Where their skin touched, his energy coursed to her veins, heightening Eva’s senses. She was seeing unlike she had seen before, the darkness of the yard becoming less black. It allowed her to take in his face again, edged and determined and femininely handsome.
Behind him, a bright blotch streaked the inkiness of night, more dazzling than any star to have ever crossed the skies. It was a ball of blazing cyan barely surfing the horizon. A rising celestial body—and her sign, Eva decided, giving her the courage to mirror his determination.
“I will come with you. With your terms,” she whispered in awe.
Javier caught her eyes and turned around to see the line ripping the night. The corners of his lips curved upward. “It has begun,” he said.
“What has?”
His gaze caressed her like she was more stunning than the sun, the moon, and even that cyan star combined. “Our new life.”
20
The Caudillo’s Loyal Servant
Reina never imagined, when she left Celeste after seeing the sign, that it would be the last time she saw her in ?guila Manor.
Her hands had tingled in foreboding, and her shoulders were heavy with dread all the way down the mountain. They parted ways at Celeste’s bedroom, Celeste in denial. Reina ran to her grandmother’s laboratory to scour the constellations in the star map, her belly wringing for the possibility of a misplaced star or dot, for the slightest deviation signaling their discovery was merely a false alarm. What she found only had the opposite effect.
Before Reina could bring the confirmation to Celeste, though, Do?a Ursulina snared her with an assignment to Sadul Fuerte, which she dutifully accepted like any other to avoid raising suspicion. She didn’t have a reason to hide Celeste’s truth from Do?a Ursulina, not a logical one at least. Reina withheld the information on a gut reaction, or maybe because she simply wasn’t ready to accept it herself.
She would have stayed in denial, too, if on the fourth night of her stay in Sadul Fuerte she hadn’t stumbled upon a crowd of people on the plaza facing the cathedral and seen them pointing upward, marveling at the cyan ball streaking the inky sky. The sight sucked the breath out of her, along with her vacillation. Rahmagut’s Claw. That night, in the cold room of the nondescript inn where she had stayed all those days for the assignment, she dreamed again of following the canopied jungle path to the lagoon.
She was held up in Sadul Fuerte for her task of guarding an iridio shipment until it was transferred to its buyer, who didn’t show up until the afternoon. The day was nearly over when Reina finally made it back into the manor, and by then the whole staff was buzzing with the gossip of Celeste’s vanishing.
A cook and a chambermaid crossed the cobbled path, exchanging whispers and glancing at Reina as she unloaded her mule in the yard, which at first wasn’t out of the ordinary, with the amount of prejudice tossed her way daily. But Reina was high on a bismuto incantation she had cast while fighting off a Páramo ghoul near the estate. Her enhanced ears picked up their gossip, of how Celeste hadn’t been seen for several days. Then a stable boy cornered Reina as she refilled a pail of water for the mule, and he told her, “You better put on your espadrilles, ’cause what’s coming is joropo,” which was the overly complicated way for people from the Llanos to say that Reina better get ready for what was coming, because Don Enrique was summoning her to his study and he was in a mood.
The second story of the manor was an empty place, the quiet shattered by rain pattering against the windows. Reina paused in front of Do?a Feleva’s portrait to brace herself.
Between Don Enrique’s door and his mother’s portrait was a painting of Do?a Laurel. Don Enrique had commissioned the painting in a more modest frame because nothing else could suit the Benevolent Lady. In it, she was surrounded by the rosebushes she maintained around the entryway steps to ?guila Manor, and she was dressed in a blue dress and ruana, her signature color.
Reina sucked in a breath through her nose. How she missed Do?a Laurel and the happiness she had brought to their lives. But now that the moment had arrived, Reina hated the way Celeste was involved.
A vast room of intricate crimson tiles and stone walls welcomed her. Don Enrique awaited her behind a desk of cherry, where he was surrounded by bookshelves, the leather map of Venazia and Fedria, and a plaque engraved with his family’s crest. On the lounging love chair at the center sat Do?a Ursulina. And next to her sat the last person Reina ever imagined seeing here.
A young woman of pale, freckled skin. A blue gown hugging a plump figure.
Maior.
Only Reina couldn’t be sure it was Maior. She blinked, and she saw the striking eyes of the late Do?a Laurel. She blinked again, and there was Maior. One image superimposed over another, as if alien thoughts were forcing her to believe this was the Benevolent Lady. Only this vision was realer than even the most realistic of paintings, as if Do?a Laurel were truly back.
Reina shut her gaping mouth and bowed. “Don Enrique. Do?a Ursulina.”
Do?a Ursulina watched her with not a care in the world, her hand petting the woman’s knee. Yet there was no life in the woman’s eyes. They were open, yes, but without gleam or recognition. A doll to advertise. Reina’s belly knotted as understanding wormed itself into her like spoiled food. They were so close to their objective, and this was nothing more than a flaunt of all the caudillo had to gain, Do?a Ursulina taunting them with a taste of their reward. After all, to reanimate the Benevolent Lady, they needed a living body.
“Se?or, you summoned me,” Reina said.
Don Enrique beckoned her closer, so she took the seat across from his desk. He stared Reina down with an impervious gaze of the deepest red. “Where is Celeste?”
Reina’s jaw locked. Her brows pinched, and perhaps it was the sign she was clutching a secret.
When he repeated, “Where is my daughter?” Reina knew it would be trouble if she didn’t answer.
“I don’t know. I just got back from Sadul Fuerte—”
The desk tremored as Don Enrique brought a lightning-fast fist down to it. The ink bottle to his right swiveled dangerously, a minuscule motion away from tipping over. “You’d best have an answer for me, Duvianos, or I’ll make you rue the day you ever set foot in my home.”
Reina’s heart shuddered and shriveled as she realized the caudillo didn’t know where Celeste was either. But the way he talked to Reina—she didn’t deserve this. “I’ve been away. I—I thought she was here.”
Don Enrique’s jaw tightened, the line sharp as a polished blade. “Celeste is nowhere to be found. A servant saw her with you on the night she disappeared.”
“Don Enrique, we were just following Do?a Ursulina’s test of the eighth dama—”
“Don’t interrupt the caudillo,” her grandmother said.
“I know she didn’t go with you to Sadul Fuerte,” Don Enrique snapped. “I have informants in the city and in my forts. Celeste is not easy to miss. But you… she tells you everything. You visit her room, at inappropriate hours even, and you mean to tell me she didn’t trust you with her childish plan to disappear?”
The assertion was like a knife to the back. Celeste couldn’t have run away. She would have told Reina.