Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(24)

Finn tried to unlock the door to her rented room at the Apple Core. It took her three tries because her hands kept shaking.

When it finally creaked open, she rushed in and slammed it shut, upsetting her tender wrist, which she’d just had healed by some back-alley bruxo in the Pinch. She’d paid him with the fox-masked boy’s cloak. She wished she could hang him with it—if not for him, Kol’s gang wouldn’t have caught her. But then again, Kol still would’ve found her, wouldn’t she? She knew she stayed here at this pub, knew her every move. Bile rose in the back of her throat.

She had to leave town, had to change her face, had to get out of this. Finn rushed to the cracked mirror that hung above the small desk beside her narrow bed. Her face was purpling with bruises, as if she’d messily eaten a fistful of berries. Her bottom lip had split.

She passed her hands over her face and thought of a different nose, one that was wider. But when her hand fell from her face, the same one remained. She pounded her fists on the desk, upsetting her wrist again. After letting out a stream of expletives, she took a deep breath and tried again. This time she passed her hands through her hair as she thought of blonde tresses. Nothing happened.

Frustration raked its nails over her bruised skin. Who the hell was Kol to decide if she should be able to use her propio? Finn didn’t give a damn about her name or the face she was born with—all of that she could toss over her shoulder and never look back—but her propio was the only thing she held dear. The only thing she clung to. If she could change her face then she could change her fate, her future, and now that was gone. Stolen.

She felt like a sealed bottle of fizzy drink. Whenever she tried to use her propio it was as if she was shaking the bottle instead of removing the stopper. Pressure built inside with nowhere to go. A painful headache bloomed between her brows. Her propio was gone unless she got the vanishing cloak, a mission that would surely end with her getting run through by a palace guard.

Run, her mind hissed.

But there was no point in that. If Kol had la Familia watching her, there was no way she’d make it out of the city alive.

Finn grew still, hunched over the desk, her breaths ragged. With a frustrated scream she lifted the husk of the desk, tender wrist and all, and threw it across the room. The ramshackle thing broke against the wall, narrowly missing the small window.

She thought of admitting that she couldn’t handle the bet, getting her magic back and working for Kol. She thought of Kol’s satisfied smirk, of her thumb pressed against her lips. Finn scrubbed at her bruised mouth, chasing the memory away. She couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.

She thought of taking on the bet. Of infiltrating the palace. It was a suicide mission in any circumstance, but to waltz in without being able to change her face? It was absurd.

Her mind fell silent, tying itself in knots trying to come up with an answer.

Her bed gave a familiar yawn of a creak as she sat. She’d slept in this bed for weeks now—just long enough to call it hers. She should’ve known better. The moment the sheets started to feel comfortable, she should’ve run and never come back. When you put down roots, you pulled up weaknesses, vulnerabilities, strings. Always strings.

And there was his voice in her head. Ignacio.

Puppet strings, Finny . . . Puppet strings . . .

A cold sweat prickled on her forehead. Kol was just like him, someone else trying to make her their obedient little daughter. Trying to control her. Control her face, who she was, who she worked for. She couldn’t help but be pulled by a memory.

During their first days together, Ignacio had treated her to a slice of sweet flan at a marketplace, and she’d kindled the courage to ask him why he’d taken her off the streets.

He’d gazed down at her with that terrifying intensity, a hunched bridge between love and obsession. “To love me,” he’d said. “I made you my daughter to love me.”

Ignacio’s propio was compulsion. Like anyone else’s propio, it had its limitations. In order to control a person, he needed them to reveal their true self to him, to tell him something intimate that gave him a foothold on their spirit to latch onto. Then they were his for the taking. He need only look them in the eyes and speak to make them obey his command. But his propio made it difficult to tell who loved him. He’d forget where the real person began and his compulsion ended.

“But the love of one’s child,” he’d said. “That is real. You’re the only one who I know will love me truly. No matter what I say or do to you, little chameleon, I’ll know that you love me. That you are mine.”

Then he’d held her in his arms the way she’d remembered her parents had and she’d felt safe and loved. But as she grew older he’d stifled her, demanded all her time, all her love. There could be no other recipient. And if another recipient arose, Ignacio would snuff them out.

Or he would tell her to snuff them out.

Don’t act like killing has ever been a problem for you, Finny, his voice purred between her ears. We both know you’re a natural.

In another searing flash of memory, Finn remembered a little girl standing before her, a girl as young and lost and hungry as Finn had been then. In her mind’s eye, Finn watched herself dig her nails into the girl’s skin, tackling her until she landed on her back. Her stomach roiled as the sound of rusted nails sinking into skin beat in her mind like a drum.