Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(43)

I clench the sword hilt in my hand and take a hard step in his direction, when there’s a knock on the door.

The four of us jump, tensing into fighting stances. A tall, broad-shouldered woman peeks her head through the crack. Her hair is covered with a scarf, flour dusted on her black skin.

“Nan?” Esteban steps forward, his face slack with relief.

“There’s a patrol making their rounds up the alley.” She speaks quickly, wringing her hands. “They’re arresting everyone and anyone who has so much as a hair out of place.”

“You have to go,” I tell the others. “Now before it’s too late. You can’t risk being taken.”

Sayida grips my shoulders. “Please don’t do this, Ren.”

I feel a cold shock in my mind, the sensation of being watched. “Get out of my head, Esteban!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” he mutters. “Everyone is thinking so loudly.”

“What are you planning, Ren?”

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Esteban answers. “You can’t seriously think of returning to the palace alone. They’ll be waiting for a counterattack.”

“If I don’t, they will move the weapon,” I say.

“You don’t know that,” Margo snaps. “We have to think. We have to plan.”

“By all means,” I say. “Make your own plans. I know how Méndez’s mind works. After all, I was one of them.”

They avert their eyes. Are they embarrassed that I’ve said what they must be thinking?

“Very well. Imagine you find the weapon,” Margo says, exasperated. “How will you get out?”

“She doesn’t plan to,” Sayida says.

I hate putting that hurt in her voice, but it’s easier this way. If I go back, Illan will read the truth of what I did. He’ll see that I destroyed Dez’s only escape. They’d be right in blaming me. To try me for a crime against our own. This way, if I stay, my death will have a purpose. “Esteban is right. I’d be a burden. This is the only way I can help the Whispers. Go, now.”

“The girl is right,” Nan says, anxiously twisting her apron into a rope. “The Second Sweep will be here in moments. My boy—” She reaches for Esteban’s cheek, the gesture so tender that I have to look away. Did my mother ever hold me that way? Surely she did, but—

“Ren,” Sayida says.

“This is your best chance,” I say. “Take it.”

There’s silence, except for the faint trickle of water from a leak in the corner. Then finally, Sayida nods. Without speaking, they shuffle toward the hidden door, their weapons clinking gently as they stoop to exit. I stare at the low beams of the ceiling, holding back my tears.

There’s a small thud as the door closes behind them, then quiet again. It’s a silence so long that my chest tightens. I feel their absence in ways I will never admit aloud.

“They’re gone,” Nan says upon her return, her voice like a splash of cold water. Sayida and Margo called her Lydia.

“We must move quickly,” I say, and I walk out of the hidden room and into the storage area. There’s a coil of rope hanging on the wall, and I grab it. “You must tie me up. Tell the guards that you found me stealing from your stores.”

Lydia sets her brown eyes on me, the deep lines of someone who once loved to laugh crinkling her face even without a smile. Now her features are like stone as her gaze moves to the rope in my hand.

“My boy told me about Dez,” she says softly. “There’s another way for you. I know what it’s like to lose your love, but you don’t have to lose yourself along the way.”

I want to tell her that I didn’t lose him, that she knows nothing about me, but even in my grief, I won’t talk back. She’s sheltered and fed us and showed me kindness even though she didn’t have to. For a moment, when I watch her, I think of the grandparents I never met. Would they risk everything for me like this, knowing the powers I wield? Are they still alive somewhere?

Lydia doesn’t seem to understand, and so I hold my bare hands out to her. With Margo’s illusion gone, my scars are visible again.

“I was lost long before Andrés,” I say.

“Robári.” She doesn’t sound fearful or angry but full of pity. She says it as if it is just a word and I am just a girl and there is nothing outside of this storage room except for us. “My mother used to tell me that some were gifted with too much power and others with not enough.”

Our magics don’t feel like a gift right now, but I don’t tell her that. “Why do this? You could have a normal life.”

“I’ll have a normal life when I can live with my grandson again. Maybe even live to see great-grandchildren.” She reaches out a hand to my cheek. “Borrow some of my hope, child.”

Part of me wants to recoil from her touch. For what comes next, I cannot afford a soft heart. Her eyes scan my face, perhaps searching for weakness. Something that will make me stay. But there is none. It’s been carved out of me. There is nothing she can do to change my mind, and she knows that.

Finally, Lydia takes the rope, and I sit in the corner of her storage room, letting her bind my hands and ankles together.

“May the Mother of All bless the path you walk,” she says before she returns to her kitchens, “for you do not know what you’ll encounter along the way.”