Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(68)

“Well, will I like it?” Finn asked.

Alfie shot her a look. She shrugged it off.

“Just let me explain before you say anything. You say you need somewhere to place the magic,” Luka began tentatively. “Somewhere no one can go. Somewhere it cannot be touched and cannot infect anybody.” He stopped then, mashing his lips into a thin line.

No matter what the suggestion was, Alfie would take it if it would help him rid his kingdom of this magic. From what Alfie had seen in the Brim, Ignacio’s power was monstrous, and there couldn’t be a valid option to stop it that he would reject. Yet Luka was looking at him as if he would explode upon hearing it.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Finn huffed, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed. “We know this. Get on with it.”

Luka ignored her instead of flinging witty repartee in her direction. It wasn’t like him. A sense of dread descended on Alfie like a veil, blurring everything in sight. Whatever he was going to suggest was going to be bad.

“Luka.” Alfie swallowed thickly. “Please just tell me what it is.”

“You know that such a place exists,” Luka said, his eyes pleading for Alfie to piece it together himself, so that he would not have to say it aloud. “You’ve seen it yourself.” He clasped his hands before him in a tangled knot of fingers. “You saw it in the Blue Room.”

The idea sprouted in Alfie’s mind then, pricking him with its thorns, drawing blood and grief and an anger so powerful that it numbed him with its heat, cauterized every wound he had.

“No,” Alfie heard himself say, his voice a rasp of fury.

“You have to at least consider it. It’s the only thing that makes sense—”

“I don’t care if it makes sense!” he shouted, the words bursting from his mouth before he could temper the heat in them. The mere idea of it made it feel as if his lungs were pinioned flat, as if he couldn’t breathe. “I won’t do it.”

A gusty sigh came from the other side of the room. Finn stared at him as if she were watching a child throw a tantrum. “Can someone please explain what the hell is going on?”

Luka looked at her and opened his mouth to speak before shutting it. He looked at Alfie then, not asking permission but giving warning. “If she’s going to help you on this, she has to know the full story.”

“No she doesn’t,” Alfie bit out, his fingers curling into fists. “Because we are not going to go through with this plan.”

Luka pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a long moment before speaking again. “If you want to handle this on your own, then by all means do it. But if you cannot come up with a plan, then I’m going to Paloma. This is the only plan that makes sense, and you know it. If you reject it, I’m walking out the door to tell her everything.”

Alfie held Luka’s gaze. He wanted to look resolute, but he could feel the shift inside of him and he knew that he was looking at Luka pleadingly, begging him to not make him do this.

The moment broke. Luka shook his head at him, a wordless apology, and turned toward the door. Alfie opened his mouth to argue, but his words died in his throat.

Luka turned the doorknob.

“Wait,” Alfie called, his voice threadbare.

“No,” Finn said, pushing off the wall. “Don’t wait. Open the maldito door and let me out. If you fools are just gonna yell at each other instead of coming up with a plan, then I’m hopping on the first ship out of this gods-forsaken city.”

Finn stormed across his room, pushing Luka out of the way and reaching for the hood of the vanishing cloak that still hung on her shoulders.

“Listen.” His throat burning, Alfie spoke. “My brother was taken from me, but not in the way you and the rest of the world were told.” Castallan and the rest of the world were told that Dez had been killed by a nameless assassin. The details of how he’d died— the coup and Xiomara’s terrible propio—had been kept secret. The knowledge of an internal attempt to slaughter the royal family and a woman with the ability to create voids was hardly the sort of thing that would keep the people calm or preserve the international reputation of the kingdom.

Finn paused at the door and looked at him over her shoulder, curiosity flickering in her eyes.

“There was an attempted coup planned by Castallano nobles. A girl broke into the palace, a girl with a propio that could create . . .” His breath caught as his lips tried to form the word. “Voids.”

Finn raised a brow. “Voids?”

“Empty, vacuous places. Places with no time, no magic, no life.” Alfie’s voice broke around those final two words and then Luka was beside him, a silent comfort as Alfie’s eyes burned. He held them open, not wanting to blink, not wanting to feel the warm slip of tears down his face.

Finn didn’t seem to pay attention to how he struggled to speak, and he was thankful for that.

She crossed her arms, considering. “So you want to trap the magic, then get this girl to use her propio to open the void and then you toss this magic in there?”

Alfie nodded and folded a hand over his eyes. “It makes sense. No one would be able to get to it there. It would never be able to harm anyone.” He dropped his hand and held Finn’s gaze. “It would never fall into the wrong hands again.”

A silence stretched between them, an understanding folded in the quiet.