Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(44)

I wait, listening to every sound that filters through the crack beneath the door—the people in the boardinghouse who are blissfully unaware of what’s transpired here and the cooks and their dinner chaos, an entire world so removed from me that I can’t even begin to imagine being a part of it.

Then there’s a pounding fist on the door. Muffled voices. Lydia’s terrified cry. Hurried footsteps getting closer and closer.

The door slamming open.

“There she is,” Lydia says, a tremble in her voice. “I caught her stealing food. She’s one of them. Look at her hands.”

The guards eye me warily before turning back to Lydia. “You’ve done your kingdom a great service.”

“Are you sure she’s one of them?” the second guard whispers to the other.

“Don’t matter.” He pulls a velvet pouch from his breast pocket, takes two fat libra coins out, and pockets them before throwing the rest on the floor. “Toss her in with the others. Our night is made.”

I wish Lydia wouldn’t look at me, but I feel her kind gaze as the guards twist my arms around my back and shackle them before dragging me out of the house. Their armor clinks in the narrow alley like a set of keys.

I don’t struggle as they take me to the chained wagon at the end of the street. My body moves as if I’m floating, and I half feel as though I’m watching myself from above. When the guard opens the wagon doors, the putrid stench of bodily fluids and too many people sharing a single space assaults my nostrils. Unable to hold my nose, I duck my head into my shoulder, but it’s useless. The odors are too strong.

There are two benches on either side of the wagon. It would fit perhaps eight people comfortably. Somehow, though, they’ve crammed fifteen bodies in here. I slip on the greasy floor as the guard pushes me in, and when he locks the doors, everything is dark.

“I’m not one of them!” a young man’s voice shouts from inside the wagon’s belly. There’s a series of thumps that I imagine are his fists against the walls. “My father’s a merchant! Let me send a postmate to the Duque Sól Abene. He’ll sort this out right away.”

“Which unit were you in?” a disembodied voice asks me. “Is it true there are Whispers here to rise up against the justice once again?”

“No one is rising up against anyone,” a hard, angry voice answers.

“I heard they’re curing us,” the someone says, thin as a ghost. “Finally, a cure for all of this.”

Cure? My stomach drops. The weapon. More people know. I want to ask him where he’s heard such a thing, but the smell is overwhelming, and I don’t dare open my mouth to speak.

As the horse pulls the wagon across cobblestone streets, I feel every bump, and I begin to tremble. I wonder if maybe I acted too rashly. Terror flows through my veins. I dread going back to the place where everything started. The palace of Andalucía, and the cathedral beside it, headquarters of the king’s justice. Prince Castian’s home and capital of the kingdom.

But as we roll closer and closer to our destination, and I again hear the familiar sound of the wrought-iron gates opening to let us in, I sink so deeply into my fear it becomes part of me. Fueling me instead of hindering.

After all, I’m no longer the seven-year-old they stole from a forest clearing. I’ve spent eight years training beside the strongest Moria in the world. Training beside Dez. I’ve spent eight years learning to find a cause to fight for.

I know you. I trust you.

That was his last mistake.

I am ready now.

And I will be ready tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. I have a plan, and this time, I can’t fail.

I think of Justice Méndez. He won’t be able to resist coming to see me once I tell the guards I’m a Robári. . . . I can already feel his skull in my grasp. But first, I will find the weapon.

Dez’s death will be avenged. After all, I made Castian a promise I intend to keep.





Chapter 11


Silence falls in the darkness of the wagon as it jostles from our excess weight, a ship in a storm. I keep my eyes down and try to become aware of the capital’s deep night sounds. Hooves on cobblestone. Cheering from a tavern. Guards laughing from the wagon’s seat. From somewhere, a cry for help that won’t be answered.

An older woman who was crying earlier has sobbed herself out and is now nothing but a tremor beside me. Crammed as we are, I can feel the shake of her shoulders as they brush against mine. The smoothness of her skin makes me think of luxury. What could she have done to get captured by the Second Sweep?

Trying to make more space for myself, I grab the chains that link my manacles together and tug them, doing my best not to think about the sticky substance they leave on my skin. My elbow hits something soft.

“Watch it,” a deep male voice growls inches from me. There’s a sliver of light filtering in from the gas lamps in the palace courtyard. A face that’s all angles and covered in bruises, and his breath stinks of liquor gone sour.

I pull my arms tight to my body and try not to breathe through my nose. Waste and urine mingle in the midsummer humidity, which eventually bleeds into the smell of rotting food as we pass by the kitchens. And beneath all that is something sweet. Something that doesn’t quite belong. We must be near the narrow alleys that link the cathedral and the palace.