The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (92)

Lázaro shivered. Rhiannon dug through her backpack until she found her shawl, the one her mother always kept because she got cold wherever she went, even in the tropics. He accepted the offering.

“Then you went after her,” Marimar said. She rubbed her hands over her eyes, as if the movement would wake her from the terrible lucid nightmare this reality was becoming. “You’re the reason she never left that house.”

“Mari, let me,” Rey reminded her softly. “Did you go after her?”

“Orquídea’s first wish severed my connection with her. She never wanted to see me, hear me, speak to me ever again. The next was to ruin Bolívar, and the way to do that was to destroy the circus. I warned her that there would be a cost to her wishes.”

“Pedrito,” Marimar said.

“He was the first price Orquídea paid,” Lázaro lamented. “I wish I had known what troubled her that day. I wish we could have both escaped.”

The room shook again. The reflective walls undulated like molten steel. Rey drew Lázaro’s attention. “What happened next?”

“Bolívar locked me up once again. He controls me with my signet ring. He drains my power, but it burns through him. I heal, and he returns for more. He has corrupted my power and in turn my power has corrupted him. And still, Orquídea’s will was so strong. I could not get near her.”

“That’s why she couldn’t tell us about your bargain,” Marimar said and the relief felt like a cruel thing. She wanted to scream but felt the rumble of the room once again, like a battering ram at the door. She met her father’s eyes. “And that’s why you got close to her daughter instead.”

“No. It was not my intention—” Lázaro stopped, frustrated. He glanced at Marimar again, and that seemed to ground him. “I got free, once. I searched for her name. I scoured the world for her, trying to find the link between us. All I found was a name in a newspaper. The list of graduates from the Four Rivers Gazette. Pena Montoya. A girl whose name meant sorrow and shared a likeness to my friend. She was only protected from me when she was on Orquídea’s lands. When I traveled to her, I fell on the road in front of her car. I loved her from the moment she asked me if I was lost.” Lázaro licked the blood pooling on his bottom lip. “I could not tell her everything, but I did tell her my name, that I was a fallen star, and when Orquídea heard it she forbade Pena from seeing me but, because of our deal, she could not explain why.” Lazaro shut his eyes tightly, sighed with regret. “She must have thought I wanted to hurt them both for what Orquídea did to me. I never wanted that…”

“That’s when my mom ran away,” Marimar said.

Lázaro nodded. “For six months I lived like a human, with her. I thought if she knew me, my heart, I could tell her the truth and free us all. Then, Bolívar’s pull was too strong. Fighting him, even though I had my ring was impossible. He had bound us. It feels like… thousands of constant cuts in my soul.”

He touched the finger where the eight-pointed star belonged. “It would have been my greatest joy to have known you, Marimar.”

She looked at him then, this strange being who was the reason for her mother’s death. “Am I—what you are?”

Rhiannon repeated the question and Lázaro shed his crystal tears once again, because he wished he could look at his own daughter’s eyes and tell her that she was made of the sigh of the universe. Just as he’d explained his origins to Orquídea all those years ago, he told her descendants.

“I did not know if I could spawn my own progeny,” Lázaro said.

Rey raised his brows and murmured, “Romantic.”

“Does this mean you’re part alien?” Rhiannon whispered to Marimar.

Marimar’s laugh turned into a sob.

“Pena tried to call me down, but I could not go to her out of fear Bolívar would uncover what I had done. Still, she broke through and made a door at the bottom of the lake in Four Rivers. My shining, beautiful Pena. She tried to swim to me and I knew if I answered her, Bolívar would hurt you, hurt all of you.”

“You still failed,” Marimar snapped.

“I have tried to fight against him,” Lázaro said. “I have been trapped here for forty-eight years, but he held me captive long before that. I am so very weary.”

“What do we do?” Rhiannon asked.

“We leave,” Rey said as the room shook harder. The bone in his fist caught fire and he let it fall to the ground.

“Leave,” Lázaro agreed.

Marimar pressed her hands against the wall she’d fallen through but it was solid. She closed her eyes and wished for a way out. The ground rumbled beneath her and she had the sensation of falling from great heights. The battering ram sound returned, closer apart than before.

She felt heat in her pocket where Isabela’s last bone was.

“There is a way,” Lázaro said, his eyes locking with Marimar, then the shaft of light pouring in from the ceiling. “You can make a path using your magic.”

“I’m trying, it’s not working,” she said.

Lázaro extended his forearms. The pearl marks along his skin formed a pattern of constellations so far away, the human eye couldn’t see them. She brushed her own skin, tracing the same pattern in brown beauty marks.