“Found her in Apartaderos,” Javier said.
“Right under our noses?”
Apartaderos was the small village perched on the crossroads on the way out of the Páramo. A place that had started as an outpost until eventually someone opened an inn. Traveling from Sadul Fuerte to the Llanos meant crossing this dingy little settlement.
“You could say that. Living right under our noses and without a clue of what she is. And once again, I have to be the one dirtying my hands kidnapping them, like some lowborn grunt.” Javier scowled, blatant in his displeasure when the caudillo wasn’t around. He leaned over the crate and broke the galio spell imprisoning her in an endless sleep. “You can take over now.”
“Yes. I don’t need you.”
Javier glared at Reina, probably formulating more toxicity to spew her way. But the silence in the room grew loud as the young woman began writhing, rustling the hay beneath her. She sat up, tufts of short black hair blocking half her face. Awake, she didn’t look younger than twenty. Her eyes found Reina’s, then Javier’s, and a muddle of panic and confusion fell over them.
“What—where—where am I?” The woman’s voice was broken and delicate.
“Fantastic.” Javier rolled his eyes. “You deal with that,” he said, leaving the courtyard as quietly as a shadow.
16
The Eighth Dama
His antics left Reina digging half-moon nail prints into her palms. She sucked in the anger with a deep breath. She had to be civil, for the woman, if no one else in this household could spare the heart to.
The woman scooted against the far edges of the crate as Reina approached. Her lips, rosy and plump, trembled. Her brown eyes met Reina’s tamarind ones. They were intelligent, and steadfast, and pleasant to hold until they realized she was nowhere near home. That was when Reina saw even the terror in her eyes looked soft, like the harshest reality she’d ever faced might have been a whipping from her mother.
Reina took in a deep breath through flared nostrils. Suddenly she hated Javier from waking the woman up so far from Do?a Ursulina’s laboratory. Of course he’d done it on purpose.
“Follow me, please,” Reina said, hating herself for robbing the woman of everything worth smiling for. Please. How she was a fool for thinking her manners would matter at all.
The woman stuttered, “Bu-but—”
“Would you rather stay locked up in there?”
Reina offered her a hand, but she wobbled out of the crate without accepting.
The young woman was short and chunky, like she would have had the potential of being curvy if only she were a whole head taller. There was no reason for her to be pretty, with her grimy dress and tousled hair, and yet Reina couldn’t shake the word out of her thoughts.
“Where are we?”
Reina stepped back to the doorway, allowing her more room. The woman’s face changed as she regarded Reina—as the torchlight unveiled the scutes on the bridge of Reina’s nose and the pointed tips of her ears peeking from behind her fishtail braid. As her gaze found Reina’s tail switching and turning in anticipation.
Disgust wormed its way into the woman’s eyes.
Reina was suddenly self-conscious. She didn’t care if she was pleasant to look at or not. It was a fact she didn’t bother refuting because she didn’t need beauty to serve the caudillo. What she needed was the strength in her muscles and her handiness with her machete. But she didn’t deserve to be viewed with disgust.
“You—you kidnapped me?”
“Javier,” Reina corrected her. “If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be here.” A mild lie.
“Please let me go,” the woman said.
Reina gestured toward the courtyard behind her. “I’m trying to help you. If you listen to me and stay calm, things won’t be too bad.” Reina didn’t believe it herself, but she needed the woman obedient.
It took her a moment, but the woman followed her back into the manor quietly, shivering and hugging herself. That was, until Reina slowed at the entryway to the underground, the rotten steel-banded door the telltale of where they were headed.
Reina slipped off her indigo-and-goldenrod ruana, with the ?guila crest stitched at the breast, and gave it as a peace offering.
A half-formed sneer warped the woman’s mouth. Instead of taking the woolen warmth, she backed away, her chest rising and falling with one forced breath after another. Reina knew what she was thinking. She had seen it time and time again in the other girls.
The woman brushed her hair away from her eyes and said, “I’m not stupid. You’re taking me prisoner—but I haven’t done anything wrong! Why would the caudillo take me? I haven’t served ?guila soldiers in months! If I did anything to offend them, please just give me an opportunity to set things right—please—”
Reina pinched her nose, feeling scutes. “What are you talking about?”
“I—I healed your men—at the stone chapel,” she said and gulped. “They came after hunting tinieblas, and that was the last time I talked to anyone wearing the ?guila bearing. Is that—is that why you’re taking me? I offended the caudillo?”
Reina shook her head as her chest wrung itself. It was always the same: their confusion and indignation. They were victims of their destiny—pawns in Don Enrique’s plans, and in the manor, they were treated like nothing more. She pulled the heavy door open, revealing stairs shrouded in shadow, and explained, “Javier took you because we suspect you’re a Dama del Vacío.”
The woman couldn’t keep her lip from trembling. She watched Reina for a moment, then frowned deeply. “I—I’d heard the tales—but I figured they were just stories—rumors people were coming up with just because lately the caudillo hasn’t been protecting us. But it’s true?” She grimaced. “The caudillo worships the god of the Void?”
Reina was impressed. Perhaps the intelligence behind the woman’s eyes wasn’t unmerited, for she was absolutely correct. But the ends would make it all worth it.
She nodded.
“I’ve heard tales… of the caudillo’s witch snatching babies and kidnapping virgins. Tell me it’s not true.”
Reina’s lips twisted into a smirk. It wasn’t the time for humor, but she couldn’t help the words, for they were as absurd as their disposition: “So you’re a virgin.”
The woman scoffed. “The wives of Rahmagut are but children’s stories! And that is none of your concern.”
Reina’s smirk widened.
“A stupid, stupid superstition!”
“Get inside already.”
The woman’s eyes widened. She whirled and sprinted down the corridor, her bare feet slapping the tiles and leaving marks of condensation in her wake.
Reina lunged as well, but the nozariel blood pumping through her veins propelled her farther, five of the human’s strides equaling one of hers. Reina caught up to her, stopping under the doorway at the other end of the corridor and blocking it.
She tried to gently grab her wrist, and the woman fought her.
“Just let me go—please!”
“Calm down.”
“You’re going to kill me.”