Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(17)

A dimly lit, narrow corridor. Torchlight burns long shadows into worn stone walls. Water drips into puddles from the porous ceiling. Rodrigue breathes heavily as he turns first one corner and then another. Voices and jingling metal echo nearby, and he flattens himself against a depression in the wall. A guard saunters past.

When the guard is long gone, Rodrigue keeps running. He passes cells full of people. Some hold ten souls. Some three. Some contain only mice scavenging through piles of hay.

Dozens of eyes watch him stride through the corridor. Rodrigue tries not to make eye contact, but he catches a woman’s gaze. She frowns. Does she know he stole this uniform?

He clears his throat, grips the hilt of his stolen sword. He counts seconds in his head, knowing he is running out of time.

“Lucia?” he calls out.

At the end of the corridor, there is no torchlight. Rodrigue grabs one and illuminates his path through the empty darkness. He holds the flame up to the cells, searching the grimy faces that slink away. Their eyes narrow at the light. Their cracked lips hiss at the intrusion. Then he sees her.

Alone in a cell so large she looks like a child sitting at its center.

“What did they do to you?” he whispers. He fumbles for the lock, but the tumblers are so rusted they won’t turn. “Lucia, come to me.”

Her head snaps up at the sound of her name. But she sees right past Rodrigue and lowers her gaze once more. She is thin, so thin he is afraid to touch her when she reaches him. Her fingers, skinny as twigs, wrap around the iron bars. There is a sickly gray pallor to her skin. Her hair long and brushed back, as if someone tended to her recently.

“The Magpie couldn’t give me more time,” he says.

He can feel midnight approaching. Voices echo from the direction Rodrigue has come. Using the sword, he swipes at the lock until his muscles burn. But it isn’t strong enough to break through the justice’s metalwork.

Rodrigue grabs hold of Lucia’s arm. His sobs reverberate off the walls. He is out of time. He touches his finger to her temple. “Lucia, Lucia, please, say something. I can’t read your thoughts. They’re—”

She looks up vacantly, silver veins spread across the skin around her eyes and the base of her neck, like snakes across the sand.

Rodrigue jumps back. Those veins pulse, glowing beneath her skin.

He drops his sword and it clatters to the ground. He can’t hear her thoughts, can’t see anything inside the mind he loved so deeply. More than that, he can’t find any trace of her power. It is as if her essence—her soul, her spark—is gone.

“This is a surprise.” A deep, even voice speaks behind him. Rodrigue whirls around. Two guards shove him into the wall. Their fists strike his face, chest, groin until he falls. The ground is wet and cold.

A third man looms over him. Shadows cut across his angular face. His trim graying hair is brushed back. He pushes aside dark robes and kneels beside Rodrigue.

“What did you do to her?” Rodrigue spits blood on the man’s face. He doesn’t wipe it away and it speckles his sharp cheekbones.

“The same thing I will do to you. Rid you of your unnatural magics. You will never harm another soul again.”

Rodrigue raises a fist to fight, but the guards pull him back down. He turns to Lucia—his life, his love—who shows no reaction. No fear. No concern. No empathy.

“Do what you want to me,” Rodrigue said. “The Whispers will never be silenced.”

The man stands, his face turning slowly to Lucia. He holds up a finger decorated with a jeweled gold band. “That was before. It is a new dawn for Puerto Leones. I want you to know exactly what is in store for your uprising. You are quite wrong, you see. Run to the ends of the world if you’d like, but with our new weapon, we will find you.” The man seizes Rodrigue’s chin. “Tell me who the spy in the palace is and I will allow you to spend one more day with your Lucia.”



“Lucia!” I gasp, my voice ragged, disbelieving. I yank my hand away from Esteban, whose face is twisted in fear. He doesn’t even reach for the flask of aguadulce he always keeps close to chase away the migraines that accompany his magics.

“What is it?” I’m suddenly aware that Dez is by my side, hands soothing, brushing my hair from my clammy temples. Just his hands. The susurration of his voice in my ear. “Ren. What did you see? Is Lucia still alive?”

“Dez, the king—the justice— Somehow— They took it—” I don’t know what I’ve seen. I don’t know how to put words to what Rodrigue went through. The justice was there, and his is a face I was not prepared to see.

“Esteban—Ren—I need you both to speak.”

Margo snatches the paper Esteban was writing on, his letters sloppy, as if he couldn’t keep up with the speed of the memory. Her blue eyes flash wide, moving faster across the words pulled from my mind.

“They’ve figured out how to win this war,” Margo says, and crunches the paper in her fist before smoothing it out again. The notes are meant to be presented to the elders.

“What do you mean?” Sayida asks, taking the parchment from Margo’s shaking hand.

I still hold the alman stone. The light has been snuffed out, turning it into another bit of translucent crystal. Ordinary. Empty. I think of Lucia’s face, so strange, covered with silver veins, so much like the magic whorls that burn across my hands. Then there was the justice himself. It’s been years since I saw him or heard his voice. I want to scream. I want to jump into the river and be carried away. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for what is supposed to come next.