“Oh, like Rahmagut’s Claw and the legend of Ches’s Blade? Were you not at the Plume for precisely that?”
Celeste covered her face with her hand, turning away. Reina fought the urge to reach out. She was reminded of a similar moment, when they’d been barely adjusting to life without Do?a Laurel. Her heart ached.
With courage Reina didn’t know she possessed, Maior said, “Why did the witch bind that woman to me?”
“To remind Father of what he will gain if he parleys with Rahmagut,” Celeste said.
And not just him, but you, too, Reina wanted to howl at her. She bit the inside of her lower lip until the tender flesh cried and swelled from the abuse. Do?a Laurel’s return would be the end of all their pain. Not just that—Do?a Ursulina was going to welcome Reina, officially, as her successor in the eyes of the governor and the king’s court. When they parleyed, Rahmagut would grant Reina a new heart. She grew giddy at the thought of having the freedom of health once again.
“Do?a Ursulina plans to bring back his dead wife, the Benevolent Lady,” Javier told Maior, who recoiled at being addressed by the man who’d kidnapped her from her life.
“I didn’t ask for it,” Maior said, her nostrils flaring. “I didn’t ask for any of it.”
A heavy silence stifled the room. What would be of Maior, after the caudillo achieved his goal? Reina wasn’t prepared for the answer. Not yet.
“I… am sorry,” Celeste said in a whisper. “I shouldn’t have acted so cruelly. You have to understand. I lost my mother at a time when I thought we were invincible. My father has gone mad. And seeing you with her only reminds me of how everything has gone so horribly.” She clenched and unclenched a palm in frustration. “I wasn’t being honest, when I insinuated that I didn’t believe these legends were true. I went through the trouble of climbing all the way up to the Plume’s summit after Ches’s Blade, and it wasn’t there for me. I wasn’t worthy, or it’s not true.”
Reina was almost ashamed to reach for it where she’d hung it on her belt, inconspicuously, like a second machete. Though the moment she unhooked the engraved handle and lifted it up to the room’s dim light, it became impossible to ignore. The blade’s edge was sharp like a line of parchment, and pure light reflected off its surface when she angled it toward the window. A mirror. It was light, yet sturdy enough to feel trustworthy under her grip, capable of cleaving tinieblas and saving lives.
Reina didn’t know the appropriate way to present the trophy. Should she kneel, like knights did in the stories? Everyone’s eyes fell on her, so she simply carried the blade to Celeste’s lap and presented it to her with both hands, clumsily.
Celeste’s brows fell in a deep frown. “It’s real?”
“It was right there. It’s just that the sun made it hard to see,” Reina said in her best attempts to reassure her. She angled the blade so Celeste could take it.
But when Celeste’s slender hand curled around the handle, it closed in on itself, grasping at air. Once, twice, Celeste tried, and the outcome was the same. Her furious surprise silenced the room, the tension thick and suffocating.
Then Javier let out a bellow. A deep belly laugh with which he doubled over, wiping the corners of his eyes. “Don’t tell me—” he said.
Celeste tried again, and her cheeks grew redder.
Reina felt like a paralyzed fool. Her mouth opened, yet there was nothing she could possibly say.
Javier’s laughs made it worse or spared her. He approached, saying, “Don’t tell me it can only be wielded by the duskling.”
Reina allowed him to try. The room witnessed how the effect was the same. Celeste’s furious gaze landed on Maior, and Reina understood her desires. Two valcos failed, and a nozariel succeeded. Now it was time for them to see the human’s attempt.
Maior’s face was a grimace as she circled Javier, keeping a wide berth, and grabbed for the blade. Her hand cut through it as if the golden metal were nothing more than light and shadows.
And Javier laughed even harder. “What, is this going to be a contest of who can lift the blade? We all know it only works for Reina.”
Reina had seen the shroud of anger darken Celeste’s eyes before, many times, when facing off against her father or when she fumed about Do?a Ursulina’s ambition. But Reina had never seen the brunt of it, so naked and raw, directed straight at her. It was a fleeting moment, in which Celeste’s beauty vanished in one blink and was back the next, an unveiling of a viperous desire. There was a question in that look, and envy.
“So you are Ches’s chosen warrior?” she said. “You?”
Reina let the blade catch the light again, her chest fluttery, her heart’s whispers awakening at the blooming of her self-doubt, for she knew she wasn’t worthy of it. Ches had abandoned her since the day she’d woken up with a new heart. She shook her head. “It’s wrong. It’s only reacting to my nozariel blood,” she said without any certainty.
When she glanced up, it was Maior’s gaze she met. A warmth filled her. At least she wasn’t hated by all. Not yet.
“I went to the Plume hoping to use that blade to stop the night, like it’s meant to be used in the stories, to prevent my father from communing with that god, and Ches’s reply is to grant it to you?” Celeste added acidly, “So, will you stop the night?”
Reina’s reply was to draw her lips into a thin line. On the contrary, Rahmagut was going to give her a new life, and she was going to make sure of it.
Celeste snorted, shaking her head. “Lovely. Well, I don’t need your help anyway. Never did. I have a backup plan. I knew I couldn’t just rely on a legend.”
“And what is that?” Reina asked, pretending like it hadn’t stung her.
Their eyes met again, and they held each other’s gazes as time slowed, each second endless like the decay on the Plume. Despite Celeste’s disappointment over the blade, and their clashing objectives, the bands of friendship still connected them. They were frayed, sure, but the elasticity was not gone, and they could stretch and bend to accommodate the changes in their lives. Reina would never act to Celeste’s detriment; she had to see that.
“I’m going to seek asylum from the one person Father wouldn’t defy. The person he knows can best him and who it will irk him the most to see me with: the Liberator.”
Reina’s jaw tightened. She stopped herself from sucking in a breath, from reacting. The Liberator resided on the same island where they needed to go—the symbolic location of Rahmagut’s tomb. How could Celeste not know this, after all the searching for a counter to the legend in her books?
“He used to send me gifts when I was little, did you know that?” Celeste continued. “He believes we’re the future of the valco species, and he wanted to protect that. I sent him a letter before I left the manor. I told him what I am.”
Reina simply couldn’t believe her good luck. She wasn’t going to have to force Celeste to go anywhere after all.
“How do you plan to make it to the Liberator?” Eva said from the doorway, earning her the startled attention of everyone in the room. “Doesn’t he live worlds away?”