Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(114)

“Not edible,” Esteban says, but takes the pure silver cuff etched with pinpricks of lightning.

“These are lovely.” Sayida puts on the copper sun pendant. It falls just over her heart. There’s a matching chain bracelet and small earrings, but she wants them to go to the elders.

“I suppose you have the whole platinum dress,” Esteban tells me.

I laugh, and even that hurts.

Margo cautiously puts on five solid-gold rings; each one fits at a different joint, divided between both hands. She wiggles one hand and creates an illusion at the center of the road ahead of us. A boy we all love looks back at us. He smiles his cocky grin, and when he takes a step toward us, he vanishes.

We take a moment for Dez, but I know that we have to keep going. I have to keep going.

“What’s this?” Esteban asks.

A slip of parchment sticks out from the pouch.

“Well? Speak, woman,” Margo says.

In delicate handwriting is an address in Sól y Perla, a coastal city near Soledad prison, with heavy port traffic that goes to Luzou. I don’t understand what it is at first. But then it dawns on me. An address—26 Calle Tritón.

“The Magpie’s safe house,” I say. “We need to go there.”

“Ren,” Margo says slowly, “I know we have to destroy the weapon. But you already tried going at it alone, and you failed. We tried doing this without you and failed. Let’s go home, incendiary. We fight together.”

This time, the name does not bother me. She’s right. I did fail, but for the first time she admits that she failed, too. There are voices in my head that won’t let me rest. Méndez. Castian. They tell me that I can’t trust the Whispers.

But they’re wrong.

“Let’s ride,” I say.



My stallions break into a gallop, and when we’ve made it up the sloping hill and past the rows of flags, we hear the distant warning bells singing. We’re out of the city, we made it past the most dangerous part, we just need to go a bit farther. My shoulders relax. I’m surprised by our smooth getaway, thinking luck, or Our Lady, has finally smiled down upon us.

My mind is swirling with Méndez’s memories. There are moments when he shows a guard kindness by giving him leave to be with his family. Then there are the moments when he enjoys cutting people, watching them bleed. Every time, I end up staring into his daughter’s eyes. I can hear him say, Lina will never. Lina will never. Over and over again until it syncs with the rhythm of hooves and spinning wheels on the dirt roads.

I think of the soldier who stood in the house in Esmeraldas. He told me I didn’t have the eyes of a killer. He was wrong. Wasn’t he?

As we ride, plains give way to forest roads, and we do not stop. My hands cramp around the reins and my hips ache. My mind hurts worse, speeding through moment after moment of Méndez walking through halls. Drinking his sorrows, or praying them away. I search and search for a visual of the weapon. There is no doubt in my mind that he used it.

For a flash I see Castian at the Sun Festival. But my vision flickers as the memories shift. Colors bleed into one another.

I see my scar-covered hands being healed by Méndez. Then so much light, I have to close my eyes. Then a terrified, whimpering voice screams, The pass is on the eastern ridge! The pass is on the eastern ridge!

That was the weapon. That brightness was blinding. I pull on the reins and shout, “Whoa! Stop!”

“What is it?” Margo asks, sticking her head out of the carriage.

“Do you want the bad or the worse of it?”

Margo and the others pile out. Sayida touches her new pendant for comfort. Esteban holds his stomach and keeps his eyes on the ground.

“Speak, Ren,” Margo says.

“I got a glimpse of the cure,” I say. I describe it to them, but they’re skeptical. “It might be Méndez staring into the sun, or Méndez looking into the throne made of alman stone. But I could feel Méndez’s thrill as he shut his eyes against the light. There’s a room beneath the palace that is full of the stone. Somehow, they’re using alman stone in the weapon.”

Esteban crouches down. He rests his hands on the dirt road, then brings his thumb over his torso to make the symbol of the Lady. “Perverting the sacred. Cruel, even for this king.”

“What’s worse than that?” Margo asks.

“Méndez was telling the truth. He knows about the pass in the mountain range,” I say. “I could hear someone yelling it. They were being tortured.”

“He couldn’t have had time to send someone after us,” Esteban says. “Could he?”

“Did you see the traitor?” Margo asks.

The coldness in her voice shocks me. Her golden curls spill over her tense shoulders. I know that somewhere something broke inside her, and I’m not sure if it was with me in the cells or watching Sayida get tortured. I look at where Esteban is nearly doubled over with pain. Fresh blood trickles from a cut near his swollen eye.

“No,” I say. “I only heard the voice.”

Margo shouts a string of curses as she climbs up to relieve me, and I climb into the carriage with Sayida and Esteban.

We ride, a storm that no one can see coming until it is too late.



We come to a complete halt on the main road that leads to the Memoria Mountains pass. At the border between Puerto Leones and the land given to us by treaty is a city of ruins. ángeles. Stucco buildings with the roofs torn off, overgrown grass and white weeds that have started to reclaim the land. It is a place of ghosts. Beyond that, in the valley, are the cloisters we call home, safe within the protection of the mountain. The Leonesse forces could never pursue what was left of the Moria army beyond this road and into the mountains because they couldn’t find out how to breach the natural fortress. What was once the capital of the small kingdom of Memoria is now crumbled houses and a castle with one wall standing.