Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(117)

Because screams spring from within the cloisters.

We’re under attack.





Chapter 28


“Stay back!” I shout at Illan. He starts to follow me, but he clutches his side and grimaces. He’s grown too old for battle, I suddenly realize.

“Hide!” I scream. We have no time for all of my questions, still unasked—how he knew Queen Penelope—how he could tell what Dez meant to me—what other secrets are lying dormant in his past.

I watch as he limps toward the trees for just a moment, before I turn and run into the cloisters, where the purple uniforms of the king’s men dot the courtyard. Blood splatters on the stone path ahead of me, bodies cut down without warning. The world has turned upside down. My stomach seizes and I resist the urge to retch.

I have to fight back.

“Ren!” I hear my name called through the fray, but I can’t find the direction it’s coming from. Then I notice the shadow behind me. I whirl around in time to see a soldier’s sword slicing through the air.

Without thinking, I lunge forward, wrapping my bare hands around his throat. My magics rise to the surface as his scream pierces my eardrums. The platinum feels like a wave pushing against me. I don’t fight against it, but sink into it. I take just enough to put the soldier in a light sleep. His memories are sharp, clear.



A boy learning how to wield a sword.

A girl waiting for him on the docks.



They slip like silver water through my fingers until I see pitch black, hear the whistles of solitude.

Panting, I steal his sword just as it’s about to clatter to the ground and race up the stairs to the council hall.

Even in death Méndez kept his promise. Who did he break?

A soldier appears from behind a pillar. She screams through her fear as our swords clash. My blood runs as hot as lava, and I fight with an anger I’ve bottled up for nearly a decade. I am so close. I cannot end here.

I ram the sword through her throat. Warm blood sprays across my face and the acrid taste of it finds its way into my mouth. I turn and spit it out on the ground.

I run through the hall and open the double doors to the meeting room.

Fall to my knees.

Three of them are dead, but they took two soldiers with them. I make to move, when a cry catches me off guard.

In the corner of the room is Esteban.

He clutches a bottle of aguadulce and presses it against a wound in his belly. “I’m sorry,” he tells me.

“Don’t be sorry just yet,” I say, pushing back my fear and trying to focus. “You’re going to be fine. We need you, you hear me?”

Esteban releases a shuddering cry as I yank the bottle of drink from him. I knock back a swig, then pour it over the gash on his chest. It’ll need stitches, but it isn’t as deep as I’d feared. I think of the start of our journey. How he told me that there’s a lot we don’t know about each other. There have been moments when I hated him, but I’ve never wanted him hurt this way. I say a prayer to Our Lady of Shadows and find the cleanest cloth I can—a swatch of old stained tablecloth—and cut it in strips. After all these weeks being injured, I’ve nearly perfected the pressure on bandages.

“Stay here. I’ll send survivors and a medicura,” I say.

He squeezes my hand hard, like he’s afraid to let go. “Ren, Ren, it was me.”

Seeing him now makes the full memory unfurl. Esteban screaming after they caught him. They separated him from Sayida. Méndez cutting into the tender skin of his eyes and lips. The other one broke too easily, he’d said before he started on Sayida.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs.

“I know,” I tell him, and squeeze his hand in mine.

His good eye blinks away tears. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

I shake my head. Because we’ve already had too much loss. Because no one could have sat under that knife without spilling their deepest and darkest secrets. And if they had no secrets to tell, they would simply make them up. They would say anything to make the pain stop. But I don’t tell him any of that. I need him in good spirits.

“Because I need you alive,” I say. “And we both know Margo would have kicked your ass.”

We laugh and sob together. I have to make him laugh because if I don’t give him a reason to keep living, he won’t.

“Thank you,” he says.

I pry his fingers off mine and race back outside. A group of fledglings are running this way and I guide them inside. “Barricade this door!”

Screams come from down in the courtyard. It’ll take too much time to get back to the stairwell, so I hop onto the ledge, take a deep breath, and jump. I grab hold of a tree branch just within my reach. My sword clatters to the ground, but I swing myself down and break my fall into a roll. I misjudged my landing, and I’m face-to-face with a soldier. His dark eyes narrow on me, sword poised to kill.

Blood spews from his open mouth in a final cry as Margo comes up behind him, skewering him in one blow.

I release a hard breath. “Thank you,” I say, and take the hand she offers.

Sweat runs down her brow and a bloody gash cuts her cheekbone open. “Don’t thank me. There’s too many of them.”

“I have an idea,” I say. “Where’s Sayida?”