“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.
Reina met her black gaze as a chill shook her from neck to toes. This was the moment she had dreamed of during those lonely days as she crossed the Llanos and the Páramo. This reunion with her grandmother. How flat and painfully disappointing it had turned out to be.
Do?a Laurel watched them. “Do you know this woman?”
“This badge belongs to me, just like it used to belong to my father, and his father before him,” Do?a Ursulina said, slowly turning it over in her hands. “I enchanted it with a powerful ward of litio protection and bismuto—enough to allow you to see the tinieblas and ward them away. I knew the journey here would have its dangers—I just didn’t expect to be… so right.” She crossed the distance to Reina and lifted her chin for a better look. “A nozariel like your mother, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing the black spots of pigmentation on the iris that made Reina’s pupils look oblong, almost like a cat’s; the caiman-like scutes over the bridge of her nose; the long, pointed tips of her ears. The marks of her nozariel breed, undiscernible from far away but never failing to earn her a scowl or a grimace from most humans. “You actually came.”
“Explain yourself, Do?a Ursulina,” Do?a Laurel commanded.
“I sent the badge to Segolita, along with this letter, to my granddaughter.”
Do?a Laurel’s mouth hung open. “As in, Juan Vicente’s daughter? He has a daughter?”
The way they said his name, with the familiarity hinting of a past Reina wasn’t privy to, reignited the agony in her chest. She chewed the insides of her cheeks, tasting her own blood, and forced the words out despite the pain. “I came to meet you.” She tried sitting up again, only to collapse with a moan. A violent spasm shook her, made her want to scream.
“She needs a doctor,” Celeste blurted out from her spot by the doorway.
“The tinieblas hungered for her heart, and they have tainted it. This is dark magic, and it will not be cured by a mere doctor, if at all,” Do?a Ursulina said.
It was a blow, renewing Reina’s fears. She let out a shuddery breath. With an angry hiss and the last of her strength, she said, “I came from Segolita—I traveled this far—to be your family. Not to die!”
And the witch who shared her blood smiled.
“Then it must be fated that you live, child, for if there is one person capable of salving a tiniebla’s rot, it will be me.”
2
One-Quarter Valco
There wasn’t a single instance when Eva enjoyed Don Alberto’s company. Their two-decade age difference was too large, their interests too incompatible. And now that she was in his office, enduring his long-winded speech about his profession, she regretted her plan of pretending to visit him at all.
Don Alberto was the keeper of names of Galeno, a dull bureaucratic appointment he tended to with much earnestness and the only thing he had a passion for, really. Presently, it was this proximity to Eva’s official family records that interested her. Nothing else.
Eva tugged on the lace of her dress, feeling sweat roll down her back from the lack of air circulating in the stuffy office. Cluttered desks and loaded bookshelves monopolized what little space there was. The only natural light came from the two small windows positioned near the ceiling. Even after so brief a visit, Eva already felt suffocated and longed to leave. Her smile was fake as she said, “I just wanted to see what you have for my family’s records—the format and details—I’ve never properly seen it myself.”
He watched her closely, as if she were a hummingbird likely to disappear in the blink of an eye. Maybe from someone else, Eva would have appreciated the attention, but from him it was unnerving. “I’m sure it’s a story you’re well acquainted with,” he said.
Eva nodded.
“The Serranos’ book?”
Her smile vanished. The Serranos were her family on her mother’s side. And as Eva didn’t have a family name given to her by her father, or a paternal family for that matter, the question landed bitterly. She was, after all, Eva Kesaré de Galeno. She was of Galeno—of the city. A bastard. And he knew this.
“Yes,” she said.
He didn’t notice her displeasure and simply beckoned her down a row of bookshelves. He located the heavy tome with the names, likenesses, and recorded histories of every Serrano born in Galeno. The tome was heavy and free of dust as he pulled it out from the most accessible and centralized location on the shelf. The record book saw much use, as the Serranos were a large lot and were the descendants of Don Mateo Serrano, the governor. With his wife, Do?a Antonia, he’d had enough children for every finger on Eva’s hand, and those children had had almost as many offspring. The women were shipped off to families all over Venazia or in Galeno to spread the blood, and the men were given positions in the capitol building. As Eva’s nineteenth birthday drew nearer, she was overdue for her turn. Don Alberto Villarreal was the best consolation prize her grandmother could procure for, in her words, a “fatherless valco girl with an inclination to madness.”
Don Alberto stood closely behind Eva as she leafed to the most contemporary records, where her mother’s name was inscribed. His proximity incensed her, as did his breath, which often had an insidious scent of onion from all the carne mechada his mother overfed him.
One of the few good things to come out of their courting was that she could get a glimpse of the government records on her father. She wanted—no, needed—to know who he was. Without that, a piece of herself would always be a mystery.