Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(77)

The guard leans against the wall directly across my door. His face remains in shadow, but I catch the crop of a dark beard and brown skin.

“Sure you did,” Hector mutters. “How was the half-moon revel?”

“Don’t answer that,” Leo says, walking backward to the door. He draws out a slender skeleton key and unlocks the door. “Good night, Hector.”

That’s when it hits me. Hector. I think of Davida sitting in the kitchen peeling potatoes.

“Parties are for children,” he mutters.

Leo makes a face for my benefit, then walks into my room. I’m at his heels when I stop and turn to Hector. If there is a chance, I have to take it.

“Davida’s in the kitchens,” I say.

Even though his body is cast in shadow, I see it go rigid. “What business is that of yours?”

I shrug and hum the song that was playing when she was working. It’s been stuck in my head, familiar in a way I can’t explain. “No reason. I thought she was waiting for someone, that’s all.”

I close the door behind me. As I climb into bed after Leo leaves, the weight of today sinks into my skin. Constantino bleeding out at court and the world moving on without him like he didn’t affect it. But he did. Even if he was taken and warped into something unrecognizable, he once belonged to a family.

I get out of bed and rummage through my things until I find the coin Dez gave me. It feels wrong to keep it. I should try to give it back to Illan one day. But for now, it is the only thing I have of Dez to remember that he was real. I close my eyes and think of him haloed by the moon. So beautiful it aches. I press the coin to my lips.

“This would be easier if you were with me,” I whisper to a boy who cannot answer.

I tuck the coin under my mattress. All I can do now is hope that my hunch about Hector and Davida is right. It’s the only way I will be able to sneak into the prince’s quarters.

Hector’s heavy boots pacing in circles begin to lull me to sleep. I stare at the canopy over my bed. Her bed. It’s a strange feeling, living in a room that belonged to someone else, someone who was meant to marry a prince before she was born, before her parents even dreamed her up. A girl whose clothes I wear and bed I sleep in. A girl who was almost charged with treason and might have had dreams of her own. Infidelity among common marriages is bad enough. But she was said to have been unfaithful to the prince. That would have been tantamount to treason. How could she keep her lands and title then? What would be so valuable about their alliance that Castian, ruthless as he is, would have stood for watching her marry another man? Unless . . . Tresoros is known for their rich earth. Minerals and gems.

I think of the prince standing in the Forest of Lynxes. Dez stopped me from using my magics. Castian said it wouldn’t work on him. I didn’t think of it. So many Leonesse wear their holy wooden wards but they don’t truly understand our power. Maybe something discovered beneath Tresoros counteracts Moria powers, just as metals amplify them? Could the weapon have come from Tresoros and therefore the union with Puerto Leones had to be retained?

I lie in the quiet for a moment, and that’s when I realize—it’s quiet. Utter silence outside my door.

I sit up, my blood buzzing and alert. This may be the only chance I get.

I change into a pair of black riding trousers and a black tunic. After rummaging through a drawer, I find the hidden flower pin I wore the day I met King Fernando. I rip off the cloth petals, leaving behind only the sharp metal clip, and secure it into my waistband. Perhaps I’d dreamed of using its sharp steel tip to stab a prince. But it’ll pick a lock just as well.



As I move across the sky bridge leading back to Castian’s rooms, I feel like the Lady of Shadows herself, in her dress made of night and morning stars. Revelers cry their songs, and the precarious roll of wagon wheels over cobblestones masks my tread.

With Jacinta’s memory, I find the Bloodied Prince’s doors like true north. The room is unmanned, and my fingers remember the familiar tricks of searching the metal organs of the lock.

When the metal gives and I hear the right click, I hold my breath, look over my shoulder once, and pray the Lady of Shadows is on my side.

I heave open the heavy doors and slip inside the empty apartments. For a moment, I let it sink in that I’m inside the room where Castian lives while he’s at the palace. A queasy sensation brings a hot flash across my entire being, because from now until the end of my days I will never be able to think of Dez without thinking of Castian, too.

I let my eyes adjust to the darkness, then cut across the carpeted floor to the window. I part the curtains, letting in waking sky, a strip of pale blue along the horizon. I must hurry. Leo will be appearing at my door soon. He always comes to wake me when the morning bleeds red beneath the lip of the curtains.

There’s an oil lamp and matchsticks on the parlor table. My fingers, though steady while I was breaking in, are now betraying me, and it takes me three matches before I can light the damn thing.

I make my way through the blue parlor with its grand tapestries and plush couches, and hurry into his bedchambers. The walls are covered in deep blue velvet, containing waves of sheen and shadow that make them seem to undulate. I pull back the curtains and am startled by the way the light casts an aura on the walls and floor. It is as if the room was designed to give the inhabitant the feeling of being under the sea, of constant sway and motion.