Eva nodded, understanding every word left unsaid. She didn’t know what made her utter, “Reina’s with Celeste right now.” But maybe she did it as a warning, to safeguard Maior’s feelings. After seeing how Celeste had treated her, Eva decided the human needed the protection.
A chilly breeze swept through them, and Maior’s dark hair rode it like froth on waves as she stared out at the rolling hills, where a single line of sunlight surfed the mounds of the Páramo Mountains. She had a tiredness to her countenance, accentuated by the dark rings under her eyes. “Yes. Do?a Celeste being here changes everything. She’s important and… I’m not.”
Eva felt it, too. Celeste was beautiful, and valco, and free.
Maior’s gaze surfed the points of Eva’s antlers. “Valcos can see magic.”
Eva nodded.
“You’re valco.”
Eva nodded again.
“You can see what that witch did to me, can’t you?” Maior gripped her belly, stricken by a sudden ache. “You can see the Benevolent Lady?”
She couldn’t lie, even if it was uncomfortable to answer. Her voice shrunk. “She’s bound to you somehow. I don’t… know how.”
Maior turned her forearms and rolled up her sleeves, revealing two long vertical scars, the skin hardly healed. “It’s the bindings. Does she talk? Is she saying something right now?”
“She seems… dead.” Eva tried being as kind as she could. But nothing about the truth could ever sound kind. “She’s just there, like a guest that never leaves.”
“Does it bother you?”
Eva licked her lips. “Yes.”
There was no privacy with the woman around—or her remnant.
Maior crossed her hands to squeeze her scars, fingernails tearing the scabs. She doubled over and winced.
Eva struggled to hold her back—to stop her. “What are you doing?”
“I want her out of me—I can’t stand it!”
The scab on her right arm ruptured, the small trickle of blood smearing their wrangling fingers with crimson. At that moment Eva realized Maior’s wounds should have long since healed.
“Stop. Whatever you’re doing won’t make you better.”
“Every night I dream of this valco—of this man,” Maior told her, her eyes shinier and wetter. “Do?a Ursulina brought me to him, through her eyes. Now I dream and dream and dream of him, like I love him, but I don’t! I’m so tired of him. I loathe him. I hate seeing him!”
“A valco man?” Eva said.
“Don Enrique ?guila, the caudillo of Sadul Fuerte—her husband.”
“You have her dreams?”
Maior went still. She gave her head the slightest shake and said, “No. In my dreams, I’m her. I have… her memories when I sleep.”
Every cell in Eva’s body screamed at her to reach out, to warm Maior in an embrace. But a voice reeled Eva back, telling her, You’ve only just met. Instead, she flipped the spell book open.
“Void magic bound her to you, so void magic must be the way to break the bond.”
Maior watched with wide eyes as Eva skimmed page after page, her finger underlining every line, eyes furiously absorbing every word despite the dying light.
The tome was thick, every page filled with tight paragraphs and diagrams requiring patience and time to absorb. Knowledge and foundations she didn’t have. Eva sucked in a breath. It was like she was staring at the depths of an ocean, arrogantly thinking she could dive in and pluck the right shell from its endless floor.
Maior placed a hand on her wrist. She offered her a small smile to stop her. She shook her head, wordlessly freeing Eva from the weight of the commitment.
Eva’s jaw clenched. She was useless now, but one day she would know the answer. One day she would be the one known as the greatest geomancer.
Two things happened in close succession at that moment: First a loud crack erupted from behind them, coming directly from the depths of the house. No—from beneath it. Then Eva’s core, the part of her deeply attuned to the workings of geomancia, which could never be deafened, felt the plunging pull of an inky void, a suction so strong that the air squeezed out of her lungs and left her empty.
There was a lot Eva didn’t know, but this time she understood the source without an inkling of doubt: a burst of geomancia, the kind that pertained to the wonders and horrors of iridio.
33
Tinieblas
Eva reeled as Maior squeezed her by the shoulder. The dusk was darker than light, yet she could still see Maior’s wordless inquiry and surprise.
“What happened to you?”
Eva blinked to ground herself. She took in the garden’s umbra, the immobile vegetal shapes, and the smells of wet moss. The air temperature dropped. Without them noticing, clouds had shrouded the skies, hiding them from Rahmagut’s Claw… and the possibility of light from its neighbors, the moon and stars. The night crackled with far-off thunder.
Her chest and extremities pulsated with unease.
As a vein of lightning streaked the sky, Eva could swear she saw one of them shaped like a grinning devil.
They whipped around at the sound of footsteps. Celeste, Reina, and Javier emerged onto the garden.
Eva craned her neck to get a better glimpse up the slope to the house. “Did something collapse?”
“We gave the house a load of iridio to speed up the connection,” Celeste said without her usual confidence.
Javier unsheathed his sword. “Something’s not right. You feel it?” he asked Eva, and she nodded.
“The house took up the iridio kind of violently. I don’t think it has attempted a connection with somewhere so far before. We might have overloaded it,” Celeste added by way of explaining.
The moments dragged in thick apprehension. They waited in silence, the mountain’s chill leaking past Eva’s ruana and clothes.
“Did you attempt to troubleshoot it?” Javier asked exactly what Eva was thinking.
Celeste’s cheeks glowed red. “Do you take me for a fool? The problem is not what’s inside the house… I think the problem will be what’s coming.”
Something like thunder rumbled in the distance again. Eva didn’t want to think of it, but her instincts yanked her back to the night with the tinieblas, when everything had seemed well one instant, and the next they were upon her, all teeth and claws.
“Let me guess, it just announced to the whole mountain the iridio it has in its stores?” Javier said.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Eva asked as she twirled her iridio pendant, the touch a reassurance.
“Tinieblas are attracted to iridio,” Reina said dryly.
At that moment the darkness over the hills took defined shapes, shadows becoming masses of galloping creatures, all headed in Gegania’s direction, proof her words were true.
“Stand back,” Javier ordered Eva and Maior.
Reina unhooked Ches’s Blade from her belt, but without the sun to bounce off its gleam, it was nothing more than an ordinary sword.
“We must protect the house,” Celeste commanded. She pressed her palms together, then spread them in a wide sweeping gesture. A tall ornate scythe materialized in her hands, with a handle of ebony and a curved blade shimmering in crimson iridio.