Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(132)

Water drips down both our faces. In this light, his eyes take on the blue incandescence of the pool. He lowers himself in front of me, his breath warm and sweet like apples gone bad.

“I will explain—if you’ll stop trying to attack me.”

Salt burns the inner corners of my eyes. I raise my chin. “I should’ve let Margo kill you.”

He winces, from my words or the pain or both, I’m not sure. “You don’t mean that.”

I’ve begun to shiver as the water turns cold around us. He’s right. I don’t mean that. But I wish I did.

“Get out of those clothes or you’ll freeze to death,” he says, and wades out of the pool and back to his makeshift room.

I hate that he’s right. He grabs a deep blue tunic stitched with bright-green embroidery in the shape of ivy and throws it at me. Then he builds a fire while I strip down and put it on. I wrap my arms around my body because the tunic only falls to my thighs. I sit at the edge of the cot and hold my hands out to the fire.

Castian looks up and this time puts more distance between us. “I will continue to answer your questions, Nati. But do not put your hands on me again.”

“I will refrain from hitting you if you stop calling me that.” I wait for his begrudging nod and continue. “How does your father not know of your power?”

Castian holds his hand up to the crackling fire. He turns it over and over, then makes a fist. “After my mother accused me of drowning my brother, I was relegated to nursemaids. Davida was the only one who knew and cautioned me never to speak of it. I understood why as I got older. That is why she still tends to me and is under my protection.”

The memory plays out in my head, colors washed gray, but I see the moment Illan stole the baby from the bassinet. I want to cut out the sympathy that swells in my chest.

“You didn’t try to drown him.”

“How do you know that?” There’s a melancholy to his words I don’t want to feel.

“Illan gave me the memory before he died.”

Castian quirks an eyebrow. His nostrils flare, like he’s breathing deep to restrain his anger. “Did he? So you know that it was his deception that kept me alive and in my father’s favor. Well, Celeste and my own mother deserve some credit. Their lie was the foundation of the Matahermano. The boy murderer. Ruthless like his father. My mother tried to tell me before she died, I believe, but I wouldn’t go to her sickbed.”

I think of the woman tortured by her decision. The portrait in his room. He still loves her, even after what she made him believe.

I think of the wooden box he held before Dez in Lozar’s memory. The one Dez recoiled from with such disgust I thought it had to contain the weapon. But the box I found in Castian’s secret study. The box contained only a portrait of two young boys.

Two brothers.

C & A.

Castian and Andrés.

Andrés? Don’t tell anyone.

“You didn’t drown your brother,” I say slowly. There is something dangerous in these words, as if speaking them aloud will lead to our end. “Because Illan took him. Raised him as his own.”

The words scrape my throat.

Dez, my beloved Dez. Illan’s son.

Not his son, though. Only raised by him. Kidnapped just like I was.

“Where’s Dez? What have you done with him?”

“He boarded a ship to Luzou not long ago.”

I shake my head. “He wouldn’t have left. He would have come back to the Whispers.”

To me.

But I saw it. In the guard’s memory, I saw Dez standing at the bow of the ship watching his kingdom fade away.

“Why would he leave?” My mind is reeling with the thought of it, the hurt of it.

Castian stares at the dying fire. It must be night outside, because there’s a chill permeating the cave I didn’t feel before. He finds his knife, the one I retrieved from the Duque’s house. He toys with it, like he might use it to carve out a new truth, a new world for us.

“Andrés ran away because he was scared.”

Andrés? Don’t tell anyone.

“Take that back.” I reach for him, but he presses the tip of the blade to my throat.

“Believe me. If I could have made him stay, I would have.”

“You don’t know him.” I hate the cry in my voice and the nearness of him.

We stay like this for a long time, neither of us wanting to back down, but his hand gets tired and I can’t look at him anymore. The pressure of the blade falls, and he returns to stoking the flames instead.

I am alive, but I feel defeated. For the first time, I am away from the Whispers, Méndez, the king, but this uncertainty that Castian brings with him is not what I wanted. What do I want? Freedom from my past. A kingdom without bloodshed. Dez.

When Illan took Dez to raise as his own, did he think that same boy would run when he discovered the truth of his birth?

“I don’t know my brother, but you do. I need your help.” Castian brushes his golden hair back. I don’t know how to feel toward him anymore. Friendship and hatred can live side by side in your heart. “There’s a way to win this war, and I believe Dez has gone after it.”

“What is it?”

“The Knife of Memory.”

I scoff. “Dez is a skeptic.”