She snorted. “From day one you’ve been scheming with my life—bringing me here just so you can suck up to Don Samón. How much are you getting for bringing me, exactly?”
He took a step to her, his expression concerned. The decreasing distance terrified her. Eva skidded around the bed. Just three steps, and she could be out in the alcove—if Javier didn’t propel himself to stop her, as she knew he could.
“You married me and brought me here like a prize because you knew Don Samón is my monster father.”
There. She’d said it.
“What? Eva—you’re misinterpreting this.”
He approached. So she leapt to the bedside table, where she had left her crystal pendant—the one with the refilled iridio—and seized it.
Arm outstretched and crystal vial in hand, she whirled around, saying, “Not another step, or I’ll blow this whole room to el Vacío!”
Javier tensed, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. “Eva, think about what you’re doing.”
“Blowing you up, like I should have done the moment I found out I could?”
His throat bobbed. “You’ve got it all wrong.”
“On the contrary. Now I know why I’m in Fedria. Now I know why you were so amiable when showing up at my home to trick me into running away.” Something cruel unraveled the strings of her heart, like she had a monster lodged in her chest. She could feel it, tendril by tendril. She had thought herself so clever, seeking Javier with her letters as if she were an equal player in the plots they played. “You were lucky I was so stupid and gullible. I left my home to be handed to that man?”
“Eva.”
“When were you planning on telling me? Why not just hand me off the moment we came to Tierra’e Sol?”
“Eva.”
“I know!” she snarled. “Because you knew I’d never be all right with meeting him. He put a spell on my mother! She never recovered from what he did. And my whole family thinks I’m a monster like him!”
If the Serranos could be called a family at all.
“Eva,” he said again, and this time she sensed his intention of extinguishing their distance.
“Not one move, or I’ll blow you up!” She scoffed. “Like I have anything to lose.”
She preemptively tugged on those threads of starlight, summoning the rawness of the cosmic plane. She saw the universe superimposed on the room—on Javier. The power was right at her fingertips. All she had to do was let go.
He took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said in the exhaling air. “I brought you here because Don Samón Bravo the Liberator is your father.”
Despite her suspicions, the confirmation made it hard to breathe. She had liked the idea of denying it. If no one gave breath to the words, they could all pretend it wasn’t true…
“I married you and brought you here and introduced you and asked you to be agreeable because Don Samón has been yearning for this moment for years. And I was the one who gave it to him. I’m the one who brought him his daughter—his estranged, beautiful, mighty valco of a daughter. With Ludivina’s failing health, your hand in marriage is worth all the gold this wretched country has to give. Literally.”
Her lips trembled as the memories of the day overwhelmed her. “He bewitched and broke my mother,” she said in a tattered voice.
“Now, Eva, there are two sides to every story. That’s not what he says—”
“Of course he wouldn’t say that! He’s a rapist!”
The air around her hand crackled. Wisps of golden iridio began unraveling around the pendant. It was energy on the verge of rupture.
“Eva.” Her name came out of his lips as a plea. “The stories were fabricated by your grandparents! To stop your mother from running off with a rebel and an enemy of the Segolean Empire! To give a justification for why she, a married woman with a child, would give birth to a valco. They forced her and the whole world into repeating their fabricated narrative—the lie.”
The bands of magic grew thicker.
“Liar!” Eva snapped.
One such band popped, bursting with sparks of fire. The flames unraveled before ever hitting the ground.
“Why don’t you go ask him yourself?” Javier said.
She could see the restraint in him as he pushed back the demon from coming through. The black tendrils oozed, in and out of his cheeks.
“If he’s innocent, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” She thought of letting go. She could imagine the destruction. Then her heart descended further. She was stopped by the irrefutable truth that, despite her threat, she didn’t want to see Javier burn.
His voice was small when he said, “I didn’t want to tell you sooner because I knew you would react this way. I wanted you not to hate me, at least not just yet—”
“Why?” she barked.
“Because, like I said, I need you against Do?a Ursulina,” he said so softly. “Because I’m turning into a tiniebla.”
Her hand lost the spark of iridio. A weight plummeted to her belly. Her mouth sagged, for she could see it so clearly.
He spread his palms, surrendering to the truth. “Because I need to be there during the invocation to beg Rahmagut to cleanse me. Because my strength alone is not enough to take the damas from Do?a Ursulina. Yes, you were perfect for me. When you sent me your letter, I recognized that you could be the wife I needed for the legacy I will build. Then I dug around, and I discovered Don Samón had a daughter with a Serrano, and that daughter was you.”
Eva’s lips quivered, her vision blurring with an overflow of tears. She squinted, and they streamed down her cheeks. She lowered the pendant altogether.
“He didn’t come for you because more and more families in Venazia are antagonistic to his ideals, even if they were allies in the revolution. Back then, they had a mutual enemy. But now, there’s supposed to be peace, and he doesn’t get to say what happens to the granddaughter of Galeno’s governor.”
“Neither do my grandparents!” Eva cried.
He took another step, nodding, and the darkness left him. This time, seeing him approach didn’t make her afraid.
“No—you decide what happens to you. And I helped you leave them. I gave you all the tools so you could blossom into this flaming, terrifying”—a laugh escaped him—“amazing valco.” His gaze fell, and he looked younger, hopeless. He wrung his palms until they turned pink. “And now I just hope that you can help me. I’m turning, Eva. Every day, every spell I cast brings me closer to losing my mind.”
He stopped at arm’s reach.
Her own step halved the distance between them.
“You’re turning into a tiniebla,” she whispered. He looked so pitiful, she couldn’t deny her urge to comfort him. As her fingertips grazed his chin, a small spark of remnant iridio shocked both their skins. All his anger, his abuse… was it Javier treating her so cruelly? Or something else altogether?
Eva tried to imagine what it would be like but couldn’t. She couldn’t fathom what went through a tiniebla’s mind. Or if they even had any sapience to begin with… One thing was for sure, though: If she ever shared a similar fate, she’d do anything in her power to stop it.