The impact of her head against a hard surface yanked Reina back to reality. It flared every nerve of pain like jabbing knives. She had been thrown into a shadowed room, where the scent of dust and manure pervaded the stagnant air. At least it was warmer than it had been, and the bedding was softer than the mountain ground. Voices approached and someone entered.
Reina bit down the ache to sit up and take stock of her surroundings. The dormitory was small, with plain walls and a wooden rosary nailed to the wall opposite her. The young valco woman named Celeste stood by the doorway. She fidgeted with Reina’s badge, which was the only source of light as dusk settled over the world outside.
As if she’d been waiting for Reina to wake, Celeste said, “Stay here, and don’t go anywhere else.”
“I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.” Her heart pounded in a mad race to outrun the pain. A contest it couldn’t win. “Please return my badge.”
“If you are who you say you are, then I must take it with me.” Celeste didn’t give Reina a chance for rebuttal, and Reina would have howled at her for leaving the room with her badge were she not so weak.
She wished sleep would claim her a second time. Was she going to die? The memory of the shadowed devils with the grinning, blunt teeth returned the moment her eyes closed. So she forced herself to stare at the ceiling instead.
Soon, the hum of a hushed argument filled the hall outside the room. The argument ended the moment the newcomers reached the doorway. Celeste brought reinforcements: a middle-aged woman who commanded Reina’s complete attention as she entered the room. The woman wore a billowing long-sleeved blue dress with fine golden embroidery. She had bobbed black hair, pale skin, and a strong resemblance to Celeste. Her mother, a human lacking the valco antlers.
She approached Reina’s bedside, cautiously, and sat on the stool positioned next to it. Another woman also entered, heralded by the clicking footsteps of heeled black boots on the stone floor. “Do?a Laurel?” she said. “What is the meaning of this?”
The second woman was the tallest in the room. Her umber skin was lustrous and free of marks, and her black hair was braided in a circle behind her head. She wore black pants, and her high-necked jacket was partitioned into red silk sleeves and a black silk bodice embroidered with golden laurels down the middle.
“Do?a Ursulina,” Do?a Laurel said by way of welcoming her to the room. “That is precisely what I’m trying to figure out.”
Stunned, Reina looked to the taller woman, her heart racing again. Suddenly everything about her features became familiar. The high cheekbones; the fullness of her lips. Yet there were other things Reina never saw in herself: The confidence and commanding presence. The opulence of her clothes.
“She was a victim of tinieblas. We found her on our way down from the Páramo,” Celeste said.
“There are tinieblas on my lands?” Do?a Laurel raised her voice, accusation dripping off her words. “You found her?”
“Yes, mami.”
“I’ve told you time and time again that I do not want to see you hunting tinieblas,” Do?a Laurel said, disappointment and concern simmering beneath the surface. The words took Reina back to that moment with those creatures, reminding her of the determined hunger in their eyes, how their blunt teeth tore chunks off her skin. Every mother should be concerned.
“It was Javier’s idea,” Celeste added, quick like a white lie.
Do?a Laurel pursed her lips, her attention drawn to Reina, who was finding it hard to restrain herself from squirming in pain in front of these women. Cautiously, the woman lifted the covers shielding Reina’s chest for a peek at the wound. A metallic stink filled the room.
“The tinieblas’ rot,” Do?a Ursulina said.
Do?a Laurel clicked her tongue, but her fa?ade was unbothered. She reached out and wiped the sticky bangs away from Reina’s temple, her pity clear in her eyes. “You survived the tinieblas? With your heart intact?” Then she turned to Do?a Ursulina and asked, “How is that possible?”
“My badge,” Reina croaked.
Celeste presented Do?a Ursulina with the trinket, then the letter. The taller woman’s eyes doubled in size, then her face contorted into a scowl as she recognized the medallion. She hesitated before accepting the letter with fingers bedazzled in fat gem-encrusted rings.
“What is your name?” she asked without lifting her gaze.
Reina choked on her own spit but answered.
Do?a Ursulina unfolded the stained letter, her jaw rippling as she read her own words inviting Reina to these cold lands across the mountains.