Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(56)

Then there was only the sound of his measured walk. Her eyes clung to the ground as his feet came to a stop just beside her head.

“Now look at what you’ve done.” Ignacio tutted with a fatherly click of the tongue, as if she were a child with a scraped knee. “You shouldn’t have run. Now you’ve hurt yourself. That seems to be what you do, doesn’t it? Silly things that only end up hurting you in the end.”

There was no point in looking away anymore. She looked up and faced him. Finn couldn’t hold back a gasp. Up close she could see that he looked exactly as he had when they’d first met a decade ago—young and vibrant, strong brows and dark brown hair, thick and lustrous. His skin was smooth, and there were no marks to show what she’d done to him. No ruined skin around his eyes. No milky pupils. Black, raised veins pulsed beneath his skin, just like the infected men in the pub—a latticework of darkness. Fear pooled in her belly at the sight. She clutched her middle, afraid that she might be sick in front of him.

“You wanted me to run,” she spat at him before folding her hands over the wound in her heel. Putting pressure on it wasn’t helping. Her hands came away slick with blood. She didn’t know the desk magic to heal it. “You don’t want anything unless it tries to run from you.”

“In your case, limp away. But you’re right,” he said with a crooked smile. It hurt to remember that she’d learned it from him. How she’d practiced in the mirror, wanting to catch mischief in the curve of her lips just like he did. Even now when she smiled, she could find him in her face. “You know me so well.”

Ignacio had a propio, but he could control someone only if they revealed their deepest truth to him. He couldn’t control her until she’d told him hers, the thing that shamed her the most. Yet now he could make everyone in the Brim freeze? This dark magic had heightened his powers beyond her worst nightmares. The sour taste of fear crawled up her throat like bile.

Though fear curdled in her stomach, a snarl curled her lip. “I can’t wait to watch you crumble to maldito dust.” Maybe this moment of terror would be a blessing. After all, Ignacio would be destroyed by this magic like that man in the Blue Thimble, wouldn’t he?

But Ignacio only smiled at her before tapping her on the nose. “Oh, my dear. I am not those fools. This magic strengthens me, gives me everything I ask.” He leaned in close and tipped his forehead against hers. When she tried to move away, he seized her by the back of the neck and held her there. “I told you I would never die, didn’t I? You should have believed me.”

Finn put her hands on his chest and shoved him away. When he touched her, her skin crawled, as if it would rather fall from her bones than feel his caress. Her body no longer felt like her own; it was a tool for him to wield, to sheathe, to sharpen, to parade as his pride and joy. And if he was right, if this magic sustained him instead of destroyed him, then she would never be free of him. She would be locked in her body again, a puppet dancing to the pull of his strings.

Ignacio straightened and gazed down at her, his vile face outlined in a halo of sunlight. “The gods saw fit to grant me what I needed to find myself again,” he said with a flourish of his cloak. It had once been a sign of comfort for her. He’d wrapped her in it when she was small. Now she wondered if he would wrap her corpse in it. “And to find you.”

She didn’t speak. She buried her dagger in his foot. Ignacio looked down at her, disappointed. He didn’t even flinch. He pulled the bloody knife from his shoe, and within moments the boot knitted itself closed. She imagined his skin doing the same beneath.

“Don’t think that because I love you, I won’t hurt you. I can do both,” he said. “I would rather end you now and remember you as you once were, when you were my good little girl.”

“I was never good,” Finn spat. “You made sure of that.”

“I made sure you were clothed and fed and loved!” he thundered. “And you sliced through my eyes, left me with nothing! To think I was going to give you a gift.”

“I don’t want a maldito thing from you, and you never loved me, you filthy liar!” she shouted. The sting of his lies burned her more now that she’d spent so much time without him. She wouldn’t let him speak her truths for her. Not this time. “You put your voice in my head and made me whatever you wanted me to be.”

Ignacio shook his head as if she were a child lying about sneaking a cookie before dinner when her face was covered in crumbs. “Do you remember when I asked you if you loved me, and you said being with me was like suffocating in the middle of a crowd and no one noticing? Suffocating and not being able to scream. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

He spun his fingers in a slow circle. Just like that, every time Finn drew in breath it pulled away from her lips. There was nothing to breathe. She clutched at her throat.

He looked down at her piteously. “Just lie down, Finny. It’ll be quicker that way.”

“Please,” she croaked with her last puff of breath. “Let me go.”

He knelt, reaching for her cheek, his face twisted with grief. “Can’t you see how hard this is for me? No parent should have to bury their child, and I will never join you in the next life.”

She wrenched away from his touch. He was still mad enough to think he couldn’t die like he’d told her when they’d first met, but now that he had this power, maybe he was right.