Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(125)

Stop it, I tell myself. Focus. Focus on here and now.

As I stand alone, I wonder if the scream I heard wasn’t the wind at all. I wonder if it was Margo or maybe Amina, who is untested and new to missions like this. At the very least, Tomás is in the carriage, ready to take us away when we’ve secured the Robári.

When the clock marks the hour, I know something is wrong. They should be here. There’s a shrill whistle, sharp like the kind made between fingers, not our familiar sparrow tune. I turn to find the source of the noise, and suddenly I’m not alone.

I’m surrounded by a dozen guards.

Alarm bells go off along with the chime that marks the hour.

And then I see them. Margo and Amina, skulking in the shadows. A door with a metal sun opens, and as they head inside, Margo turns around, staring straight into my eyes. Unflinching.

I won’t fail you.

Make sure that you don’t.

Filipa never trusted me.

Margo never trusted me.

I didn’t realize how much I’d come to feel for Margo until this moment, as the pain of her deception rips me in two.

I don’t struggle as the guards drag me into the prison. I understand now how the Whispers truly think of me, and what my role in this mission was all along—the bait in the trap.





Chapter 31


The dimly lit room where they’ve locked me up faces the sea. What once might have been a classroom in the days when this place was a Memoria university is now a bare room with a table of weapons and half a dozen lamps, only one of them on. There’s a wardrobe in the corner likely used for storage. Rain pelts the double-paned glass window that rattles in the wind. There is no one else here except for a guard and Judge Alessandro.

“Be sure not to injure her,” he says, sniffing. His large eyes are rimmed with dark circles. He takes note of my bracelets. I thank the Lady I hid the pouch with the rest of the metal. “Remove the platinum. All of it. We will need her in prime condition for the presentation tonight. Fetch Prince Castian, won’t you?”

I jerk my head up, and cold dread pools in the pit of my stomach. “Castian is here?”

Alessandro crumbles a piece of parchment and throws it at me. “It’s Lord Commander to you.”

“Right away, my justice,” the guard says, standing at attention near the door with his sword already drawn.

My justice? Only Méndez carried the title. They must’ve found his Hollow and already elevated Alessandro. His feet whisper across the stone floor as he paces around me.

“I knew you were not to be trusted. I told Méndez over and over that he should have brought you here straightaway.” He shares Justice Méndez’s overconfidence. I hope that it will be his destruction, too. “Pity about him. Still, even I could not predict you were foolish enough to enter here by yourself.”

They haven’t found Margo or Amina. Bitter anger rips through me. For a brief moment, I consider throwing them to the justice, but that feeling ebbs and is replaced with a cruel hurt I haven’t felt in a long time. They betrayed me. They left me. And yet, I cannot bring myself to do the same to them.

“You underestimate me,” I say. My casual tone seems to bother him. Dez used to do this, and it always worked for him, getting his enemies too enraged to act thoughtfully. “Don’t worry, you’re not the first.”

“Says the bestae who keeps escaping the palace only to be brought right back. This time you will not be given mercy.”

Mercy. The word echoes in my head like droplets of water in an empty cell. I stomp on the ache that swells in my throat and force myself to be the person he expects.

My mouth tugs into a grin. “I take it you found the gift I left behind? I would have wrapped Méndez in a pretty Dauphinique lace for King Fernando, but I didn’t have enough time.”

A muscle jumps in his throat. “I suppose I should thank you, because now here I am, justice to the king.”

“Congratulations.” I answer his arrogance with a cruel laugh. He leaves the window and marches to face me. There’s hesitation in the way he keeps his distance, the way a hard breath shudders through him.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“Only the things I saw in Méndez’s memory about your wife.”

His eyelids peel back as he raises his fist. “Silence!”

“Castian was in those memories, but I’m sure you knew that. I wonder how long you’ll last as the justice when the prince gets rid of you and takes back his queen.”

Alessandro’s lip curls into a snarl, and he punches me once. Blood spills across my tongue where the inside of my lip has split on my tooth. I spit at the floor but miss his feet.

“You won’t be laughing when you’re on that table,” he says. “You’ll be a complete and utter monster. We’ve already turned one Robári into our own to command. Prince Castian will reward me when I present you to him. He is eager to get his hands on the next one. What better gift to give our crown prince than the wretch that tried to kill him?”

I laugh. He doesn’t know. No one knows that Castian tried to stop the justice’s experiments. No one but Méndez and Cebrián, and now me. My mouth tastes sour at the thought that Castian—the person I hate most—may be my only way out.