Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(131)

“Easy, you’ll make yourself sick.”

“I’ve spent my entire life on the run,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I know how to drink water.”

He shrugs. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

“Castian,” I say. “Castian. Are you really Castian?”

He brushes his hair away from his face. It makes him look younger. Just a boy trying very hard to be a cruel man.

“I am Castian, son of Fernando the Righteous, Prince of Andalucía, commander of the five fleets, rightful heir to the kingdom of Puerto Leones.” He turns his face to avoid my eye and drinks. “And I’m an Illusionári.”

“You remembered me. From when we were kids,” I say.

I think of the boy who begged me to leave the palace. That same memory is stomped on by the prince I met in the woods, on the executioner’s block before a sea of his own people. I can still feel how the bile rose to my throat as I ran faster and harder than I ever had before across those rooftops.

Too late, I was too late. I breathe short and fast, ball my hands into fists to stop my wretched body from betraying me by trembling.

“Did you kill Dez?” The words nearly choke me.

The beginning of a sad smile quirks at his lips but dies just as quickly. One of his eyes is swollen more than before and ringed with black. It makes it harder to meet his gaze without wanting to feel pity for him.

“This might pain you to hear, as you’ve wanted nothing more than to murder me ever since we saw each other again, but I’ve never killed anyone.”

I’m either too tired to make sense of his words or he’s taking advantage of my exhausted state to get away with a lie. “What?”

“I should say, I’ve never executed anyone innocent, and that includes Moria.”

I shake my head. “No. I saw you. I saw you with my own—”

He hits his head against the wall behind us. “I’m an Illusionári, Nati.”

“Don’t call me that,” I whisper.

“I create illusions. The way Margo created that smoke.”

“Your power can’t be that strong,” I counter, because I can’t believe it. I can’t. But I have seen it in my newly surfaced memories. The way Méndez’s memory of the prince faded into color because he was talking to an illusion of Castian. The way Cebrián saw him make dice vanish and reappear, just like when we were kids.

And yet, it’s strange hearing it come from his lips. It is even stranger having to accept that he is telling the truth.

Now he actually smiles, all straight teeth and cunning blue eyes. “What is my crown made out of?”

“Gold.” The metal catalyst that strengthens Illusionári. “That was you at the Sun Festival. When I felt sick. And when I was running to get to Dez. I thought it was Margo both times.”

He rakes his hair with his fingers. “It was foolish on my part. I needed to follow you, so I created an illusion of me standing in a corner alone. I’ve done that more times than I should be proud of.”

I lean forward, practically crawling to him for an answer. “Did you kill Dez?”

“I admit,” Castian says as he stands, though I take note of how he cradles his side as he limps to the blue pool of water, “that one was the most challenging illusion I have ever done. Dez was—is—the leader of the Whispers, and the king and the justice needed to feel like they were winning. I had to use a gold-hilt sword as well. It helps if some of it is true. It makes the illusion stronger. I even had to cut off Dez’s ear to fool the thousands who were witnessing.”

The guard’s memory hits me like a brutal, cold wave. Dez standing on the bow of that ship, missing his left ear. Tears spring to my eyes. A hurt I didn’t think I was capable of feeling gnaws at my heart, leaving me breathless.

“Dez is alive?”

“Yes.”

This single word echoes in the cave. I hear it over and over, and it still doesn’t feel true.

Dez is alive.

My elation at this discovery is like the start of a flame—a light stretching across a match. If Dez were alive, why didn’t he try to find me? If he is alive, why didn’t I feel him? The more questions I ask myself, the more I stomp on that happiness, extinguishing that spark of fire.

I push to my knees. Every step I take to Castian is like walking across jagged glass. He takes off his tunic, hissing as the cloth sticks to his broken, bloody skin. How can he tell me this and then do something so normal as clean his wounds? How can he watch me stagger to him as if he hadn’t shattered my world more than once in a single turn of the sun?

My name vanishes from his lips as I punch him. He doesn’t expect it but grabs me around the wrist and pulls me into the pool of salt water with him. I wrench myself free. I make the mistake of panicking, attempting to breathe, and getting a mouthful of salt water instead. My feet find purchase on soft white sand, and then I’m breaking the surface and coughing so hard it burns.

The water reaches my waist when I stand and face him. “You’ve been pretending while your kingdom suffers? You broke my— You broke me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, wincing as he touches the cuts on his ribs and shoulder. “I am. You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”