Reina glanced at the tunnel’s entryway, bewildered, and saw a disheveled Eva doubled over, her body heaving with shaking pants. Like she had sprinted across universes to stop Javier in this moment. Only she had come a second too late.
Panicked, Reina focused on Celeste, her entire core wishing this to be a nightmare. All she had to do was wake up and see Celeste safe, healthy, and whole. But the reality was that no matter how hard she pressed on the opening or how much she spread her hands to drape over the wound, the blood never stopped flowing. She was a useless tourniquet. A useless friend. A useless protector.
Hot, blind panic swelled within her, growing in waves and clogging any chance of her ever breathing again. Reina trembled as Celeste’s warm blood soaked her hands and trousers, so warm and once alive, the smell so strong she tasted it in her mouth.
Someone skidded to a stop next to her, tried shoving her away from Celeste. Yet Reina fought them. Tears blurred her vision, and confusion welled around her, but the last thing Reina wanted to do was let go. That was when her name registered, screamed by Maior’s lips.
Reina wiped the tears away, smearing her face with Celeste’s blood, and realized the person pushing her was Maior, hands twisting and turning, Reina’s bismuto revealing the lilac of her geomancia.
“Heal her!” Reina barked, raising Celeste’s frame as she understood Maior’s intentions. “Now!” Without Rahmagut, there was no spell or incantation to bring someone back from the dead.
The dead.
Reina sobbed again.
It was now or never.
“Save Celeste.” Her swelling tears blurred her vision, and Reina hated herself all the more. She was going to miss these last few moments with Celeste.
“I—I think—I don’t know—I don’t know if it’ll work—”
Reina cursed Maior. “Save her! Use your galio—do something!”
Maior’s hands spread and kneaded, her brows knitting in deep concentration. The magic slithered into Celeste’s clothes, but there was no visible change in her. If anything, her face dulled.
Reina wanted to scream at Maior. “Please, be useful for once—”
“Reina.” Celeste’s soft voice cut through her climbing rage. Her blue eyes glistened, not in pain, but a bit sleepy, a bit gone.
Reina’s own tears threatened to blur the image of her in this final moment. “Please hold on,” she whimpered. “You’ll be all right.” It was a lie Reina was willing to believe and live by, if it meant it would give Celeste the slimmest chance to make it through. “Just hold on. We—we have galio. The bleeding—it stopped.”
“I’m so sleepy.”
“Celeste.”
“I just want to close my eyes.”
“No!”
Celeste took a big inhale and carried on. “I’m so glad… I’m so glad we shared the amapolas. I’m so glad our fates were bound, even for a little bit.”
Everything she said sounded like a goodbye. Reina didn’t want to hear it. This wasn’t it. It couldn’t be it.
“If it meant being in your arms now,” Celeste said in the softest of voices.
“Maior, save her.”
Reina sobbed. But to Celeste, it didn’t matter. She smiled while her lids closed. Then even the smile faded.
Reina pressed her bloody fingers against Celeste’s neck, praying for a pulse. But her hands were too shuddery—too shaken. She dropped her head to Celeste’s wet chest, which was still so warm.
Maior’s arms wrapped around Reina, trying to ground her. This time it did nothing.
Reina couldn’t breathe. The heat and shame clogged her throat. Everything was so wrong, so wrong, so wrong—it hurt.
Eventually Javier’s and Eva’s voices yanked Reina from that suffocating ocean. In fact, the reminder of Javier was what pulled her out. White-hot anger invaded her chest, flaring from her belly up.
Reina took in a big inhale. She peeled Maior’s arms off her and laid Celeste down, gently, because she deserved the treatment of a petal.
Across the tunnel, Eva called Javier a monster, but his mien had changed. He was on his knees, pleading, like he was someone other than the devil who’d impaled Celeste. To Reina, it didn’t matter.
Maior also rose, backing away. But Reina hardly noticed when she began walking to the sanctum.
Eva screamed something at Reina—which never registered in her mind—and went after Maior.
Reina let the touch of the blade’s hilt fill her senses. She let it tether to her being like an extension of her appendage. She had no sense or inkling of how much iridio was left in her heart. What she knew, much like how she knew hunger or pain, was that the iridio was flooding every inch of her being. She was the iridio, and the iridio was her. Reina basked in the throb of the geomancia, embraced the swell of muscle mass, uncaring of whether this would be her last.
With one swift slash, she cleaved the air where Javier had stood a split second prior. The bastard had reacted—heard her midswipe—quick enough to whirl away.
But when there was nothing but hatred in Reina’s core, it was easy for her to become as fast as Javier.
It was easy to turn into that same monster.
“Wait—listen to me!” Javier said, with such nerve that Reina swung at him again, howling, the entirety of her weight on the strike.
Javier swiveled away, reaching for his fallen sword to shield himself at the last moment.
“You killed her. Your niece. Your blood.”
“It wasn’t me. I wasn’t me.” Javier’s voice shook, his eyes glistening.
Reina swung at him again, backing Javier against the tunnel wall.
“Please understand: All this time I’ve been battling a curse.”
“Save your filthy lies!” Reina couldn’t wait for the moment when she got to slice off his tongue. When she could rob him of his good looks and of his life.
“And I still am!” Javier went on. “Because of Laurel, I’m doomed to become a tiniebla.”
Red swamped her eyes. “Don’t you do dare soil Do?a Laurel’s name,” Reina spat. “You’re a scheming rat. And you deserve to be brutalized like you brutalized Celeste.” She leapt again, swinging the blade down in a vertical line, and hissed when Javier rolled away.
“You can’t kill me—I’m on your side—” Finally, Javier began countering with his own swings. “Do?a Ursulina is killing the other ones.”
One, two, three slashes, the clang of steel echoing through the tunnel.
“Without my help, you won’t be able to stop her from taking Maior. You want to save her, don’t you?”
The clear, distilled rage gave Reina the quickness of feet, of arm, to deflect each strike with Ches’s weapon.
Javier reduced his reach, tricking her into lunging for a close slice to his kidneys, and brought down the hilt of his sword on her wrist before her blade could even graze his clothes. She huffed, pain exploding from her wrist, and was stunned as Javier used the close proximity to knee her hand.
Reina lost grip of the blade. It flew into the air, swiveling once, twice, then clanging against the ground.
“Please stop,” Javier begged.
Reina pivoted to him with a snarl. She didn’t care. She had nothing else to lose. She had the memory of Celeste, of her smiles, and of her fast-escaping blood.