Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(108)

Finn shook her head. “No, it’s not you who’s wrong.”

“Hmmm?”

“It’s not you who’s wrong for the throne. It’s how you’re looking at it.”

“You’re an expert on ruling now?” he said dryly.

She shook her head again. “No, but I’m an expert on people, breaking them down so that I can mimic them.”

“So you’re an expert on me, then?”

She thought for a moment. “Sí.”

His laugh rang hollow and sad. “Well, that makes one of us.”

Finn remembered how he’d draped his cloak on her after they’d fought on the night of the cambió game. As if she were someone to be protected instead of a stranger who’d robbed him and knocked him flat on his back.

“You’re the kind of person who sees everything as something precious, something fragile. You’re afraid that you’ll break it.”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“You can’t see things that way. I’m not saying that Castallan isn’t great. It is. But it isn’t perfect. It never has been, never will be. Forget history. Forget legacy,” she said, and she wished she’d spent more time taking her own advice. She should’ve lived her life instead of running from the past. “If what you actually want to do is rule, gods help you, then just accept that your kingdom is a giant cesspool of shit like everywhere else. Then you won’t be afraid to take risks to make it better. And then maybe you’ll fix some things. If you walk around acting like you’re ruling over something perfect and fragile as glass, you’re gonna do nothing but polish it up and admire it. If you want to be a half-decent king, forget about everything that came before you, look at this place as it is, and deal with what you see.”

Alfie looked at her then and his eyes held her in a way that no one else’s had—as if beneath the grime of everything she’d done, the lives she’d ended, the pain she’d caused, there was someone worth knowing.

“I wish I’d met you earlier.” Something in the way he said it made her eyes sting.

“Right now, I wish for a lot of things.” More time would be the first, and she could hear the same feeling in his silence. The fear of death creeping behind them, following their footsteps.

But maybe this was as good as it could be. The moment she’d met Ignacio, she’d been on borrowed time. Still, her heart hammered in her chest, speeding up its rhythm to match how quickly her life was winding down, ending.

“Finn?”

“Yeah,” she said, her throat burning.

“You’ll never have to go back to him. We’ll kill him or we’ll die trying. And if we should die tonight,” he said, “I’m glad we will go together.”

“I don’t want to go at all.” She hated how small she sounded. Finn let go of the reins with one hand to rub her eyes before gripping the fabric of her trousers.

“Neither do I, but at least we won’t be alone,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to Dez when we get there. You’d like him.”

Finn had never bothered to think about the afterlife. She’d assumed that if there was some paradise of eternal rest she wouldn’t qualify. But maybe with a prince to vouch for her, she’d make it through.

“My parents died when I was really young,” she said. She remembered so little of them. Some of her most cherished memories were of how they would look down at her tenderly and swing her by the arms while they walked. How they’d called her Mija and pressed kisses to her cheeks. “I won’t know anyone in the next world.”

“You’ll know me,” he said. His hand grazed hers tentatively, a question in his touch. Only when she moved hers closer did he interlace their fingers, a touch of softness cutting through the wind blowing past the carriage. “And now I know you.”

She’d always imagined the weight of someone’s hand in her own to feel like an anchor, tugging her into a forced stasis when she only wanted to run, to be free. Yet now, she wanted nothing more than to stay. She felt more freedom in this moment than all her years combined.

Freedom, she was coming to understand, could be found in a person instead of a place.

The road straight and clear ahead of her, Finn turned and looked at the prince. In his gold eyes was the same unguarded fear that she felt in her bones, a vulnerability that left her raw and exposed to all that was to come. But there was power in the fear that surged between them, power in knowing that death was coming and that there wasn’t time to pretend, to be anyone but who you were, to feel anything but what you felt. She cast her eyes back on the road.

“All right,” she said. “Then we’ll go together.”

The thief and the prince rode on, the lacework of their fingers a promise that where one of them went, the other would surely follow.





33


The Substitute Prince


Luka was nervous.

The last time he’d been nervous at a ball he was—well, he couldn’t remember. Social functions were more his element than fire was. This was all very out of character and annoying. Needing to do something with his hands, he worried the collar of his deep blue overcoat that Alfie himself would have worn to the ball, if he were here to attend it. But he was not.