Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(110)

The mallet slams down, and this time Sayida’s shriek is so loud that it echoes long after she’s done. My entire body has turned hot. My power sears across my skin, stronger than it’s ever been. I can feel the light running patterns across my flesh as the metal around my hands grows hotter and hotter, fabric dissolving and stripping away. My screams join Sayida’s.

I can feel the power burning through my skin and as the pain grows unbearable, I yank my hands apart as hard as I can. The red whorls carve across my flesh. Then I feel the sudden weight of my arms as the metal breaks free.

I freeze in shock. What did I do? I slowly look down at my tattered dress, the platinum still shimmering in the dim light. Bits of cloth and leather stick to my buzzing flesh. This is something new. Something dangerous.

I let the chains fall onto my lap so they don’t rattle. I undo the ties around my legs with trembling fingers, but the chains slip and clatter to the stone floor. Méndez’s head snaps to me.

“What are you—” He rushes toward me, but he’s too late, I’m already free. He swings the mallet at my head, but I duck to the side. I hit the floor, then scramble and pick up the chair to throw at him. He uses the mallet as a weapon but cries out as the wood strikes his shoulder and his weapon slips out of his hands, falling with a resounding thud.

“Guards!” he shouts, but his eyes widen, because we both know the mistake he made in sending them away. Not even the guards like to stick around to hear the screams.

“I’m going to kill you,” I tell him. My heart is a mangled, wretched thing and I want to blame him, I do.

“Your magics don’t work on me.” But even as he says it, it dawns on him that I’m wearing platinum, and there’s a spark of doubt in his eyes as he backs away.

I am the thing that everyone fears. The creature in the shadows, the warning whispered on lips across the entire court and kingdom.

“You’ll never be free, Renata. Not as long as you carry that curse with you.”

“I stopped looking for freedom a long time ago,” I say, my magics surging to my fingertips. “Do you know what I want now?”

“What?” He looks over his shoulder but there is nothing except a wall. His weapons are out of reach, and he’s not a fighter. He never was.

“I want to be the Whisper that silences you,” I say, reaching for his throat with my bare hand. My blood rushes to my head in an almost exhilarating way the moment I touch him, but he barrels into me, pushing us to the ground. I struggle to get ahold of him; his skin is slick with sweat and blood. I can’t breathe with his knee in my abdomen. I take his hand and fight dirty. I bite so hard I taste blood as it breaks the skin. He cries out and crawls backward like a crab across a sandbar.

I close my hand around his and that rush returns. My power lights up, whorls all the way up my wrist. The heat beneath my skin burns away what’s left of the silk.

“My Ren,” Méndez whimpers.

A hard breath shudders through me. I want to claw out any weakness I feel toward him. I look at Sayida, and I know what I have to do. He shouts as my bare hand grips his face. My palms tighten around his jaw and I don’t let go, my power coursing through my skin, driving its way through his mind, my fingers radiating a stronger light than I’ve ever seen before. I dig and dig, drawing out his memories one by one. They come to me quickly.



A young man standing in an empty cathedral staring up at the statue of the Father of Worlds.

Méndez fighting in the first war, before the King’s Wrath.

Méndez holding the lifeless body of a woman in his arms.

Méndez running in a yard, his hands reaching for a little girl with dark hair. “Lina!” he shouts. Her eyes dark as night with a laughter that echoes in his heart.

Méndez weeping before a coffin so small he carried it in his own arms. Lina will never, he thinks. Lina will never . . .

Méndez taking the hand of another girl. “Renata,” he calls her.



Then the memories spill too quickly for me to control, dark edges spilling into the center of my vision until there is gray and then total and complete darkness.

When I let go, I pull myself off Méndez. He lies completely still.

His body is alive. That’s how it is at first. A shell of a person. Slowly, he’ll fall into a deep sleep and never wake up. His body will starve until his heart gives out.

His salt-gray eyes stare at the ceiling. I shut my own as pinpricks of pain stab in my skull, the aftereffects of taking so many memories all at once. I stare at him for a long time. His eyes blink slowly, mouth slightly ajar.

A fate worse than death. Every memory. Every thought. The ability to make new ones. The name that sent fear into every person in Puerto Leones, Moria and not. Once the leader of the King’s Wrath, the Arm of Justice, my captor.

Now a Hollow.





Chapter 26


None of us look at Méndez, who lies slumped on the chair.

What remains of him.

I did this to him. Méndez arrives home from the war. He tries to wash blood out of his hands but can’t. “Papá!” A little girl calls to him. I gasp as I break from his memory. The little girl looked like me, but I heard what he called her. Lina. Is that why he cared for me the way he did? I want to scream. I want to get his memories out of my head and give them back.