Incendiary (Hollow Crown) Read online

  Fire! Not sunrise, I realize. Fire.

  My head spins and I crouch down, grabbing hold of my knees for support as I struggle to breathe. Someone calls my name, but it’s like they’re a hundred meters away, and the brilliant colors of my memories still swirl dizzyingly through my vision.

  Then something soft brushes against my cheek.

  Dez. The callused pad of his thumb rough on my skin. Be calm. The word chimes around me, through me. My body relaxes, muscles unraveling like string pulled from a tapestry, and as my heart slows, Dez’s warm magics fill my senses. I’m overcome with the need to be calm, still. And suddenly, my mind feels clear. The Gray retreats and I slam the door shut. Sayida and Dez have moved me away from the camp and to a soft patch of grass. How was I so out of it that I didn’t even feel it?

  I curse and slam my hand into Dez’s hard chest, regretting the shock of pain it brings me. “I told you I don’t want you to—”

  “I’m sorry,” Dez says, his voice low but steady. He’s not sorry at all. “Sayida can’t sew up that wound if you’re shaking.”

  “Are you done yet?” Margo asks, her sharp blue eyes on Dez. “We need help with the bedrolls.” Then her eyes flick toward me, and her upper lip curls into that familiar sneer. I can’t be certain if she’s upset because Dez used his magics on a fellow Whisper, or because he touched me so intimately. Perhaps both. Perhaps it’s just because no matter how much I bleed or run or fight in the name of the Whispers, my existence is a reminder of everything that has been lost.

  Dez grunts an apology and silently withdraws to add a log to the fire.

  “Come now,” Sayida says to me, returning to her suture kit. “Esteban, would you be so kind as to share your drink?”

  Esteban, who has begun preparing our meal, scowls. “It’s probably already infected. You’d be wasting good drink.”

  Dez stares at Esteban with the kind of steel that has made better men soil themselves.

  “Just a splash,” Esteban grumbles to Sayida, but narrows his eyes at me when he tosses the flask to her hands.

  “Ignore him,” Sayida whispers in my ear. “It won’t hurt too badly, but you can bite down on your belt if you’d like.”

  “I think we have different definitions of ‘won’t hurt too badly,’ ” I say. “But I’ll be all right.”

  She giggles when I glower at the slim flask of aguadulce. The drink might be made from the sugar cane stalks plentiful in the southern provincia, but there is nothing sweet about the clear liquor. Once Dez poured it over an open cut on my leg before digging out a thick shard of glass that was lodged in there. I couldn’t walk for weeks, and I couldn’t stomach the smell of aguadulce for even longer.

  Sayida gives me a warm smile. “What happened? I’ve never seen you react to a flame that way.”

  Sayida never has to use her Persuári gifts to influence my mood. There’s something about her that makes me want to spill my secrets, even the things I can’t always voice to Dez.

  “It’s nothing,” I say. “I remembered something from when I was a child.”

  Her thick eyebrows arch with surprise. “That’s good, isn’t it? You haven’t been able to access the Gray since you were rescued from the palace, right?”

  I hold my hair back and stare at the grass while she cleans and dries the wound. “I’ve been working with Illan to try and recall more from my time with the king’s justice to use to our advantage, but nothing has worked. He thinks that I compartmentalized my memories so my mind wouldn’t crumble. That I created the Gray to hold all my memories from that time. The other elders believe that the Gray is a side effect. A punishment, really, for the Robári who create Hollows. It’s what I deserve, I suppose.”

  “Don’t say that, Ren.” Sayida frowns and presses a dry cloth to the flask of aguadulce. I brace for the burn of alcohol. “We all have darkness in our pasts. The goddess says we all deserve forgiveness.”

  “I shouldn’t be forgiven just because I hardly remember the first nine years of my life.”

  “And look at all you’ve done since,” she whispers, then covers my wound.

  My vision flares red and I swallow my scream, if only because I don’t want Margo and Esteban to think me weak.

  “Hold still now.” Sayida waits for me to stop wincing, then threads the needle. I shut my eyes and hold my breath as the metal pierces skin. The silk string follows through and tugs.

  I breathe hard and fast. My temples pulse with a dull ache. I have to keep the Gray under control. The elders believe that perhaps there’s something there that could help turn the tide of the Moria rebellion against the king. But deep down, I wonder if the reason I couldn’t access the memories with Illan’s training is because I didn’t want anything resurfacing.

  Unlike the Whispers, I spent part of my childhood in the palace, not as a captive—as a guest of the king and the justice. A kind of pet, really. Ten years ago, the justice began to seek out Robári children all throughout the kingdom to be used as weapons. And though there must have been a few others like me—Robári are rare, not extinct—I don’t remember them. Maybe they were old enough to refuse the work the justice demanded, and were executed for their belligerence. But I didn’t refuse.

  I did as I was told.

  Justice Méndez had singled me out. He would sit me in one of the palace’s many parlor rooms and bring trays of delicacies for me to choose from. He told me that my ability to pull memories from people was the most powerful he’d ever seen. I didn’t know then that I couldn’t give the memories back. That I could steal one too many. That when I was finished—when I emptied people of all their memories—I was leaving behind only a shadow of a person. A Hollow.

  I didn’t know I was the justice’s greatest asset in the beginnings of the King’s Wrath, when thousands of my kind—including my parents, I later found out—were massacred. The crime was using our magics against the king and people of Puerto Leones.

  “There,” Sayida says when she’s finished, applying an herb salve that cools my burning skin. Admiring her work, she smiles. “That should hold you over until we get back to Ángeles.”

  “If we make it back,” Esteban says, snatching the flask from Sayida’s hand before she can put it away.

  “Always the optimist. Have you so little confidence in my ability to get you home?” Dez calls good-naturedly, but I hear the challenge running beneath the question.

  “I trust you with my life, Dez, but I worry that scavenger’s mistake will follow us.” Esteban runs a hand over his coarse, curly hair.

  “This scavenger also happens to be the only person in Ángeles who can read an alman stone,” Dez says, an edge to his words. “Unless you’ve acquired talents I wasn’t aware of.”

  “If you call that curse a talent,” Esteban says.

  I stand abruptly and leave—but not because of Esteban, whose insults are as familiar to me as the whorls on my palms. I glance at Dez once because I know that he is going to follow.

  Treading away from our camp, I keep along the river until we’re out of earshot. Dez’s presence looms behind me, his steps matching mine.

  “Esteban was out of line,” Dez says when I finally stop to face him. “I’ll speak to him.”

  “Esteban is always out of line,” I say sharply. “And I don’t want you to have to speak to him. I want you to let me deal with him myself.”

  Dez glances skyward, confused. “Let me help.”

  “Don’t you see what you do?” I take a breath because between running in and out of Esmeraldas and my memories trying to break out of the Gray, I feel stretched too thin. “They’ll never respect me if you come to my defense at every turn.”

  “You’re still the most valuable person in this unit. In all of Ángeles. Without you we’d be in the dark.”

  “You don’t see it,” I say, shaking my head slowly. “I’m not talking about my value.”

  He smiles. Now, of all times, he smiles at me—with that look that makes me want to do se
nseless things.

  “Then tell me,” he says. “I can’t read your mind, not for lack of trying.”

  “Can you change the past?”

  He takes my hand, and I imagine that I can feel him through the soft leather of my gloves. “Ren—”

  “I’m serious.”

  His smile falters but only for a moment. “You’re always serious, Renata. I’m sure you were born serious.”

  “Being responsible for thousands of deaths will do that to a girl.”

  “You’re not a girl,” he says, caressing my shoulders. “You’re a shadow. You’re steel. You’re vengeance in the night. You’re a Whisper of the rebel Moria.”

  I know he means to compliment me. Among our units, we are as good as our skills. But when he tells me I’m the whisper of death, and not a girl, it’s like an arrow in my chest. I stare back into his eyes, wishing he were a little less reckless. And yet, then he wouldn’t be Dez.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No, Renata.” He sighs. “I can’t change the past. If my father’s bedtime stories serve me, there’s only one way to change the past, and that’s with the Knife of Memory.”

  I laugh because if I was born serious, then Dez was born brazen. The Knife of Memory. A blade so sharp it can cut away whole swaths of memory at a time—whole years, whole histories. A classic Moria children’s tale.

  “You can’t make this right, Dez. Only I can.”

  He wags a finger at me. “As Margo so lovingly reminded us, we lost our last stronghold because of me. I couldn’t defeat the Bloodied Prince. If she’s going to turn her rage on someone, it should be me.”

  “That wasn’t your fault. We had no allies and were outnumbered ten to one, Dez.”

  He looks away but agrees with a nod. Something inside me twinges at the hurt on his face. Under the shade of verdina trees, I allow myself to finally relax into the strength of him. His tunic is loose and unbelted. I brush the wild black waves of his hair that never want to stay tied down. It hurts to move my neck, so I stand on a thick tree root.

  “Why do you get to comfort me, but you won’t allow me to do the same?” He chuckles and rests his hands on my waist. We’re eye to eye, and I surprise him with a kiss. The fear that’s dug its claws in me all day lets go. I can let go when it’s just the two of us. He wraps an arm around my lower back and presses me against him. Everything about him is sturdy, dependable as the great trees that surround us. He draws back to catch his breath. When I rest a hand over his heart, I can feel it race. His crooked smile brings a tight sensation in my belly. “Not that I’m complaining, but what was that for?”

  “I’ve wanted to do that since we left Ángeles,” I whisper. “Thank you for today. For coming back for me.”

  “I will always come back for you.”

  Those are bold words, an impossible promise that he can’t actually keep. We don’t live in a world that allows for those kinds of vows. But I choose to believe them. I want to.

  He reaches around his neck and unties a black leather cord with a copper coin strung from it. On one side it has the profile of a nameless woman with a laurel crown, and on the other side three stars around the inscribed year, 299. As long as I’ve known him he’s never taken it off. It takes me a moment to realize he’s offering it to me.

  I shake my head. “I can’t take that.”

  “Can’t?” he asks. “Or won’t?”

  “Illan gave you that pendant.”

  Dez holds the coin along its edge. “And he got it from my grandfather, who was a blacksmith for the crown. There were exactly ten of them minted before the capital fell under siege by a rebel group from the former queendom of Tresoros and all production stopped. My father says King Fernando keeps a gallery with his trophies, and the other nine coins are there as a reminder that Puerto Leones was once surrounded by enemy lands—Memoria, Tresoros, Sól Abene, Zahara. Their fate was to be conquered by the lions of the coast.”

  “How come I’ve never heard that story?” I ask. To be fair, there are dozens of versions that tell of how the Fajardo family of Puerto Leones conquered or “united” the continent. But the queendom of Tresoros was an ally. I didn’t know there were still rebel groups over a century after its fall. I wonder, will we still be in this fight in another few decades?

  Dez brings me back to the present by gently tucking my hair behind my ear. His smile is so beautiful it hurts to look at him for too long.

  “Consider yourself lucky to miss many of my father’s ramblings of ancient times. That doesn’t change the fact that I want you to have it.”

  I shrug my good shoulder. “I can’t wear anything around my neck.”

  “Keep it in your pocket. In your boot. Just keep it with you.” He presses it onto my open palm and closes my fingers around it. “It’s worthless if you try to buy anything with it, but it’s the only family heirloom I have.”

  “All the more reason I shouldn’t have it.”

  He licks his lips and sighs. “When I realized today that you hadn’t gotten out of the village, I knew there was a possibility that I wouldn’t see you again. That I’d never hear you yell at me or correct me when I’m wrong. I’d never hold you or see you in the courtyard back home. I couldn’t bear it, Ren. Everything is going to change soon, and I don’t know who’s going to make it out alive, but I want you to have a part of me.”

  “I have nothing to give you, Dez.” Emotions swell in my chest. I lean into him with my eyes closed, because if I look into his eyes I will be weak. I will take his trinket. I will soften when I should be sharp edges and steel. He kisses the mound of my cheekbone, and then I can’t help it. I look.

  “You give me your trust, and I know how hard that is for you.”

  I’ve known him for too long, and I don’t think he’s ever spoken so honestly. Dez never hides his feelings, but I wonder if there’s something he isn’t telling me. Something about the mission and in the alman stone that is more dangerous than we thought. When he looks at me, I see a flash of fear in his eyes. The Dez I know is not afraid of anything. But maybe I imagine it. Maybe it’s the excitement of the day and the shadows of the setting sun.

  “I will cherish it.” I hold the copper coin close to my chest and kiss him once more, too briefly.

  From our camp in the distance comes Dez’s name. It’s time to read the alman stone and discover what Celeste San Marina died to protect.

  Chapter 5

  As the sun sets, we gather closer around the fire. I’ve never transcribed an alman stone outside our fortress in Ángeles. It has to be done in the presence of at least two elders and a Ventári. Because of our pasts, they don’t trust Robári to tell the truth.

  Ventári like Esteban can see if I’m lying. He’ll look into my mind as if peering through a window and write everything down. The day I don’t need one of the mind-reading Ventári to prove I’m telling the truth is the day I know the Whispers trust me.

  Margo and Sayida watch quietly from the other side of the fire pit while Dez paces around us in that slow, predatory way of his. I take the alman stone from my pocket and set it on the makeshift tabletop. I have the passing thought that this is what a fallen star might look like—a white crystal with light trapped inside.

  I pull off my glove, then rest one hand on top of his. The pearlescent whorls and scars are a bright contrast to the rest of my olive skin.

  Esteban’s onyx eyes roam my face. “Ready?”

  He wears a silver bracelet, the metal conductor for a Ventári’s powers. Esteban once described the bracelet as a torch, helping him illuminate the deepest thoughts in the human mind. The Moria are said to have metals in their blood, that they’re the key to strengthening our powers. I always remember the stories Illan would tell us as children about Our Lady of Shadows plucking the veins of metal beneath the earth and imbuing them with her power. She gave that magic to the Moria to protect the world she created. That’s one story, at least. It is difficult to protect anything when
all you can do is hide.

  “Ready,” I say.

  I shudder as the chill of his magics seeps into my skin. Esteban is the only Ventári I’ve let read me. If you didn’t know what was happening, the tension behind your eyes might be confused with the start of a headache. For me it’s close to having someone step into my skin. The intrusion brings a shock of panic because when I look at Dez, all I can think of is the kisses we traded not too far from here. Breathing deeply, I try to keep my mind as blank as a lake on a windless day. No need for Esteban to know—

  “Know what, little incendiary?” Esteban smirks.

  “That you’re an ass. But I suppose we already know that.” I concentrate on the time Esteban accidentally fell into the compost pile back in Ángeles, and Esteban’s eyes flash dark.

  “I’ve told you,” Esteban says. “You can always fight against my power. Show me what you want me to see. If you’d only bother to practice.”

  If I did that, it would only incur suspicion and he knows that. “Get on with it.”

  Holding the alman stone at eye level, I concentrate on the core of light pulsing in the stone like a still-beating heart. No one, not even the elders, knows why only Robári like me can read the images an alman stone captures. The stone itself was once so sacred it was only used to build the temples and statues of Our Lady of Shadows, divine mother to the Moria. When the kingdom of Memoria was conquered by Puerto Leones, many of the histories and texts were destroyed. Though elders tried to pass down stories, we don’t always know what is myth and what truly happened. Ten years ago, during the King’s Wrath, all remaining statues and temples were crushed to dust. The pieces of alman stone we’ve been lucky enough to find are used to communicate across the network of Whispers in the provincias.

  This stone means everything to me.

  The lines on my palms light up the same way they do when I’m about to take a memory. Unlike when I enter people’s minds, the images in an alman stone have bright white edges. Everything about them is too bright, as if the sun were right above the scene no matter where or when it took place. The sound is like trying to communicate from behind a wall of glass. As the forest fades away and the warmth of Esteban’s magics snake up my arm, the last thing I hear is the scratch of his quill.