Eva had never understood what it meant when the wise and decrepit talked about their regrets. When her great-aunts and her grandmother shared a coffee in the sunroom in midafternoon and bemoaned the wrong paths they’d taken in life. For, if faced with the wrong or right choice, how could they have made the wrong one? Well, now she knew: Sometimes the garden path lined by rosebushes could lead to a thicket of thorns.
Eva didn’t have a demon in her, despite everything her grandmother had drilled into her head. She was sure if she took Javier’s hand and led him into a church, he would be the one going up in flames, not her. Néstor had always called her impetuous, and maybe at one point or another, she had been in agreement. But now Eva knew she was taking the blood-damned crown. She’d run away with a demon and was now his bride.
The morning after the massacre at the inn, Eva went through the motions like she was little more than a pet. Darting eyes avoiding his. Noncommittal grunts of yes and no becoming her only form of communication. Her ire growing as she watched him play this game as well. They left El Carmín with him pretending nothing had ever happened.
Javier paid for a boat that took them southbound on Río’e Marle, where Eva spent two days avoiding him, and they touched Fedrian soil in the early morning of the third day. Then they walked a dirt road flanked by palms and plantain trees, by greenery blooming in violent oranges and fuchsias and smelling of sweet fruits. The sights were a distraction from the anger boiling up inside Eva. Hatred at being deceived. Resentment for being struck. Nevertheless she followed Javier, plotting her escape as her only consolation. She didn’t care if she had no clue where to go without him or if it put a hitch in her plans to master geomancia. Leaving Galeno was supposed to be her act of taking control of her life. She wasn’t going to stop now.
As the sun was finishing its descent, they came into a village possibly a quarter the size of El Carmín, with houses of colorfully painted adobe walls and clay-tiled roofs, most falling apart from neglect. Despite the dilapidation, the roads were decorated with ropes strung between the roofs of opposite-facing houses, crisscrossing in the air. Hanging from the ropes were paper cutouts, like tiny fluttering butterflies. Some white; some dyed in goldenrod, scarlet, and cerulean. It looked like the village, too, celebrated Saint Jon the Shepherd.
Here the nozariels were in equal quantity to the humans.
Eva saw adults and children with hair and eyes the same color as those of humans, only their irises were stained by a slit of black, giving their pupils a feline impression. They had pointy ears, and the bridges of their noses were scaled, as well as the tops of their shoulders, their kneecaps, and elbows. She thought she would see them with their tails switching behind them. Eva imagined the short fur along their lengths in the same color as their head of hair, their tips hairy, long, full, and braided like when she’d braided the tails of her family’s horses, banded by ribbons. Yet she couldn’t spot a single person with their tail intact—not even in this land where their existence wasn’t forbidden.
She followed Javier past a fruit stand of bursting papayas and golden mangoes, where a gaggle of girls feasted on their pulp. Eva saw their pointed, glistening fangs like the canines of a jaguar. Small differences, minor enough to make them close cousins to humans （were they truly demons escaped from el Vacío, like the superstition told?） yet weirdly unsettling to see—at least for someone who didn’t grow up around them.
At the center of the village was a town square peppered with equal amounts of wildflowers and weeds, where a bronze statue of Ches stood. Here he was depicted as a robed nozariel man, with a blade pointing up where the high noon sun ought to be. If so many tales of Ches and Rahmagut were still passed on from nozariel parent to child, it wasn’t surprising to see this statue as the most interesting landmark of the village. It made Eva think of her grandmother, who held a fierce grudge against Fedria, where nozariels worshipped other gods besides the Virgin. What surprised Eva the most, however, were the waves of light exuding from the statue—minuscule pulsing threads, visible with sunlight one moment and gone the next. A spell alive and woven with care, flowing outward through the nozariels and even through her, disappearing as glittering stars toward the edges of the village.
“You’re noticing it?” Javier said, catching her staring.
It was iridio, enchanted there by someone very powerful. Whatever its purpose was, Eva would rather not learn than have to rely on Javier as her source of information. She held her nose high and instead watched a group of men on the road. They argued about transporting a large statuette of Ches on a cart, as its affixed mule was refusing to cooperate.
“The tale of Rahmagut bringing demons from el Vacío isn’t just human hate talk,” Javier told her, like he expected to pique her interest. As if he was trying to say something so enthralling she would have no choice but to grace him with the privilege of her attention.
The group was joined by musicians hauling drums and a blowing horn out of one of the homes. They were regular folk, different from humans in only the slightest of features, living lives undeserving of the mistreatment and hatred they received in Venazia.
Eva shook her head to herself, feeling foolish for trusting her family’s view of the world. The only demon here was Javier.
“I don’t care for tales,” she said flatly, incensed by the afternoon sun and by the injustices she’d had to face for being different.
“Yet you believe in me. You believe in Rahmagut.”
One of the men in the group began slapping the leather top of his drum.
Javier grabbed Eva by the back of the elbow to herd her away. Once, in El Carmín, his touch had made her weak in the knees. Now she just wanted to yank free.
“I can walk by myself, thank you.”
Another man joined with his own drum. Eva recognized this beat. It was the same rhythm of the song played for the Saint Jon the Shepherd revel.
“Let’s get going before we get stuck in their crowd,” Javier said.
“Didn’t you have a great speech to make? About el Vacío? Can’t make it in front of them?”
With poorly masked annoyance, he glanced at the nozariels, then at Eva. As he did so, angled sunlight caught his eyes, turning them into brilliant garnets. She looked away, forcing herself to ignore his looks. Hate was what she was supposed to be feeling, not this puppy-eyed amazement.
He tugged her around a corner, away from the musicians. “All day, you have been acting like an obstinate mule, and I don’t have time for it, Eva Kesaré. We need to get going and purchase supplies before the day ends.”
She frowned at the use of her name, wary of once again forbidding him from it. She jerked her arm free.
Javier towered over her, surprised by her reaction, and she stepped back until she bumped against a wall. Half of her cowered, yet the other half didn’t care. He had deceived her, poisoning her dreams with a false journey.
He grabbed her by the arm and pinned her to the wall, her shoulders and head scraping against hard, ragged clay.
“Did you not learn your lesson last time?” he growled. “What did I tell you about pretending to be something you’re not?”
He was so close Eva could inspect his blemishes. His chapped lips and his silvery fuzz of unshaven facial hair. The bead of sweat rolling down his temple. The proximity made it hard to breathe.