She shuddered, and her sob betrayed the holding back of her tears.
“What about afterward? My family—they treated me horribly for being valco. I grew up believing you were a monster.” She knew she was a coward for not facing him. A coward for not speaking Javier’s truth. “I thought I was a monster, until Javier allowed me to be a valco for real.”
She could only imagine how different her life would have been if she’d had a valco father to guide her. She would be glowing, like Ludivina and Celeste.
Eva’s chest burned with envy.
“New governments are fickle and weak. There’s a lot of work to be done to inspire patriotism for a nation. During those years, if I hadn’t dedicated myself to the work, then Segol could have taken over again. Everything would have been undone. And when I found out about Dulce’s death, I feared it was too late. I was too ashamed of the consequences of my inaction.”
The clock on his wall chimed, like an umpire pacing this game they played.
“Afterward, I decided it would only be appropriate if you came of your own accord. The choice was not mine alone anymore.”
She flinched as he draped his hand over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry that I failed Dulce, and you. I understand this is a lot to take in, and you’ve been through so much already. But I want to have this conversation when you feel ready.”
His hand left her, and Eva turned around, surprised.
“I have been waiting nineteen years for this moment.” He smiled, his eyes sunny and his cheeks tanned, the late-morning sunlight gilding his antlers. “I can wait a few more days, for when you’re ready to talk. For when you’re ready to hear my side of the story. Because, Eva Kesaré, I wholeheartedly believe you should stay where you belong, with your father.”
Eva’s chest did a little flutter. His eyes shimmered with the caress of tears, as surely hers did.
She wiped them away and whirled. “Thank you” was all she said under the doorway; then she fled.
Eva returned to a room too big for her alone, to a bed made for lovers and a wardrobe housing the tailored high-necked outfits of a man. She shed her dirty clothes, then drowned herself in the lukewarm tub that had been brought up and filled with water scented in jasmine and hibiscus. There she slept until her skin shriveled like a prune.
Don Samón was true to his word, as a nurse and a maid later invaded her privacy to mend her wounds and feed her boiled plantains and grouper stew. Then, hours later, when the Tierra’e Sol sun was a descending fiery ball, bleeding the horizon in reds and mulberries, Maior came to her door.
She was dressed in loose linen robes, her torso and arms wrapped in bandages and her face swollen and glistening with ointments.
They stared at each other for several long moments, until the caw of a faraway parrot shattered their spell. When Eva extended her hands, Maior melted into her embrace.
“Can I sleep with you?” Maior’s whisper tickled the fine curly hairs around Eva’s neck.
The request was a surprise. All this time Eva had imagined Maior wouldn’t want to peel herself from Reina. “Of course,” she whispered back, brushing away Maior’s soft locks.
They held hands and walked to the bed after shutting the door behind them. “Why doesn’t Don Samón’s medic mend your wounds?” Eva said as Maior curled into a ball on Javier’s side of the bed.
Between a stifled yawn, Maior said, “He seems tired from all he had to do for Celeste. Maybe I’ll go to him tomorrow.” She patted the cotton beside her and said, “I don’t want to be alone tonight, though.”
Eva bit her lip. Her heart was tight—the memory of the tomb stomping it into a dried mush. Maior had come so close to dying, and it was all her fault. She swallowed a thick breath and rushed to Maior’s side.
Maior frowned as she noticed something on Eva’s hair. She crept closer to brush back Eva’s curly bangs. “Your antlers are black,” she murmured.
Eva’s hand shot up to touch them. The texture felt more ragged than before, rippled.
She crawled out of the bed to stare in shock at herself in the standing mirror. All that remained of the alabaster color were lines branching like lightning. The rest was colored in black.
Maior stood behind her to stare at their reflection. “What do you think it means?”
“Trauma,” Eva joked, and grinned at Maior’s bubbling giggles.
Though the more Eva inspected the twists and ragged edges, the more satisfaction stirred inside her. What if she had come out of that tomb as something more than valco? Javier’s compliment drifted back to her again, taunting, because no one had yet claimed the title of strongest geomancer in Fedria.
They crept back to the bed, under the covers. Eva held Maior in a loose embrace as the moon rose through the open alcove. Rahmagut’s Claw was not visible from this angle. She brushed the black hair from Maior’s temple and watched her lashes flutter and close. She supposed she ought to be thankful. Rahmagut’s tomb had collapsed, and Maior was safe.
When sleep found Eva, it was soothing and light. Then it left her, like a coy maiden running away. Eva watched the star-speckled sky for a while, listening to Maior’s gentle breathing, and knew her night of sleep was ended.
That was why, after she slipped out of Maior’s limp embrace, she scurried through the halls of Don Samón’s manse. She knew, from chatting with the servants ealier, that the prisoner cells were detached from the manse, inside a stone fortress accessible through the beach.
Eva crossed the sandy path with the moonlight as guide, her nightgown fluttering from the tropical breeze. She reached the cobbled steps to the fortress and glanced back, guiltily searching for watching eyes, then stepped inside.
Every door she opened was loud and rusted with humidity, every step through the flagstones a thunder. It was no wonder Javier was sitting up by the cells, waiting, when she entered the room with a flaming wisp as a companion.
Despite the obvious trembling of his body, he had the hint of a smirk on his lips.
“You can’t live without me, can you?” he said as she fetched the heavy iron key and opened his cell. She allowed herself in.
Don Samón’s cells were so seldom used they only smelled of brine.
“You’d think being a prisoner would take away that arrogance,” she said, her hands itching to reach forward.
In the end, Eva settled for kneeling in front of him, keeping a safe distance.
His face was purple and battered, his beauty stripped by the beating Reina had given him.
“Why did you come?” he asked after the seconds brought a silence better fit for breaking.
In truth, Eva didn’t know. “I’m going to tell your brother everything. And Reina.”
“You’re going to tell them how you sped up my turning? How my days as a sane valco are numbered?”
She sucked in air. “If you turn, I can still control you.”
He let out a little chuckle, then moist coughs.
“You’re going to tell Enrique how your magic drove me into shoving a sword through his daughter’s belly?”
Eva’s lips pursed. She slapped him.
It was a meek one, and he sneered.
“Have some respect—some decency. You almost killed her.”