Beneath her touch she could feel Celeste’s shiver. “Reina?” she said, pulling away.
Reina sobered up. This touch was improper.
“What’s going on?” Celeste’s voice held the same panicked edge as the babe’s cries.
“You have… the birthmark.”
Reina felt like a fool. All those days when they had frolicked in the pine grove with Celeste’s hair in a high ponytail. All the times they had sparred and Reina marveled at the slick length of Celeste’s neck. She had been too blind by her own desire to see the truth tattooed across Celeste’s skin.
“The birthmark?”
The babe sensed her distress and began stirring unhappily.
“What birthmark?”
Eight times Reina had confirmed the pattern in the other women. And only one remained to be found.
“Well?” Celeste snapped, startling the babe.
Reina didn’t want to say it. Her heart began to pound, dread licking its way up her spine.
“You have the birthmark of Rahmagut’s constellation behind your ear, ‘on the place where Rahmagut handled his wives most adoringly,’” Reina said, quoting the journal writing. By now, she was an expert on the matter.
She had seen Celeste’s moles and freckles in the past. Her shoulders and back were dotted in them, just like they had dotted the Benevolent Lady’s. But the possibility of Celeste being one of them had never even registered in the furthest confines of her mind. Reina couldn’t have found something she hadn’t been looking for. But the ability to cross through Maior’s blessing was a second sign Reina would be a fool to disregard.
“But—” Real alarm filled Celeste’s voice. “I’m not like them. I am not.”
Despite the emphasis—the self-assuredness—it was futile to argue it. The signs didn’t lie. And they wouldn’t lie to Do?a Ursulina, when she decided to risk the life of a babe on the ritual proving what Celeste was or was not.
Reina shook the tension from her arms and shoulders, her hands navigating to the hilt of her machete. She met those blue eyes.
For months, Reina had looked up to the skies hoping for her luck to change. Hoping that Don Enrique would acknowledge her strength and stop seeing her as a worthless half-breed. She yearned for her grandmother’s kindness, which Reina knew existed deep down, buried underneath layers built from a life of prejudice and lessons learned the hard way. She ached for a future with Do?a Laurel back, with Celeste by her side. To see it unfold this way… It only filled Reina with apprehension. Because she was duty bound to her grandmother, who’d saved her life and offered her a future. But she had also made an oath to herself: to protect Celeste at all costs, and to be the person Celeste saw home in when they looked into each other’s eyes. But if this discovery unraveled them both at opposite ends, Reina wasn’t sure where she was supposed to stand.
18
A Convent or a Prince
Spicy sunlight stung Eva’s exposed shoulders as she waited outside the post for the postman to hand her the letter. An aristocrat, he was closing up early to attend the most talked-about wedding of the season, so he’d prohibited her from entering his office, lest other customers also get the idea of delaying his departure. As she dallied, a breeze lifted her frizzy curls, displacing the beads of sweat already gathering behind her neck. She took a big inhale to taper her growing anticipation, scenting the all-too-familiar river harbor smell of turtle water. Behind her the cobbled streets bustled with carriages and hollering drivers transporting the influx of wedding guests arriving by ship into Galeno. There was traffic on the main road leading to the center of town, a backup of donkeys and mules herded by the hired hands of the Serranos, Contadors, Villarreals, and other noble families welcoming their relatives.
If Eva stood out on the rotting stilts of the harbor, she didn’t acknowledge it. Every day that month, she had visited the post with the same query: Did she have any new correspondence? Thankfully, the postman was a dry man lacking any interest in small talk, so he kept to himself and didn’t bother spreading the gossip far and wide to the society of Galeno, of the governor’s granddaughter receiving letters with the wax seal of a soaring eagle.
Finally the postman emerged from the shade of the office and handed Eva a wrinkled envelope. She accepted it greedily, uncaring of the stains and dust that were a guaranteed embellishment. It was unavoidable, for a letter making the cross-country journey to reach her.
Of course, she didn’t open it right away. She navigated a few short blocks to the plaza with the sculpture of Saint Jon the Shepherd shaded by a tamarind tree, where she had commanded her driver to wait. She didn’t open it even as she sat on the carriage’s velvety cushion, her chest and thighs gathering sweat beneath her dress. Life with her family had taught her to be careful—or paranoid—of what even the help might see or hear. She couldn’t risk her final correspondence with the ?guila heir being confiscated by a nosy cousin or aunt. Not when her plan was this close to fruition.
A traffic jam of carriages slowed their arrival to the hacienda. Eva told the driver to drop her off near the gates, by the golden cassia trees, as the Valderrama carriages clogged the driveway with their army of attendants coming to serve at the wedding of their son to Eva’s cousin. They’d been there since the morning, when Eva had headed to the post, bringing enough bodies to fill up every guest room in the Serrano hacienda. And it wasn’t just them. It was also the Casta?edas and the Silvas （only the lowly cousins, not the king himself, for this wedding wasn’t that important）， and many more families with names and fortunes inherited from the era of Segol’s rule. Eva approached inconspicuously, avoiding the kind of glances that could snare her in unwanted pleasantries.
An army of proper girls, severe grandmothers, boastful heirs, and their lord fathers emptied the gilded carriages parked on the driveway. Do?a Antonia greeted the women with a kiss on the cheek and extended a hand to be kissed by the men. She ushered them to the doorway, where a servant was stationed to offer them papaya or mango juice and escort them to their rooms. Mules followed them, hauling sacks and coffers down the back doors to the outdoor kitchen and servants’ quarters. Eva could only imagine the treasures hidden within: fine silks and emeralds mined from the jungle and even more mother-of-pearl encrusted rosaries. A hundred treasures brought to the family as wedding gifts. There were goats and thoroughbred palfreys and so many chubby piglets Eva couldn’t keep count; sacks of plantain, papaya, and cassava; and stacks of anise bottles and wine.
She watched the arriving guests with a tightness in her chest, perking up anytime she glanced upon a particular body frame, at the hope of seeing Néstor jumping out of one of those carriages. Néstor with his husband. Néstor with his optimism and endless love for Eva. It was a daydream she’d been nurturing since the moment she’d drafted his invitation letter. Even Do?a Antonia hadn’t complained when Eva’s own calligraphy had begged for his return, if only for the wedding.
Pura cornered her before Eva could disappear inside. Her sister had emerged from behind the porch’s bougainvillea with her newborn. She wore a vibrant apricot and poppy-red dress embroidered with flying macaws. A large leather hat hung from her neck. Her hair was half-braided up, her kinky coils bouncing over her bared shoulders.