His expression simmered to something like amusement. “Celeste only listens to me sometimes. What you witnessed there was a rare moment.”
Eva settled on the bed. The feel of the mattress on her aching bones was a relief she hadn’t indulged in a while. Melt into me, the bed told her.
“I don’t blame her. You’re not that much older than her,” she said and yawned.
“No.” He ran a hand across his sweaty forehead.
“You’re… young enough to be her cousin.”
“Yes.”
“Why is that?”
Javier’s lips became a thin line, and for a second, Eva imagined he was going to spew something vile.
“I mean,” she said, feeling silly, “your brother’s so much older than you, right?”
He tossed his sword to the ground and unbuttoned his doublet. “Do you know why valcos are on the verge of extinction?”
Eva wasn’t listening. She stared at the stained satin he shook off, her mind racing, grappling for what he meant to do.
He pushed his slick hair back out of his face and continued. “Valcos are a dozen times stronger than humans. You could say the gods balanced this out by making us notoriously infertile. The conception of a new valco child is so rare, it is a gift from the gods.”
Eva frowned. She refused to believe an ounce of it, for the implications of what her father had done to her mom.
Javier folded his doublet. He loosened the strings of his shirt, then slipped off his rings, save for the galio pair. Eva watched him get comfortable in his clothes as the sleep dried out of her like leftover rain under the Llanos sun.
“Once, we were many—or so the stories say. Some couples didn’t conceive at all, while others only raised a single child. After the humans settled and overcame us in numbers, the last pure-blooded valcos had no choice but to marry each other, cousins and siblings. Mother’s parents were cousins, as were their parents before them. Your ancestors and mine could even be of the same blood. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He shook one boot off, then another. Eva’s muscles transmuted to stiff marble. She inched farther and farther back onto the bed.
She asked him, to keep him busy talking—instead of whatever he was doing… “Did your father have valco blood?”
He shook his head. “Mother was an only child and the youngest of her cousins by a good generation. Her cousins were loyalists; they fought on Segol’s side and were killed for it. So, no. She bred with humans, and her valco line dies with us.”
Finally, once he stripped to his loose long-sleeved shirt and trousers, he meticulously stacked his doublet, accessories, boots, and weapon into a neat pile, which he placed atop the corner chest.
“Soon enough you’ll hear the hateful rumors that our age gap was because Mother was too busy indulging in her affection for women to conceive another child. But the truth is that Enrique’s father was a charlatan, and he abandoned her. Eventually Mother had to try again with another human, hoping for sons and daughters who could marry each other and pass on the blood. I was the only one.”
Eva swallowed uncomfortably.
He spread his arms, showcasing the whole of him. “Obviously it didn’t work out. I was born male, and our valco blood is doomed to be further diluted. Only, now that I’ve found you, not so much.”
He kneeled on the bed and took off her left boot.
Eva pulled away at once, her belly in a swirl of panic. “But—there’s Celeste. She’s valco. If it’s the family tradition to inbreed, why not marry her?”
His eyes hardened. Her question opened a terrible box, but it was too late to take it back.
“Celeste was the only good thing Laurel gave Mother. And yes, she was supposed to be my bride. But Enrique doesn’t value Mother’s legacy anymore. He became a tool under Laurel, thinking with his prick rather than with his head. Stop squirming, and give me your foot!”
This close, her throat itched with the tang of his sweat and their blood. “No—you can’t undress me.” Eva’s chest pounded with a flurry different to when the tinieblas threatened her. No, this panic was compounded with delight at the thought that this beautiful monster could desire her. He was talking about consummating his marriage to try for heirs.
“Undress you? I’m trying to heal you, you half-wit.”
Her mouth went dry.
“You were limping all the way up. I saw what that tiniebla did to you.”
With a puff of relief, Eva eased to the ministration of him removing the other boot. Shivers bloomed in her stomach as his fingers took her foot gently. “But you refuse to be a healer.”
“I mastered galio to be undefeatable in battle. Not to make anyone else undefeatable. Besides, you very well know Celeste can see spells of geomancia,” he said, avoiding her gaze. “And during the battle, Reina was flaring bismuto—I couldn’t risk it.”
Understanding dawned on Eva.
Black, putrid magic began to slither in and out of his cheeks, then his arms, as he summoned the galio from his rings. A smoky blackness overtook the white of his eyes. He tensed, the monster taking over.
She watched, petrified, well aware he was restraining whatever terrible thought or action the demon in him itched to perform. Then she felt it—waves of pleasure from the healing. She closed her eyes, sucking in air as the pulled ligaments of her ankle shrunk and rearranged themselves. Relief like a splash of water on hot days in Galeno.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a young man demoralized by a curse.
He hadn’t wanted to heal anyone in the kitchen because he knew Celeste could see him for what he was. And he wasn’t just half valco, half human anymore. Slowly but surely, he was turning into something else.
34
The Liberator
Excitement charged the kitchen on the morning Celeste announced that the iridio table had finished mapping the mineral vein network. The house was now connected to the Cow Sea coast, where they could charter a boat to the Liberator’s residence in Tierra’e Sol. The news was highly anticipated, for they had spent days anxiously making repairs to Gegania while seeing the cyan smear in the night as the countdown to their journey’s end. With Celeste, Reina had patched up the fractured plaster around the front door and windows. Eva and Maior had replanted the vegetable garden and the conuco. And Javier kept the grounds safe from the trickle of tinieblas, whistlers, and other unnamed ghouls attracted to the iridio churning underneath the house.
The party broke fast on Maior’s pisca, exchanging pleasantries with giddy anticipation about the travels ahead. Mostly, Eva and Maior did all the talking, and for that, Reina was grateful. She was worn, and her head throbbed, and it wasn’t until she ascended back to the room she’d claimed and almost collapsed on the unmade bed that she realized she needed another refill of iridio.
There was only a small amount left. Three beads or so of liquid that she kept for an emergency, which a moment like this did not qualify as. She could delay the refill and risk collapsing in front of Celeste and Javier on the way to Tierra’e Sol. Or she could give herself one last boost, hastening her reconnection with Do?a Ursulina, who would give her the ore back as soon as she saw that Reina had fulfilled her objective. Either alternative carried its plethora of risks, with Reina’s death as the only sure outcome. So she just unbound her chest with her teeth grinding in self-hatred and her hands shaking from exhaustion to do the blood-damned refill.