Reina savored the information in her mouth, noted how in this rule, he and Laurel were the exception.
His voice went even lower as he added, “You know better than anyone that every valco birth is a gift from the gods. We do not have the luxury to choose.”
Do?a Laurel unfastened Don Enrique’s pants herself.
“Javier is what Mother wanted.” His voice shook when he lifted his lips to her ears. “Power still matters in this world, even as humans try to change this to better protect their frailty. But Celeste is beyond human. She doesn’t need the protection of the law. She is Mother’s legacy.”
He thrust into his wife, earning himself her broken exhale.
When he looked up, those dead-blood eyes found Reina.
Reina’s heart stopped, and should have stayed still, because she was dead anyway.
But she ran.
She descended as far as the underground, leaving the mora juice atop the first chest of drawers she passed, her skin humming with panic. Her fear took her there, she realized as she stood outside Do?a Ursulina’s lair, doubling over and gulping down the air of decay infecting the corridor.
If there was anyone who could dissuade Don Enrique from ripping her bowels open, it would be Do?a Ursulina. But Reina couldn’t imagine her grandmother ever standing between her and the caudillo. Reina had seen Don Enrique spar against his officers while she carried dirty rags for the laundress or while she minded the goats. She had seen the way he swung his greatsword at lightning-fast speed with a ferocity that should only exist in legends. With her own eyes, she’d witnessed why valcos had evaded enslavement and instead risen to prominence as military leaders. Hidden beneath their immaculate fa?ades were creatures who could rip leather and chains with their bare hands. And now she had meddled in the privacy of the strongest valco in all Venazia.
She knocked on her grandmother’s door as the panic flared again. Maybe Do?a Ursulina wouldn’t stand between them, but surely Don Enrique wouldn’t banish Reina if he saw she was essential to his left-hand woman.
Inside, Do?a Ursulina leaned over her desk, engrossed in the writings of a large scroll and surrounded by other strewn literature. She looked up to the intruding Reina with the whites of her eyes inundated in black. “I could hear you all the way down the stairs. You have no sense of stealth.”
Reina let out a shuddery breath. Don Enrique was valco. He had better ears and eyes than any nozariel or human. He’d probably known she was skulking outside the whole time.
“What do you want? Don Enrique knows he shouldn’t be bothering me—I’m hard at work. And if it was that woman Laurel who summoned me, well, then tell her nothing at all. She doesn’t deserve explanations.”
Every doubt embraced Reina with a wicked, mocking smile. She hesitated, the words sounding silly even before she murmured them. “Does Don Enrique know everything that happens in this manor?”
Her grandmother’s raised eyebrow was her answer.
“I saw him and Do?a Laurel together, and I wasn’t supposed to. And he knows—”
“What does it matter? This is their home.”
Reina frowned, relieved. She stepped closer, seeing the scroll was an elaborate star chart.
“I suppose I should ask what you were doing in their private quarters, but, alas, I do not care. You’re but a fly on the wall to them. Meek and insignificant.”
She met her grandmother’s gaze, even if their darkness inspired nothing but fear. But Reina didn’t want to be fearful. She wanted to be irreplaceable, otherwise there would be nothing stopping them from expelling her back to where she came from.
“I don’t want to be meek and insignificant.” She had seen the staff cower in the presence of Do?a Ursulina, like they did with the caudillo. It wasn’t hard to see why. But Reina wished to know how Don Enrique and Do?a Ursulina had come to be that way. She wanted to learn from them. “I want to be respected.”
Do?a Ursulina croaked a laugh. “Expect it to be an uphill battle. You’re not in Fedria anymore. This is a land that’s slowly ridding itself of nozariels. Here, soon, your lot will disappear, just like the yares were killed off.”
The name was a familiar one, even if Reina had to search deep in the confines of her memories for it. Yares, the horned and winged man-eaters who’d shared the continent with valcos and nozariels before Segol’s colonization. They’d been hunted into extinction shortly after the humans had arrived.
“You should consider yourself lucky the ?guilas allowed you into their household. There’s a ban on nozariels, and most landlords hold the opinion that it’s cheaper to slit their throats and bury the bodies than to secure them passage to Fedria. After all, there’s no law against slaying animals.”
“I’m not—” Reina’s hands curled into fists. “We’re not animals. We’re people.”
The words weren’t new to her ears. She knew her life mattered less than a human’s. But it cut deeper uttered by someone who shared her blood.
Do?a Ursulina reached for a nearby cup and took a sip. “No. You are daughter to my son, whom I loved, even if he abandoned me.” Her lips drew into a line as she stared at the map, drawn into the memory of a life past. “He was supposed to be like a brother to Enrique, did you know that? He was my world. Then that nozariel woman had to come and poison him with radical ideas of a life in Segolita. She took you both to live in misery. So forgive me if I don’t exactly have the highest regard for your kind. If I can’t help looking at you and seeing her in your face.”
Anger lanced through Reina. Not because she knew her mother and was indignant about an unfair judgment on her character. But the words were acidic.
“I told him it was a mistake to leave everything, and I was correct—look at us now.” Do?a Ursulina’s black eyes descended on Reina, her upper lip curling bitterly. “You know how I found out about you? Secondhand gossip, which took years to reach me by the way. It’s not every day that a mutual acquaintance from Segolita travels to Sadul Fuerte.”
Do?a Ursulina cleared her throat.
Reina liked to believe she saw sorrow there. “Well, now I’m here.”
“Yes, and I’m glad for it. You have his eyes, after all.”
Reina held her breath. She didn’t want to blink and ruin this sliver of acceptance.
There was a moment of silence between them, a comfort, during which Do?a Ursulina resumed her studies without expelling Reina from the room.
“I hear things when I touch my new heart,” Reina said uncertainly, praying her concerns weren’t misinterpreted as madness.
Do?a Ursulina gave her no acknowledgment.
“It’s because of this ore, isn’t it? Tell me why I feel like I’m never alone now that I have it in me.”
Do?a Ursulina beckoned Reina to approach the table.
The star map covered most of the dark wood. It was inked in a thousand little dots, some labeled and connected by more lines and charts. Despite her grandmother’s beliefs, Juan Vicente had taught Reina how to read the written word, so she knew this chart had been immortalized in a language she couldn’t understand. The guttural whispering haunting Reina filled her ears, awoken by whatever secrets were recorded in the map. It reminded Reina of when humans prayed to the Pentimiento rosary at wakes. She grew itchy, hot, and trapped by her new heart, like she was locked in a tight, stuffy closet with no hope of ever getting out. Her hands grasped for the roughness of her apron, touching the bulging ore on the left side of her chest.