Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(107)

Finn’s breath caught in her throat. Ignacio had spent years hammering his words into her head about who she was and who she could be, all of it starting with that night in the alley. But the prince didn’t speak to her with disgust or pity. He spoke as if she could still be saved. As if she weren’t as broken and monstrous as Ignacio made her feel.

Maybe she wasn’t.

“That night with the bread, that was the night my face changed for the first time.” She’d never told anyone else about the moment that triggered her propio. But she didn’t want to die with that secret locked in her chest too.

“You just wanted to be someone else after that night,” he said.

Finn could only nod at that, her throat burning. Alfie sat back and stared forward again.

“My propio came for the first time at a moment that would look so insignificant to anyone but me,” Alfie said.

“What happened?” Finn said, more than glad to move away from her own memories. When he didn’t speak, she asked again, “Qué fue?”

“It really was a day like any other,” he said, but his voice carried a current of barely masked pain, like a river meant to gush held back by a flimsy dam. “I was nine. I walked into the library to find Dez. When I got there, he and my father were sitting together, laughing and smiling at each other.” Alfie’s voice quieted to a pained murmur. “They didn’t even notice that I was approaching. And I just, I saw this look on my father’s face. It was a look of such love for Dez. Such pride. And I’d never seen him look at me like that. I knew he never would. Never like that. That day was the first time I began to see magic and change my magic to match someone else’s. The first thing I did was change my magic to match Dez’s shade of gold.” Alfie cleared his throat, his voice thick. “Dez gained his propio after holding me as an infant for the first time, because he loved me. I got mine because I was jealous of him. Some brother I was.” He fell quiet for a long moment. “I just mean to say, you’re not the only person who wished you were someone else. You weren’t alone in that, even if it felt that way.”

His words dusted her skin and clung there, like fallen snow. To share one’s faults was a weakness; this had been clear to her for most of her life. Your faults could be used against you, used to control you, hurt you. If she’d known this as a child, she would’ve kept her secrets to herself instead of entrusting them to Ignacio. But Finn always prided herself on being a fast learner. Since then, she’d known that her scars and the stories that came with them were to be suffered in silence. They were something to be carried on the skin and the soul as a map of her most wretched moments. But it had never occurred to her that scars could be shared, the burden slung across two pairs of shoulders instead of one. It was a stunning feeling that sprouted and grew from the boy beside her and the soft cast of his eyes when he regarded her, as he tucked her secrets into his pocket for safekeeping instead of unsheathing them like a dagger to hold beneath her chin.

“Blue,” he said suddenly.

Finn tilted her head. “Blue?”

“The color of my magic, it’s blue,” he said. “You asked me before. It’s dark blue. When I showed Luka what it looked like with paint, he said it looked like the color of the night sky in a children’s book.”

She could imagine that. Something clean and soothing, calm, but a bit sad too. It was his color. “That makes sense.”

“And your magic isn’t one color,” he said, his words hurried, as if they didn’t have much time left. She supposed they didn’t.

“It isn’t?”

“No, it’s a deep red but it’s constantly shifting shades. Constantly changing.”

Finn smirked. “Just like me.”

“Just like you. I have never met—seen anything like it.” Alfie cleared his throat.

Finn was glad to have an excuse to keep her eyes forward, the wind cooling the flush warming her cheeks. She gripped the reins tight as the horses moved with a curve in the road. “Why were you going after Englassen books?” she asked.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, his voice hushed.

“You get to know who you’re dying with, but I don’t?”

The prince was silent for a moment before he heaved a sigh. “I thought something in those books might help me bring my brother back. Or that’s how it began. It continued for much stupider reasons.”

“Like what?”

“To be reckless. To do something, anything, that would prove I’m just as wrong for the throne as I’ve always felt.” From the corner of her eye she saw him rubbing the back of his neck, a gesture that would be forever paired with him in her head. “My parents call it the weight of history. They tell me that I am the product, the progress of our ancestors—people who were enslaved by Englass, disconnected from their magic, their culture. And I believe them, I believe in our history and I’m grateful,” he said, his words hurried as if he feared she’d think him spoiled. “But when I think about all that was sacrificed for me to be who I am, have what I have, I get so paralyzed with nerves, I can’t think. Can’t do anything. It sounds stupid, but if I can’t handle the weight of history, how can I ever hope to become king? I’m wrong for it, I know it. Sometimes, I suspect my parents know it too. Especially Father. I know he wishes it were me, not Dez, who’d been taken.”