“Your whole speech in Apartaderos, about helping me stay free from the caudillo and that—that hag, was all a lie, wasn’t it?” Maior’s voice was soft but not without her relenting determination. “You saw me as a na?ve fool and used that to get me to follow you while you looked for the other dama to collect us all.”
“What we’re doing is bigger than you. It is a year in the making.”
“You will continue to do that witch’s bidding?”
“You wouldn’t understand. She saved my life.”
Reina’s breath shuddered. After nearly a decade of loneliness, of being regarded with disdain, Do?a Ursulina and Do?a Laurel were the only ones who had given her a home. Despite her unconventional methods, Do?a Ursulina was all Reina had. She had left Segolita for this. Her home was back in ?guila Manor, awaiting her triumphant return.
“Well, back there, so did I,” Maior countered.
Reina clicked her tongue at that.
“So you will drag me along in search of this Celeste.”
Reina hated the tone and implication, the flippant way she referred to Celeste. “I don’t care what you think about this. I’m going to the Plume for her, and if I have to bring you along, so be it. Nothing changes. Celeste’s capable of taking care of herself, but as long as she’s away, I won’t know if she needs my help. She’s my best friend, and I would do anything for her.”
Maybe she’d said too much. Maybe it was unnecessary or a confession. But it felt cathartic to say the words, even if to the wrong person.
Maior sucked in a breath. Then, she whispered, so softly that it was almost lost to the surrounding town chatter, “Why do you talk about her that way? Like you love her?”
The racing of Reina’s heart had nothing to do with its adjustment to this new method of using iridio. She stepped back, glancing about them, afraid someone had overheard. But no one cared about the nozariel and the human tucked into the shadows of the fort.
Maybe all this time, while Reina was noticing the dimples and the pouting lips and the flush on her cheeks, Maior had been watching her back. A pang bloomed in her chest, making it hard to breathe while they were this close. All this time, the concern this human had felt for her had been genuine.
The realization infuriated Reina—especially as a part of her enjoyed the discovery. It was anger she clung to as she reminded herself now wasn’t the time to have doubts or unnecessary feelings for the wrong person. Celeste was her priority and her future. Her grandmother and the ?guilas would always be the priority. So she calculated her statement to sting as much as possible, to squash any hope Maior would otherwise have. “What exists between me and Celeste—it’s none of your concern. So now you know the truth about me. My grandmother instructed me to bring her the damas to invoke Rahmagut, and that is what I will do. Even if it validates your speciesism. Even if you hate me for every moment of it. You think you’re not a prisoner, but these are freedoms I have given you, and right now, if you don’t come willingly, I will take them away.”
28
The Fallen Star
Eva’s eyes snapped open to darkness. She curled forward, gasping. She sat up suddenly and smacked her skull against a forehead.
The person moaned and moved away.
Eva, too, hissed from the impact, screwing her eyes. She grappled at her clothes, feeling for blood or for gashes but finding none. The fire-lick pain she had felt before losing consciousness was utterly gone. She was in one piece.
As her eyes adjusted, the darkness became less absolute. In fact, the sky was lit by the swirls and waves and clusters of stars. Millions of them. And the star with the streaking tail of cyan was the brightest of them all.
She was in a clearing, at the foot of a great cliff, wrapped in a hemp blanket and lying across from a burned-out campfire. Bordering the clearing was the dense blackness of a jungle bursting with the sounds of night. A mild, hot breeze lifted the sour, moist smell of the surrounding greenery.
Javier sat across from her, perhaps too closely. With a grimace he massaged his forehead where they’d collided.
The memories of the night came down on her, like one of her grandmother’s backhands, heavy and deserving.
“I… I thought I died.”
Javier let out a deep breath. “You would have, if I hadn’t found you,” he said. “How could you be so stupid?”
Eva looked away. She gripped her clothes tight, ashamed and repulsed that she had one more item to add to the list of things she was indebted to him for.
He pressed both hands to his face and sighed.
Eva lifted the hemp blanket tighter around her. It was comforting to do so, to feel her chest and skin unexposed to those flesh eaters. Her stomach felt feeble, like one wrong thought or memory would be enough to make her retch out what little was stored in there.
“You’re incredible. Somehow your litio wards were strong enough to protect you from the tinieblas’ rot. Otherwise you’d be alive right now, but your heart would… be rotting away.” Javier reached forward, almost like he had any kindness in him. His great farce. “You’re fine—just disoriented—it happens. Galio healing will do that if the wound is severe—”
She swatted his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
Silence descended over their campground.
“Just tell me what happened,” she said.
His shoulders stiffened. He leaned away. “Fine. You want me to tell you? You’re an idiot, that’s what happened. Suicidal. Stupid. Reckless. I get the running away part. You must be regretting leaving your comfortable home—homesick—”
“It’s disappointment. I was tricked,” she said. His assumptions angered her. He couldn’t be more wrong. “Did you forget about what happened in El Carmín?” she asked him.
Javier only stared, which was more of an insult. He couldn’t even give her the decency of an apology. But perhaps she was the fool for expecting one. “What else do you want me to tell you? You left the town and its wards, and you walked right into a tiniebla nest.”
Eva ran her hands down her forearms, the memory of the attack lifting her skin in goose bumps. Their eyes. Their manic greed. How the light of her spells barely touched them and yet Eva could sense their hunger.
“I don’t understand,” she said slowly, and it was once again the painful reminder of the imbalances between them. His wealth of knowledge and her sheltered ignorance. “I—I don’t understand what that means. My heart rotting. The town’s wards. Tinieblas.” A second shiver ran through her, like a pointed icicle scratching down her spine. The name sounded fitting, for the darkness they exuded. “Is that… what they are—those creatures?”
Javier nodded. “Didn’t they ever teach you about tinieblas in Galeno?”
Images of the hacienda returned to her, the fire-red sunsets and the lonesome rain trees standing guard on flatlands that went on forever. How she missed her cousins’ laughter, their silly games across the courtyards, and the admonishing call of an aunt telling them to settle down. The smell of black bean soup with coconut, when the cook wanted to spoil her.
“My grandmother never concerned herself with talk of Fedria.”