The incantation had been a trick, mocking her for all the scars she had earned under the ?guila banner. Reina wanted to howl. To curse him with every droplet of anger boiling in her. Instead, once she was able to suck a breath into her lungs, she glared at him with her lips trembling in indignation. Against the caudillo, there was nothing she could do.
Finally Don Enrique said, “You want to earn your place in my army? Bring me my daughter. Or else be gone and never return.”
Reina didn’t grant him a nod of reply. She whirled on the spot and left.
21
The Duvianos Heir
Reina’s boots took her out of his study in a stomping rage. She didn’t care for the servants’ eyes that followed her in curiosity. Nor if her scowl or her slamming of doors seeded the gossip of her banishing. A weight settled in her heart, like Don Enrique’s incantation truly was kicking her out of the manor. It was a thought Reina refused to accept. That was, until she reached the building of the servants’ quarters, where she found the final gift from the caudillo in her bedchamber.
Everything she owned had been searched and carelessly upturned. Her bed and sheets, her clothes, her chest of possessions, even her sparring clothes and potions were broken and strewn across the floor. Like they’d been hoping to find the truth about Celeste’s disappearance within her things, in the process showing how little regard they had for her.
Reina slammed her fist against the doorframe. “No.”
She leapt to the dresser across the room, where one door was smashed and the other hung meekly by the hinges. There the coffer of her gold savings sat open and empty, with nothing in it but dust.
All of it, gone.
The gold she had saved up during her two-year employment with the ?guilas. The escudos that were supposed to be her pathway to establishing herself in this new home.
She slammed the coffer lid shut, then slammed the dresser door until it gave. Instead of taking careful steps to her bed, she kicked everything to the wall. The books, the accessories, the mementos Celeste had gifted her. In her rage she punched and kicked and broke the pieces until all were trash. Trash, she thought vehemently, as Don Enrique saw her.
She forced a deep breath.
Her torso knotted with a foreign jab. Reina slipped out of her vest, unbuttoned her shirt, and unwrapped the cotton bindings that flattened her breasts. When she faced the silver plate nailed to the wall, she saw a brown-skinned woman with a piece of ore protruding above her left breast. Flesh and sinew grew over the tubes and edges of the black ore, a chorus of fervent whispering electrifying the air as Reina’s hand neared its epicenter. A thousand rushed, guttural voices, like the sudden pitter-patter of demons scuttling through corridors. Months ago, during a lesson on void magic, Do?a Ursulina had confirmed Reina’s suspicions of the chattering voices being the manifestation of every iridio spell ever invoked. The good and, obviously, the wicked ones.
Her hand hesitated, not because of the susurration but due to the crimson stain advancing upward from the bottommost corner, like a rot. She touched the spreading red, and a searing fire shot through her.
It was the incantation she had agreed to, to bring Celeste back at all costs.
Celeste, who was a Dama del Vacío. Who was simultaneously missing and the only person standing in the way of bringing Do?a Laurel back from the dead. The heaviness in Reina’s chest constricted her even more. She backed up against the bed, surrendering to it as exhaustion squeezed the air out of her.
She couldn’t accept that Celeste had been taken. She didn’t believe it. Likely she was hiding in Gegania, away from Don Enrique’s madness and Do?a Ursulina’s ambition, in the place only Reina knew of. Celeste hated their pursuit of the legend, but what she didn’t understand was that the coldness in her life could so easily be fixed by Do?a Laurel’s return. Celeste didn’t see it, but Reina was doing this for her.
Reina wrapped her chest and buttoned up her shirt. Her shoulders shuddered from her sobering up. How foolish she was acting, breaking trinkets as if losing some escudos was the end of the world. It wasn’t. She didn’t know where Celeste was or if she was in the danger Don Enrique professed. What she did know was the ache in her very core, gnawing and cold and straining her bones, which told her losing Celeste would be the end of her world. Reina needed to make sure she was safe. She needed to earn her welcome back into the manor and shatter Don Enrique’s curse, so that she might resume her future as it was meant to be. As Do?a Ursulina’s successor and the protector of Celeste’s heart. She had to make Celeste realize all there was to gain from having Rahmagut’s favor. They had to finish what they had started. Otherwise all those deaths she’d witnessed and been complicit in would be for nothing. If Celeste cared for her, then she would see how much Reina needed this.
In her chest, her transplant flapped like a useless, dying trout. Celeste cared. Reina was sure of it.
Reina rummaged for the few items that remained unbroken and stuffed them into her traveling knapsack. Her potion flasks were shattered, but she still had the pair of bismuto rings on her fingers. She spared the room one last glance, hoisted her knapsack, turned to the doorway, and froze.
Do?a Ursulina was standing right outside her door.
The scars on Reina’s chest itched and screamed.
“Take a walk with me.”
Reina did so, following her until they were well beyond the damp darkness of the gardens, past patches of mud and under a tree still weeping with leftover rainwater. Do?a Ursulina turned to her, the evening lights of the manor glowing behind her at a distance. She had changed into a tight-fitting jacket and pants, black as the night.
“I never imagined you would be this stupid, when I brought you into my life,” Do?a Ursulina growled. “When you find Celeste, you bring her to me. Do you understand? You forget about Enrique.”
“But I have to prove to the caudillo—I’m banished—”
“Your fealty is to me, not to him, you fool. Your little spew about loyalty, it was inspiring—a little touching, even—but see where it got you. You’re a fool for promising Enrique anything—and now you’ve gone and made a pact with iridio? Iridio keeps you alive, or have you forgotten?”
“He was treating me like a traitor!” Reina said and flinched, already imagining the sting of Do?a Ursulina’s backhand for her insolence.
Instead, Do?a Ursulina grazed the side of Reina’s jaw with her fingers—a tender threat. “Enrique’s never cared about you, and he’s not about to start, regardless of whether or not you return his beloved brat.”
“His men ransacked my room! They took my escudos.” Reina didn’t know what made her say it or if Do?a Ursulina would care at all.
“They wanted to see what you knew, under Enrique’s orders. See? And you would pledge your loyalty to someone who treats you like that? I might have been stern with you, but it was for your own education. If it were up to Enrique alone, you wouldn’t be welcome in this manor at all. Your time here wouldn’t have expired if you hadn’t decided to air out the dirty laundry—if you had just kept your mouth shut. Do you think he doesn’t know what you have done for him? Enrique hardly acknowledges the things that benefit him. He never gives credit where it is due.”