Blood still dripping from his fingers, Javier straightened up to watch them in delight. “Get me out of here? I paid for my rooms. Did I not?” he barked, his corrupted voice bouncing off the walls as if a hundred Javiers filled the room. The sound lifted Eva’s skin in goose bumps.
The man who had wrestled the inn owner made a run for it, following the last patron to the door.
Javier’s fist knocked blood into the man’s teeth before he could reach the exit. The impact sent him hurling into a wall, the crash of his shoulder and skull on bricks imprinting in Eva’s memory.
Guilt bubbled in her belly like food gone spoiled. This was her fault.
Javier leapt at the man, who stumbled up and used the wall as support.
For a second Eva imagined the same flash of fingers, the same sickening ripping of sinew. She couldn’t stomach it. She called Javier’s name and stumbled past the mess of furniture to reach him.
Javier grabbed the man by the head; then he slammed him against the brick wall. Once. Twice. When the man’s knees gave in underneath him, Javier let him fall into a bloody heap.
Eva tried to steady her breathing but couldn’t.
Her husband shook the blood off his hand in disgust as the stain of black magic rippled in and out of him. When his eyes met Eva, they froze her. This person was a demon, not the graceful youth she had met at her cousin’s wedding.
She murmured his name, as if her imploring had the power of bringing normalcy back to him. But she was a whimpering fool for thinking it could.
Fear gripped her as Javier walked past her, his shoulders rolling in a swagger, turning to the inn owner. He had everyone’s attention, and he held it unapologetically, like a fistful of crushed flowers.
“I expect no more interruptions tonight,” Javier told the inn owner with his voice still corrupted, “unless you’re interested in sharing a similar fate as… this scum.” He smiled toothlessly. “Close the inn for the night. You have a lot of cleaning up to do.”
The inn owner’s throat bobbed, and he nodded.
Those hellish eyes snapped to Eva, who stood amid the broken furniture.
“Let’s go, Eva Kesaré.”
The length of her arms prickled with the cry of panic running along her skin. She was paralyzed under the gaze of a man capable of awful things. And the papers with golden iridio ink upstairs could attest that she had no other choice but to obey. If he could do this to these men, what could he do to her, the person he now owned under the stipulations of their marriage? Eva hesitated with her heart thrumming loudly in her chest. In the end, every step forward was a battle with herself. The threads of black lapped in and out of him as Javier led the ascent to her room. Eva watched the corruption with a held breath. They were like hungry snakes, taking bites of his flesh.
Javier held the door of her room open for her and watched her walk in with a face that looked changed. This wasn’t the beautiful man she’d married.
He shut the door, the motion forcing what was left of pure air out of the room. When Eva turned to look at him, she choked, her throat closing up.
She squeezed whatever courage she had in her and said, “I’m sorry—”
“It’s hard not to leave an impression, everywhere I go.” He absentmindedly stroked his antlers, leaving a smeared trail of blood. “The antlers—they’re impossible to hide.”
She stepped back as he stepped forward, though it didn’t take long for her legs to meet the edge of the bed.
Eva’s heart became a dying troupial.
“I can only hope people forget me when they see me outside Sadul Fuerte. But… here in El Carmín… how can they, when there’s a scene at the inn?”
“You didn’t have to kill them—”
Eva’s words were smacked out of her mouth by his backhand. It sent her plummeting against the creaking straw bed. Fire and lightning spread over her cheek, and she shrieked.
“I didn’t have to kill them?” he growled, pacing the edges of her bedroom like a caged beast. “After they talked to us—to our species—like they did? Should I have let them demand escudos from us? Filthy, entitled humans—”
Eva trembled, the pain of her cheek spreading to her head. She clamped her hands over her face and tasted blood on the inside of her mouth.
Javier leaned over her, his eyes wide. “Do you think we could have talked it out, Eva Kesaré? After you acted like you wanted to fight them yourself? Do you think that arbiter was going to let you walk away?”
“Don’t—don’t—” Eva began, her voice broken by sobs. “Don’t call me Eva Kesaré.”
When said together, her first and middle names were supposed to be endearing, used lovingly by her grandmother and late mother. Eva had allowed the handsome, gentle Javier to use them because hearing him say them had filled her with warmth. But coming from this beast, it sounded spoiled.
“Oh, no? How about wife?”
He wrenched one of her hands away, and Eva yelped, but he wouldn’t give it back.
“I hope it scars,” he said of the cut on her lip, “so every time you look at yourself, you remember where you stand.” He threw her hand back at her.
With two thunderous steps, Javier marched to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob for so long that Eva forced herself to look up.
The black corruption was gone. The ripples, the threads, the terrible aura of decay. He gave her a sidelong glance, one that made Eva wish she could turn back time. When he spoke, his voice was handsome again. “Rest. We leave for Fedria at dawn.”
Eva watched the door close behind him with tears brimming in her eyes. Sleep never came to her—not out of defiance but out of terror for what she had done.
24
The Whistling Crossroads
After leaving ?guila Manor, Reina spent the night at the iridio mining camp, where the ?guila miners saw her as nothing more than another familiar face, unaware of her banishing. The next morning she sought the trails leading to Gegania’s burrow and wasted the whole day only to discover the entrance was gone. She recalled the location; they had carved their initials on a nearby tree during one of their hikes, just for the fun of it. Reina came upon the marked bark and saw the tunnel was nowhere to be seen. If anything, a mess of sediment and crushed bramble made the area look caved in. The hollow expanding within Reina made her jittery and breathless, as the truth became realer with every moment she circled the tree with the C and R initials and found no underground entrance.
Celeste had broken the connection to Gegania. This made sense, if she was hiding from the people employed under her father. Only it stung Reina to realize it. She held Celeste’s secret—more than one of them. Celeste could trust her. There was no need to take such a radical route and cut Reina out of the house.
Reina had no other choice but to make for Apartaderos the following day. Gegania was perched near the mountainous settlement, through a trail she vaguely remembered from when Celeste had shown her the house for the first time. Reina would have to find the house via the village and meet Celeste through its front door. It was the best lead she had.
Her body ached and chills shuddered through her by the time Reina first glimpsed the smoke from the farthest house on the edges of Apartaderos. She squeezed her ruana about her, her condensing breaths reminding her of the cold descending with the dying sun. She felt ill, her muscles weakening like butter from the travel and the shock of losing the core nourishment to her heart.