Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(105)

Finally, there’s a click and the rusty groan of the door opening. He shoves me in. The floor is slick, and I fall on my side.

A soft, dark laugh comes from the corner. I push myself up, try to stand, but only manage to get to my knees.

A girl with matted blond hair and a purple eye swollen shut stands over me. I see past her cuts and welts. One open blue eye. A red dress. Margo.

“Get up, traitor,” she says, and spits in my face. “I wasn’t aiming for you, but I’m going to finish what I started.”





Chapter 25


“You don’t understand,” I say, pushing myself up to my feet.

Margo is lighter than me, but she’s clawed herself out of more scrapes than I can count. There’s a fire burning within her. She needs to let it out. I can see it in the way she paces back and forth, sizing up my legs, the cut in my arm, the belt tying my hands together.

“I’m tired of trying to understand you,” Margo says. She lashes out with her fists and pushes me. The floor is so slick I slip and hit my head on the dirty sack in the corner. “You’re the reason we’re here!”

I crawl to a stand. “You never tried. I’ve spent years listening to you telling me how worthless and untrustworthy I am.” I get in her space, poking at her chest as she slaps my hands away. “But there is nothing you have ever said, nothing you could ever say, that would make me hate myself more than I already do. So yes. This is my fault. And yes, I was part of this, one of them, but I was a child, Margo. I don’t want to be forgiven. Everything I’ve done since Dez saved me from this nightmare, and since I came back, has been to try to fix what I am, what I did. I’m trying to make this curse worthwhile! At least let me tell you what I’ve discovered.”

She steps to me, and I snap back. But she isn’t trying to hurt me. Instead, she undoes the belt around my hands. The buckle hits the floor with a heavy thud. Margo resumes her pacing, stopping every time she completes a full circle to grab the bars in the narrow window. There, she sticks her arm through and tries to fiddle with the cylinder lock, trying random codes.

“That’s a one in a million,” I say.

“But it’s still a shot.”

“Why did you come here, Margo? Where are the others?”

Margo lets the lock go and settles on the cold floor. She shivers, pressing her hands together and rubbing them for warmth.

“The others are waiting for me outside the capital. After we parted ways with you, we went to the safe house in the town of Galicia until we could come up with a plan.”

“Why didn’t you return to ángeles?”

She rolls her eyes, and I flinch, noticing again the bloodied bruise covering her left eye almost completely. “Because after—after what happened, the inspections at the bridges and tollhouses were doubled. We needed to wait, but we were not alone.”

“Who was there?”

“Half the Whispers. Mostly scavengers and cooks. After a week they began the night journey back to ángeles. Esteban wanted to go to keep things in order, but we had to see this through.”

“What do you mean, keep things in order?” I ask, though my chest is already tight with what she’s going to say.

“Illan is a broken man. You wouldn’t recognize him, wasting away in his bed. It’s as if he’s lost the will to live. Nothing we say or do snaps him out of it. He mostly drinks broth when he remembers and drinks a fifth of aguardiente until he falls asleep, muttering things we cannot make sense of. He believes we’re lost without Dez.”

We remain silent, the unspoken thing between us so heavy that I also find my way down to the floor. The cold seeps through my hose, and I kick off my shoes. If we get out of here, they would fetch a good price, even as filthy as they are now.

“Without Dez—it’s like everyone has lost all hope. They’ve only managed to get one ship of refugees to Luzou since that day. No one knows what to do. Where to go. All safe houses are compromised. Many won’t even take us in anymore because of the pamphlets the justice released, Dez’s picture with a red painted X over his face. The leader of the rebellion is dead. They circulated so quickly that Illan found out that way before we could tell him in person.”

I try to picture Illan in the forest the night before everything went terribly wrong. The thrill in his old features. How clever he thought he was finding out about the weapon that controlled Moria—used them—destroyed their magics. I imagine picking up that flyer. Seeing the likeness of his son’s face covered in what could be blood. The proud boy, the handsome boy who would charm the stars into shining in the middle of the day if he wanted to. The dead boy.

You were born serious, Dez told me, and I don’t know why out of all the things he ever said to me, that’s the one that keeps repeating in my thoughts when I least expect it.

I stare at my hands, one gloved, the other bare and more scarred than ever. These hands stole the lives of hundreds, including my own parents, but were rendered useless against Castian. How?

“How can they be finished?” I ask. “Illan is the one who sent us on the mission to find Celeste’s alman stone. He’s the reason we confirmed the weapon’s existence in the first place!”

“Black protocol is still in effect across all the Whispers’ channels,” Margo tells me. “The Moria in hiding will stay hidden. There’s nothing we can do. Not while the king and the justice have dispatched troops to all ports. Even if we wanted to sail to Luzou, or take our chances in the frozen Icelands, we can’t. Ships are being searched top to bottom. Even the empress’s ship. We are being chased to the ends of the world, and now we can’t even turn to the sea.”