is too bright, but if I run, I can make it back before anyone can see me leave this place.
I quickly whirl around, but I bump into the desk, knocking the conch shell off the table. I dive for it and catch it just before it falls and shatters.
“Careful,” a voice says. “Those are quite the collector’s items.”
Sweat pools between my shoulder blades, and I blink several times to make sure I’m not imagining him.
“Leo.” My brain is firing in all directions and it’s the only thing I can say. “I—”
“Say nothing.” His voice is gruff, angry. He takes the shell from my hand and lets go of a hard sigh as he sets it down. “After everything—No. Let us both say nothing.”
How did he know I was here?
Then I realize, this must have been what Méndez wanted. To remove the lock and the guards to see where I’d go. I walked right into a trap.
That is, until I see the item Leo slips from his jacket pocket and sets on the center of the desk. Roses waft from the sealed letter. This isn’t correspondence from the king or Justice Méndez. It’s clearly something far more personal.
“Follow me,” he says, clearing his throat severely.
I do so without question, too stunned to do anything else but walk beside him across the sky bridge we’ve traversed dozens of times together, and back to my door, where he lets us both in and busies himself with the routine we’ve created.
I think of the letters in the prince’s keepsake box. Whose letters but Lady Nuria’s would the prince have kept? Are the prince and Nuria still together after all that happened between them? What message could Nuria be sending him now, through Leo?
As if reading my mind, Leo turns to me with a half smile. Morning light dances across the room. We are bathed in reds and yellows. The illusion of fire follows me wherever I go.
“You’re lucky, you know. You’re quite the favorite.”
“Why is that?” What’s he getting at?
“Because you won’t have to give up Lady Nuria’s lovely chambers, since she will be given apartments suited to the wife of a judge.”
“She’s here?”
“She arrived not moments ago after three weeks away in Citadela Salinas. But she’s returned for the Sun Festival. Hence the missive I just delivered. But that’s between you and me, of course. No one’s to know I’ve been helping them stay in touch. Anyway, you get to keep her rooms, and she’ll be relegated to guest quarters.”
I hardly know what to make of this. Is he telling me so that I will seek her out?
Lady Nuria. The prince’s onetime fiancée. Back here.
I must seek an audience with her.
As for Leo—that’s the thing about trust. It can also be solidified with mutually assured destruction.
FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS, I AM THE PICTURE OF OBEDIENCE. I GO WHERE LEO and Sula tell me to go. I help in the kitchens and with the lavanderas. The paranoia of getting caught takes over. It’s like my body does not belong to me. Even when I’m alone, the sensation that there’s someone watching me lingers. It is a feeling that settles ice-cold on my spine, paralyzing me with such fear that it is not until the middle of the second night that I find the courage to read the alman stone I stole from Prince Castian’s room.
After I prepare for bed, the fall of footsteps alerts me to the guards outside. I get under the covers and cradle the glowing alman stone in my hands. Each new memory I have of the prince warps the previous one, unraveling different kinds of hatred I didn’t know I was capable of. He’s a murderer, a madman—power hungry and cruel to the women around him. And yet, everyone still wants him. I hesitate before pulling the memory from the alman stone because I don’t know what I will find.
Castian takes off his golden circlet. He’s covered in blood and dirt. It streaks his face and neck. His clothes are steeped in it. His hands tremble as he undoes the ties of his tunic.
An older attendant comes in. Her large brown eyes give her the look of an owl. But when he sees her, he lets go of a long breath. She looks like she wants to go to him, but doesn’t. Her rough hands move in the air.
Castian nods solemnly. “A bath would be lovely, thank you, Davida.”
The woman bows and picks up the clothes he’s discarded, then leaves. As the sound of water runs, Castian watches the painting of his mother. He stares at her for a long moment, shakes his head, then opens the secret compartment behind the painting. He reaches into the safe and withdraws a long rectangular wooden box etched with gold symbols. His face is stone, resolute. He marches out of the room.
When he returns, his hands are empty. Davida reenters and holds out a robe for him.
I sit in the dark for a long time and process what I’ve seen.
Castian did have the weapon in his room, but I was too late. I was always going to be too late because that was the day he murdered Dez. I remember the clothes he wore, the pattern of the blood on his face. I remember charging toward him and being stopped.
He came back to his rooms and ran a bath. How could Davida attend to him? Is that why she’s in the kitchens? A place to go when the prince is gone?
When I finally fall asleep, I dream of being swallowed by the sea.
Come morning, Leo and I talk about everything and nothing but finally return to an easy rhythm. He never mentions our run-in at Prince Castian’s chambers again, not to ask me why I was there or to explain his own actions, which leads me to believe I’m safe. He clearly doesn’t want anyone to know about him being a messenger for his old mistress as much as I don’t want anyone to know about me rummaging around Castian’s apartments.
With four days left until the Sun Festival, it’s difficult to search the palace during the day because Alessandro keeps getting better at trailing me. Sometimes, I’ll swear I’m alone, and then I catch him near me. The thing that gives him away is the cloying scent of holy oils. It’s like he bathes in them.
I remain with Leo, and I tell myself it is for protection. But really, he’s the only friend I have in the world.
Leo fills me in on all the court gossip. Lady Sevilla caught her husband in a compromising position with her own sister and may not attend the queen’s garden party. Duque Arias’s ship was lost at sea during its voyage back from Islas del Rey, the king’s private islands.
We’re interrupted by the jostle of the doorknob. Leo’s green eyes narr
ow with confusion. Only Leo has the key.
And Méndez.
The justice lets himself into my room and dread coils in my gut. Dressed in riding trousers and a long tunic with a decorative sword belt strapped around his waist, he looks like he’s ready for a long journey. Where would he go less than a week before the festivities?
I hate that he strides in as if he is entitled to be here. I hate that when he looks at me, his gray eyes brighten. I hate that I am relieved to see him, just for a moment.
“Renata,” he says, tugging off his gloves. “Leonardo. I thought I might catch you before your duties.”
Leo and I rise to our feet at the sound of our names.
“What a surprise,” I say, a brightness in my voice I’ve learned from listening to the courtiers that flitter around the palace. “You’ve been too busy for me, my justice.”
Leo hurries forward. “May I fetch you something—”
Méndez holds up his hand and Leo falls silent. Blood rushes to my face as I wait for him to speak. “I came to see the status of your wound and give you instructions.”
“My justice?”
Leo clears the food trays and wipes down the table.
“I am sorry, my sweet. I am called away on matters of the king,” Méndez says, but the curt tone of his voice makes me wary to continue to prod.
“I was about to change her bandage,” Leo says, returning from the adjoining room with the healing kit. Fresh cloth and tinctures in brown glass bottles. A needle and thread in case my wound has reopened.
“That won’t be necessary,” Méndez says. “Lady Nuria is here. Please see that she and Judge Alessandro have everything they require.”
At the mention of her name, Leo and I look at each other. His dark eyelashes flutter and he tugs on the bottom of his attendant jacket, the only sign that he might be nervous. My heart spikes to my throat, but I break our gaze and begin unwrapping my own bandage.
“Right away, my justice,” Leo says, and folds into a low bow before leaving.
Incendiary Series, Book 1 Page 24