We Set the Dark on Fire

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  And then there was Mama Garcia and her letter . . .

  She may have been a Segunda, but she was a Garcia, too. She wouldn’t act rashly, and she clearly had help. Someone within the house who knew the situation. Dani’s analytical mind looked for ways to pass a message along to La Voz, but Sota had said they would be in touch, so where did that leave her?

  Did she dare leave the complex to get the new information to them? Was anyone watching the house? Her mind spun in useless circles until she was dizzy, but she was no closer to finding an answer.

  If she was caught doing anything remotely suspect while Mateo was being watched, it would be the end for her. There were fifteen suspected La Voz contacts missing, and the military police were clueless or looking for a scapegoat.

  Had Mateo done it? And after everything she’d seen of him, did it even matter?

  There were no lines the Garcias wouldn’t cross to protect him from scandal. They would kill her if it meant he was never associated with a suspected sympathizer. They might be planning to do it already.

  But if they were, wasn’t it even more important that she get the information to them as soon as possible?

  Mateo, Mama Garcia, Jasmín, La Voz . . . The threads tangled in her exhaustion, leaving nothing but a vague sense of dread in their wake. If just one of them snapped, it would all unravel.

  Outside her window, the moon was low, waxing, bordering on full. The goddess in its face pulled at the tides of Dani’s blood, revealing a heart that was conflicted in more ways than one.

  Sleepless, she watched until the light disappeared below the sill.

  Dani had just settled back into her bed when light footsteps in the hallway set her pulse to pounding, her fears springing fully formed into her mind, like they’d only been biding their time. Had someone finally come? Would it be Mama Garcia, or would she have someone else do her dirty work? Dani thought back to Mia, demure in her black uniform in the dining room.

  Would her hand hold the knife steady?

  If this was really it, would Dani have the strength to fight off her death, or would tonight truly be the end?

  Her body shook like a leaf, heart pounding until she was sure it was audible from the hallway. She had only just begun to live her life on her own terms. She hadn’t been of any use to anyone. She wasn’t ready for this. She knew she should grab something heavy, hide. But all she could do was shake, frozen, in place.

  The footsteps stopped at her door. The pounding in her veins reached its crescendo. And then someone knocked at the door.

  All the tension left Dani’s body like a crashing wave; she collapsed onto her mattress, boneless. Assassins didn’t knock.

  “It’s me,” said a slightly breathless voice from outside, proving her point. “Can I come in?”

  The emotional swing from impending doom to heart-pounding romantic jitters was almost too much for Dani’s already frayed nerves. “Come in,” she said weakly, lying back down before sitting up, then lying back down again.

  “It’s too quiet in the house,” Carmen said, a nightgowned silhouette in the doorway, her voice barely more than a whisper. Dani hoped the darkness would conceal the trembling in her fingers. “Plus, I thought you might be torturing yourself over that letter. Do you mind if I stay in here tonight?”

  “Yes,” Dani said, hoping her breathlessness sounded like something besides ebbing terror. “I mean . . . no. I mean, of course I don’t mind.” She was grateful for the way the night hid the heat in her cheeks. Should she scoot over? Did Carmen want to lie beside her in this narrow bed?

  The heart-pounding feeling didn’t recede. Dani was nervous, and not in a butterflies-and-fireworks way. She had never let herself consider what lay down the path from their frantic rainstorm kiss the night before, and if she was being truthful, she didn’t think she was ready to. Not yet.

  But while her mind was racing, Carmen was settling into the lounge chair beneath her window, covering herself in the blanket she’d trailed across the floor from her own room. Dani thanked the gods in the walls, in the cushions of her chair, even the ones that lived in her accelerated, nervous heartbeat.

  The sound of Carmen’s body shifting were strangely intimate, and Dani couldn’t cool the heat that spread through her belly, seeking more fuel to set fire to.

  Finally, all was quiet.

  “Are you okay?” Carmen asked into the starlit darkness.

  “Yes,” Dani replied. “Just thinking.”

  “Worried about Mama Garcia?”

  “More worried about La Voz . . . ,” Dani said, the words still resisting the trust she was placing in Carmen. For some reason uttering them made her more conscious of the space between their bodies. Of the quiet in the house and the dare her presence seemed to have issued, even though she didn’t move closer.

  “Maybe they’ll all go to prison,” Carmen said, so casually that Dani laughed, a short, shocked thing that lingered. “I don’t know, is that a bad thing to hope for?”

  “I wish it was that easy,” Dani said, though she didn’t. Not really. She wanted to be the one to take down Mateo. Circumstance would never be enough. “The system will protect them, like it always does.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Carmen said, her voice soft.

  “It’s not,” Dani said, and she felt the truth of it in her bones. “That’s why we fight.”

  “How?”

  “We get to La Voz. We talk to the people who can make him pay when the government just wants to protect him.”

  “Where do we find them?”

  “I don’t know,” Dani admitted, frustrated. “I’ve met them in the marketplace a few times, but they said they’d find me when it was time . . .”

  “So we wait?”

  Dani took her time answering, weighing Sota’s instructions with the beating of her heart, the urgent pounding of her pulse that said it would be foolish to delay. Were these her instincts? Was this the reason La Voz had wanted her? And if so, wouldn’t she be foolish to discount them?

  “They said to lie low,” she said, unable to keep the uncertainty out of her voice. “Regain the Garcias’ trust. But all I want to do is climb out that window right now and go find them. Tell them about Mateo fleeing the complex on his parents’ orders.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” Carmen asked, her words heavy with the thrill of adventure. For a moment, Dani saw it, too, the two of them sneaking out into the night, making their way to the capital on a secret mission.

  “It’s risky . . . ,” she said. “For all I know they have eyes on Mateo already. And if Mama discovers we’re gone, it’ll just solidify her suspicions and put me in more danger.” She looked at Carmen, a small smile lifting her lips. “Put us in more danger,” she amended.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Carmen said. “I live for trouble.”

  “I got that impression, yeah.” They chuckled softly, their laughter making music together in the charged space between them. But underneath the laughter there was something stirring in Dani. Something that made her want to take more risks than this one.

  “Either way, it wouldn’t be smart to go at night, right?” Carmen said, the suggestive tone in her voice mirroring Dani’s restlessness.

  “Definitely not. I barely know where to find them in the daytime.”

  “So tonight we just . . .”

  She trailed off, and Dani felt the need to be close to her twining with the new bravery her role in the resistance had given her. The Primera mask, which had been cracking and splintering for days, fell away for the first time since she’d put it on, and Dani got up from her bed, her feet knowing where to go as her heart pounded at every pulse point.

  A stolen kiss was one thing. There was an absolute cutoff point. But tonight, with José and Mia the only people in the house, and the night stretching out until morning before them, there would be no one to tell them when to stop. How could a thought be so thrilling and so terrifying at once?

  Tomorrow, there woul
d be plans to make, and loyalties to discover, and a corrupt government to compromise. But tonight, there was Dani, and there was Carmen, and there was time.

  20

  As a Primera, you must be decisive. A moment of hesitation can spell disaster. Assess the situation, make your choice, and follow through.

  —Medio School for Girls, 14th edition

  THIS WAS NO MIDNIGHT EVIDENCE burning. No rushed trip into the marketplace trees. This was an empty room, and the staff dismissed for the evening, and Carmen reclined on a lounge chair waiting for her.

  This was Dani’s wanting, for once, getting the best of her fear.

  When she kissed Carmen this time, there was no clashing of teeth. No rolling thunder. No threat of rain. When she kissed Carmen this time, it was the sun breaking through the clouds, and Dani could see everything for miles.

  “Wow,” Carmen whispered when they pulled apart.

  “Wow,” Dani agreed.

  They giggled then, and Dani took fistfuls of Carmen’s hair and pulled her gently back until their lips met again, and again, and again.

  Dani had worried and wondered so often what came after kissing, but there had been no need. Kissing was a kingdom all its own, with a million secret places to be explored. There was no telling what tomorrow would bring. What threats would be leveled, what secrets would be explored. Either of them could be dead by morning, or arrested. Fleeing across the border to escape treason charges and assassins.

  Her feelings for Carmen were so much bigger than one night, but if tonight was all they had, Dani was determined to make it count.

  What could have been hours later, they lay beside each other on the lounge, breath slowing down, lips tender and used and smiling.

  Between them, Carmen traced lazy shapes with her index finger on Dani’s palm. “So, what’s next?” she asked, and Dani felt her languid muscles tense.

  What did Carmen expect? She was a Segunda, of course; maybe kissing wasn’t enough. Dani tried not to balk at the thought of clothing coming off, of touching someone else the way she’d barely touched herself, but the idea of it loomed like something dark ahead of her, pulling at her even as it warned her away. She wasn’t ready. Not yet.

  “Hey,” said Carmen, tugging at one of Dani’s curls, pulling her back down to the ground. “You okay? I just want to be able to talk to you about resistance stuff, you know? We’re in this together and—”

  “Oh!” Dani barked, interrupting in her relief. “Yeah! Right! Resistance stuff!”

  Carmen looked utterly puzzled, then her eyes went round as coins. “Oh, did you think . . . ? Because I didn’t mean . . . No. We don’t have to . . .”

  Dani couldn’t help it; she started giggling. And then she couldn’t stop. And then Carmen joined her, both of them laughing until their sides were sore and everything was quiet.

  In that quiet, Carmen reached over again and took Dani’s hand. “Look,” she said, drawing Dani’s eyes to her face, her lips . . .

  “Don’t worry about that, okay? If we want to . . . when we’re ready . . . we’ll talk about it. But for now, I just want to do this until I get dizzy.”

  The halting, stuttering sentence, designed to ease Dani’s fear, did nothing but ignite the feeling that they were on borrowed time. What if there was never a later? What if they never got the chance to be ready?

  Carmen, oblivious to her thoughts, leaned in, keeping their fingers intertwined as she bumped noses with Dani, pulling back a bit, a question in her eyes.

  Dani answered it by closing the space, her fear gone, nothing but the desire to make the most of every moment driving her. By the time they pulled apart again, the dark velvet of the sky was lightening, and neither of them could ignore basic human necessities anymore.

  “Why can’t your lips also have nutrients?” Carmen wailed. “I’m starving!”

  “I mean, they do, but you’d have to eat them,” Dani said logically.

  “And what a waste that would be,” Carmen smirked, getting to her feet and letting her nightgown fall in folds around her thighs. “Stay here?” she asked when Dani stood up, too. “I’ll bring something back. I don’t know if we can keep the air from catching on fire between us right now, and that would be kind of suspicious, don’t you think?”

  When Carmen left, Dani walked into her bathroom and splashed water on her flushed face, taking in her reflection and all the ways it had changed since last night. She didn’t look like a Primera anymore. She looked like a girl who knew the taste of lips and tongues. A girl who had wondered what was next.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, once, twice, trying to forget the world outside this room. Mama Garcia, who might still want Dani dead. Jasmín, who was somewhere worse than prison. La Voz, in the dark without the information Dani had gathered. The whole of the outer island, where people were starving and sick and dying while she bloomed.

  Suddenly, the room seemed airless. How dare she find joy when there was so much suffering in the world? When she was the cause of more than a little of it?

  “Back!” Carmen cried from her bedroom, but Dani couldn’t move. “Dani? Are you . . .” When she caught sight of Dani’s reflection, she paused. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dani said, trying to smile. Trying to recapture a little of the dreaminess that had carried them to sunrise together. “It just feels . . . wrong, somehow. To be so happy when everything is so . . .”

  “Awful?” Carmen asked, and inexplicably, she was smiling.

  Carmen crossed the room, coming up behind Dani and wrapping her arms around her waist, settling her chin in the curve of Dani’s shoulder. In the mirror, they complemented each other. Their skin melting from the deep brown of Dani’s to the golden hue of Carmen’s. Even Dani’s face looked softer.

  “The bad stuff will be there,” Carmen said, kissing the side of Dani’s neck. “If we want to fight it, we have to find joy where we can. We have to find beauty. We have to take our moments to be happy. Because the joy is what keeps us strong and reminds us we have something to fight for.”

  Dani turned to face her. “How did you get so smart?” she asked, and Carmen answered by kissing her again, on the lips this time. Something lingering and slow that carried them back into the bedroom, where there was fruit, and tea, and a hundred more kinds of kisses.

  While they ate, Carmen asked questions, and Dani found she could answer them honestly. Her favorite thing about home, the thing she missed most about her family, her favorite place in the world. Dani turned the tables before long, and while Carmen told her about growing up in Mar de Sal, Dani watched her eyes drift, her face open up.

  She missed home as much as Dani did.

  “My family is gigantic,” Carmen said, when she asked. “A million cousins, sisters, aunts and uncles that are like parents. We were a huge, rowdy bunch, always on some adventure or another.”

  “And you were the ringleader?” Dani asked, twisting a strand of Carmen’s hair around her finger, wishing every day could be this endless.

  “Is it so obvious?” Carmen asked, her smile a little sad. “I was one of the youngest, but I was smart and sneaky, and I could always get the adults to believe whatever story we cooked up about where we’d been.”

  “That makes sense,” Dani said, though the idea that Carmen had always been so good at lying caught like a thorn in her thumb.

  “Does it?” Carmen mused. “I’ve always considered myself an open book.”

  “All the best lies have some truth in them,” Dani said, the whirlpool of reality starting to pull at her feet, dragging her out of their perfect night and into a morning where no one could be trusted. Where disaster was always looming.

  “There’s this light when there’s a storm coming in off the ocean,” Carmen said, and Dani could tell she was trying to pull her out of the darkness. “It’s like everything beneath the clouds is glowing from within.”

  “I remember,” Dani said, giving in. “It felt dangerous and beautiful,
all at once.”

  “Kind of like you,” Carmen said.

  “Kind of like you.” They kissed again then, and Dani realized that the girl pushing her backward, laying her head against Dani’s chest, had a power she’d never given anyone.

  To expose her.

  To break her.

  Dani had never allowed anyone that close before. But Carmen had slipped in and taken her place in Dani’s heart like the world’s gentlest thief.

  Maybe this was trust, she thought, her thoughts growing hazy as Carmen’s fingers traced circles on her arms, her stomach, as the warm weight of them relaxed into the rug. Giving someone the power to ruin you, betting your life on the belief that they wouldn’t.

  “We’re out of tea,” Dani said as the sky turned rosy beyond the windows. “Be right back.” Carmen let her go, even though it was clear she needed more than tea. The night had been magical—something she never thought she’d be allowed to have—but with the dawn came decisions, and Dani needed space to make them.

  She’d almost made it to the kitchen when she heard voices, and her breath caught in her throat as she retreated back into the early morning shadows, hoping against hope that it was just Mia and José discussing the deliveries from the market. But something in the hair prickling on the back of her neck told her it wasn’t.

  As she waited, Dani’s breathing came slower, each inhale shorter as fear wound its way into her stomach and lungs. By the time the footsteps came, her heart was almost loud enough to drown them out. But not quite.

  The first thing she felt was a sense of déjà vu. Flattened against a wall in shadows, listening to heavy footsteps in the hall. The same footsteps, she could be almost sure, that had broken her and Carmen apart the night of Jasmín’s arrest. The ones that had disappeared toward the south end of the house.

  But tonight, she was barely ten yards from the kitchen, and she had a feeling she was about to find out who they belonged to.

  “I told you, we can’t talk about this here,” came a voice in a hissing whisper. A man’s voice. But where was it coming from?