Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(51)

“He was a Ventári,” I say, and wince again at the burning pain in my palm. “He saw that I had run away from the Whispers and tried to kill me.”

“You let this man have a weapon?” Méndez’s voice is colder than the draft squeezing through the crack of the door.

“We didn’t know he was here,” the older guard stutters. “The cell was empty before—”

But Méndez silences the guard with a pointed finger, then returns his attention to me. The hard edges of his face soften.

“My Renata.” Is that satisfaction in his voice? He wraps his arm firmly around my shoulder. I let myself soften in his hold. Relieved. Grateful. Pliant. I let out a real sob. I’m betraying everything I love because a fissure in my being remembers how safe I once was with this man.

Méndez guides me through the dark. We step over Lozar’s body. I killed him, and we are walking over him as if he’s a puddle in the market square.

“Clean this up.” Justice Méndez waves a dismissive hand at the guards and they scramble to lock the cell.

“Yes, my justice,” Gabo says, and bows.

“You did well in telling me, Gabo. She should’ve been brought to me as soon as possible.” Justice Méndez’s eyes cut to the officer. “You, on the other hand, Sergeant Ibez—I am disappointed in you. I understand you chose to not follow my instructions.”

“Your Royal Justice, please!” The words are said in a frenzy. “I believed her to be a liar. As you preach, they are charlatans. Deceivers—” His dark eyes widen with shock.

Deceivers.

That’s the last word he manages before Gabo slashes the dagger across his exposed throat.

I swallow my scream as Méndez’s hand grips my shoulder even more firmly.

“Come, my sweet,” he says. “You are safe now, with me.”





Chapter 13


I should never have gotten lost in the woods. With Justice Méndez’s arm around me, it takes all of my willpower to remain calm. It’s the Gray that won’t keep still, releasing a memory like dust from an unearthed tomb. It is so clear, swirling with the color that normally bleeds out of my memories from the Gray. For the first time, I’m not swallowed into the memory, but it is simply there for me to grasp.

When I was a little girl, our home always had an altar dedicated to Our Lady of Whispers with her crown of stars and the moon at her feet. Back then, I knew nothing of the goddess or the people she gifted with magics that vein the earth. I knew that I had a power I couldn’t always control, and I’d wonder at the strange glow that traveled under my fingertips. I didn’t have the burn marks that come with taking a memory because my parents never let me take my gloves off outside the house. My mother was a Persuári and my father an Illusionári. I remember my mother channeling her warmth into me when I was afraid of the dark. I remember my father casting shadows on the wall to take the shapes of the stories he told me. Those are the magics the king and the justice claimed were responsible for the most devastating plague in our history.

The day I got lost, I tugged on my wool gloves and followed my father into the woods. The flowers on our altar had withered, and so I was to help pick new ones.

“You must be very careful, Nati,” my father would warn. I’ve never seen kindness in anyone else’s eyes the way it lived in his, even when he was serious. When I let myself remember him, I realize he was scared, too. “Stay close.”

But I didn’t stay close. I found a patch of wild gazenias in full bloom. I followed their orange hearts and yellow petals through the dry woods until I came across an open field. I’d never been so far from home before and I’d never left the woods. I tried to turn back, calling for my father and mother until I came across soldiers in the king’s dark purple-and-gold uniforms.

“Are you lost, little one?” a woman asked, coming close. I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but I can still remember the fear that overpowered me then. I nodded and told the soldiers exactly where I lived and what my house looked like.

They didn’t take me home. They brought me to the palace, with promises of seeing my parents there.

I was taken to a nursemaid who washed my hair and changed my clothes before bringing me to Justice Méndez’s study. I was made to sit in the same chair I sit in now. It has a leather groove and a high back that stretched far above my head.

Méndez always had a smile for me. His patience was remarkable with a girl who did nothing but cry for her parents at first. He sent up cherry cakes with fresh cream and oranges encrusted in burned sugar and drizzled in clover honey. He said I could see my parents if I followed instructions.

Nameless guards brought a blindfolded man into the room. His mouth was gagged and his hands were tied. I cried again, but now Méndez knew he could calm me down with more delicacies. At home my mother fried potatoes with rosemary and cooked squash we grew ourselves. We ate meat once a month if there were enough rabbits to hunt. I’d never seen or tasted such wonders as I did my first time in the palace.

“This man,” Méndez said, “has a secret. Have you ever seen snow, Ren?”

I wanted to correct him. My father called me Nati. It was comforting, familiar, my name. Anything else made me feel uneasy, out of sorts, like an entirely different person. But I wouldn’t correct this man. There was something in the justice’s gray eyes that made me stop. So instead I answered his question with a nod.