Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(50)

I hear a rattle down the corridor, another sharp breeze, and I know the guards would rather leave this man to wither away than to show mercy.

Mercy.

It was Dez who taught me the Whispers’ songs. He and Sayida and I would hum as we returned from a hunt after days, shoulder to shoulder in the tall grass hills of the Memoria Mountains.

And so I hum to Lozar, whose fate is forever linked to mine in a way that I didn’t expect to find down here. He sings along, a hoarse sound, a rebel’s final yell.

“Mercy,” I whisper.

There’s the crunch of his bones. I remember the first time I snapped a hare’s neck in my hands.

A dull pain seizes my heart and holds on until I’m singing alone, and the only heartbeat I hear is my own.



I don’t notice the people that have gathered at the cell door until I hear the sharp clicks of the cylinder keys falling into place. A voice I have not heard in a long time calls my name.

I drop the man in my arms, and Lozar’s body slumps into a corner. I make a silent promise. No one will bury you, but I will remember you as long as my memories are my own.

“What in the Father’s name?” The sergeant stomps in, splashing through the filthy puddles. Torchlight floods the dark cell. His bewildered stare takes in the dead man in the center of the room.

I must be a sight to behold. My left hand is a bloodied mess. Moments after Lozar passed, I grabbed the boot knife and stabbed it through my hand. One of the elders, a medicura who once taught in the university, showed us where in the human body to strike to kill swiftly. Where to make it bleed the most. Where to injure but not cause permanent damage. After all, we were not the monsters.

The guard picks up Lozar’s limp hand. The dagger I placed there falls with a light ping. It is the same older guard with the pox scars on his face who walked me down here. He snatches me up by my shirt and shakes me. Pain splinters from my palm and from the sudden jolt of my neck. Blood trickles down my chest where one of the stitches must have come undone.

“Stand down, you fool!” the familiar voice says.

Justice Méndez sweeps into the cell with Gabo at his heels. The justice’s fine leather shoes slosh through the muck covering the ground. He was never afraid to get dirty. At the sight of him my heart revolts against itself. His gray eyes take in Lozar’s body, the knife, then the mess of me. His hand is extended, as if he can create a wall between me and the officer. Then he seems to remember himself, his elegant features turning to stone.

“Uncle,” I whimper.

I can see his age in the silver weaving through his short beard and thick black hair. He’s thinner than the young medic that I remember, but not sickly. It’s like he’s been carved out and tapered to show his strength. His face sharp as diamond edges. There is a war in my heart over the man I despise. The one who traded candies for my power. The man who read me stories before bed and then later signed away the lives of my family and others. How can I have no memories of my own parents, but now that he is in front of me, something inside me unhinges? Memories of him drift from the Gray. Form and re-form like ink in water.

I catch the moment when he softens. He sees me, as if for the first time, like the day I was presented in front of him by the guards who’d plucked me from the woods outside my home. A little Moria girl with crude hand-stitched gloves.

“Renata.” His voice weighs me down, like my feet are encased in mortar. It takes all of me not to look away from the intensity of his stare. “Can this be you?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice strangled. “I’m sorry—he was trying to kill me.”

“Renata.” The way he says my name has an edge. I shouldn’t have sought him out. It was a mistake to think he’d be happy to see me. He knows where I’ve been these past years. He knows that I can’t be trusted. He takes my bloody hand, and I use all my strength not to withdraw. His thumb traces the freckle at the base of my thumb. Dez kissed me there once. “Do you remember what I said to you when we last saw each other?”

The day the Whispers stormed the palace and set the capital on fire. The day I first met Dez and he saved me from this gilded cage. The day I last laid eyes on Méndez and swore I never would again.

“You said—” I swallow the choking cry swelling to the surface. “You said you wouldn’t let anyone take me away.”

I stiffen as his hands rise in the air, not to strike me, but to wrap around me.

“You have come back to me,” Justice Méndez says. He takes my face into his hands and examines me this way and that, as if I’m a horse he plans on purchasing. But then I see his eyes land on a distinct cluster of freckles along my jaw. He’s trying to find a way I could be an impostor, a look-alike. His thumbs trace the scars on my palms, over and over like he’s trying to memorize their pattern. Is it that dark in here or are there tears in his eyes? “I do not believe it.”

My throat aches as I find the courage to lie and lie well. “The Whispers are in upheaval. I was able to break free from the safe house. I made it to the capital, but I had nowhere to go. I had to steal—I haven’t eaten in days—I was captured and brought here.”

I wince when he holds my injured hand tighter. He keeps his finger pressed over one of the cuts. His gray eyes snap to the guards waiting in the shadows.

“My justice—she killed the prisoner—” the older guard says.