Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(92)

Spiced cocoa. Luka’s favorite. He must have spilled it. Alfie’s heart sagged in his chest. The parchment was a sopping mess, and Alfie knew that it was beyond repair—the spell was broken. He and Luka could no longer use the parchment to communicate. But a corner of it had been wet, yet not so soaked that it was impossible to write on. Luka must’ve scribbled a note on it at the very last minute, before the spellwork fell apart. It was his final message.

Sombra turned into stone, not bones. A statue.

Be safe.

Alfie stared at the words Luka had scrawled into the wedge of parchment no longer than his finger. Sombra had been turned to stone? What did that mean when it came to stopping Ignacio?

“You there! Muchacho!” a guard called from behind him. He dropped the tray of food he’d been carrying for a prisoner. “What are you doing here?”

Alfie’s hands flew to his face. There were no more wrinkles, only smooth skin and the features he recognized as his own. He’d lost Finn’s magic after transporting.

The guard was running toward him, his hand moving to the machete at his hip.

Alfie raised his hand and shouted, “Parar!”

The guard’s spine straightened. His body froze before falling to the ground, stiff as a board. Alfie rose off the ground and stepped over the guard.

“Sorry,” he muttered, his voice rough with pain. But there was no time to stew in guilt.

Alfie walked to the door. In the Clock Tower, prisoners’ magic was stifled and blocked, so there was no need for extreme precautions to lock them in. The door to the cell was simple. Made of wood with a strong, but easily magicked, lock. At least to anyone who was fluent in the language of magic.

Alfie stood at the door to Xiomara’s cell. His hands shook at his sides and he couldn’t help but reach for the flask at his hip. He could feel the anger bubbling up within him, churning in his stomach like a beast roaring to be freed. He did not want to feel it, did not want to surrender to it again. The tequila sitting cool in the flask would blur the sharp edges of his pain. He need only take a sip. Just one. He pulled the flask from his hip and unscrewed the cap, raising it to his bloodstained lips. The burning scent fell over him with the soothing softness of a blanket.

But before the tequila flowed over his lips, a sharp-tongued voice echoed in his mind.

Who you are when you’re angry is still you. It doesn’t have to be all of you, but it’s a piece of you all the same. If you deny that, you might as well deny your whole maldito self and be done with it.

He could not remember opening a door and inviting the thief in, but she’d somehow nestled into his mind and made a home there. Her face bright in his mind, Alfie pulled the flask away from his nose. With a shaking hand, he put it back in his holster.

For months, he’d had been torn between the anger and hunger for vengeance, and the opposite pull begging him to let go of that anger, to move forward. Each side came with its own brand of shame that brought the flask to his lips to quiet it all. The drink blunted that battle within him, coating his mind in a numbness that removed the guesswork of which part of him was right or wrong. But he would not live that way any longer.

He was a boy who’d let his anger swallow him whole and attacked his own mentor, and he was a boy who’d watched Marco Zelas’s mother grieve with the ache of empathy in his chest. These jagged pieces fought within him each day, but they formed him all the same, and he would need all of himself to get through this moment.

Fear coursed through him at the thought of being alone with this girl, with no one to keep him from giving in to a part of him that scared him so deeply. Finn had said she would be there to tell him when he was too close to stepping over the line, but she was nowhere to be found.

But then again, that wasn’t what she’d said, was it?

If you do, I’ll tell you and you’ll decide to step back or dive in, but I can’t stop you.

This decision was going to be his either way. He would depend on no drink or no person to hold him accountable. He would have to trust that who he was was enough to withstand this.

Alfie took in a trembling breath and leaned against the door to gather his strength. Then he pressed his palm to the lock. “Abrir.”

“Co?o!” Finn cursed as the fireworks erupted around her in a spray of color and sparks.

The guards looked about in shock as a monstrously huge firework of the great bird on the Castallan flag swooped over their heads in a surge of red, flaming wings. Dragons and other mythical beasts streaked through the air. With a yelp, Finn dodged a shooting star with a shimmering rainbow tail. It hit a guard straight in the stomach, sending him flying over the railing and down the ten-floor drop.

The prisoners were jeering in their cells as the guards ran about in a panic, shouting orders to no avail.

How had this happened?

The dragon pulsed against her chest again, as if in answer to her question.

The prince’s voice bloomed in her head, soft with worry and confusion. This magic, it’s not like normal magic . . . It just, it listens. Or it listened to me.

It made sense that it would listen to him; he was the one who sealed the maldito thing, after all. And he had that kooky propio color magic thing. But why would it listen to her?

“He’s going to kill me,” she muttered as she dropped into a crouch to dodge a streaming yellow firework. She was supposed to go back to him, then they would set the fireworks off together when they were close to the prisoner’s cell, not now when they were eight floors apart. At this rate, the fireworks would end before she even got to the prince, let alone before they got to Xiomara’s cell. Without them as a distraction, how would they sneak the girl out of her cell? They needed her to even have a chance at getting rid of the dark magic.