Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(79)
“Leo.” My brain is firing in all directions and it’s the only thing I can say. “I—”
“Say nothing.” His voice is gruff, angry. He takes the shell from my hand and lets go of a hard sigh as he sets it down. “After everything— No. Let us both say nothing.”
How did he know I was here?
Then I realize, this must have been what Méndez wanted. To remove the lock and the guards to see where I’d go. I walked right into a trap.
That is, until I see the item Leo slips from his jacket pocket and sets on the center of the desk. Roses waft from the sealed letter. This isn’t correspondence from the king or Justice Méndez. It’s clearly something far more personal.
“Follow me,” he says, clearing his throat severely.
I do so without question, too stunned to do anything else but walk beside him across the sky bridge we’ve traversed dozens of times together, and back to my door, where he lets us both in and busies himself with the routine we’ve created.
I think of the letters in the prince’s keepsake box. Whose letters but Lady Nuria’s would the prince have kept? Are the prince and Nuria still together after all that happened between them? What message could Nuria be sending him now, through Leo?
As if reading my mind, Leo turns to me with a half smile. Morning light dances across the room. We are bathed in reds and yellows. The illusion of fire follows me wherever I go.
“You’re lucky, you know. You’re quite the favorite.”
“Why is that?” What’s he getting at?
“Because you won’t have to give up Lady Nuria’s lovely chambers, since she will be given apartments suited to the wife of a judge.”
“She’s here?”
“She arrived not moments ago after three weeks away in Citadela Salinas. But she’s returned for the Sun Festival. Hence the missive I just delivered. But that’s between you and me, of course. No one’s to know I’ve been helping them stay in touch. Anyway, you get to keep her rooms, and she’ll be relegated to guest quarters.”
I hardly know what to make of this. Is he telling me so that I will seek her out?
Lady Nuria. The prince’s onetime fiancée. Back here.
I must seek an audience with her.
As for Leo—that’s the thing about trust. It can also be solidified with mutually assured destruction.
Chapter 18
For the next two days, I am the picture of obedience. I go where Leo and Sula tell me to go. I help in the kitchens and with the lavanderas. The paranoia of getting caught takes over. It’s like my body does not belong to me. Even when I’m alone, the sensation that there’s someone watching me lingers. It is a feeling that settles ice-cold on my spine, paralyzing me with such fear that it is not until the middle of the second night that I find the courage to read the alman stone I stole from Prince Castian’s room.
After I prepare for bed, the fall of footsteps alerts me to the guards outside. I get under the covers and cradle the glowing alman stone in my hands. Each new memory I have of the prince warps the previous one, unraveling different kinds of hatred I didn’t know I was capable of. He’s a murderer, a madman—power hungry and cruel to the women around him. And yet, everyone still wants him. I hesitate before pulling the memory from the alman stone because I don’t know what I will find.
Castian takes off his golden circlet. He’s covered in blood and dirt. It streaks his face and neck. His clothes are steeped in it. His hands tremble as he undoes the ties of his tunic.
An older attendant comes in. Her large brown eyes give her the look of an owl. But when he sees her, he lets go of a long breath. She looks like she wants to go to him, but doesn’t. Her rough hands move in the air.
Castian nods solemnly. “A bath would be lovely, thank you, Davida.”
The woman bows and picks up the clothes he’s discarded, then leaves. As the sound of water runs, Castian watches the painting of his mother. He stares at her for a long moment, shakes his head, then opens the secret compartment behind the painting. He reaches into the safe and withdraws a long rectangular wooden box etched with gold symbols. His face is stone, resolute. He marches out of the room.
When he returns, his hands are empty. Davida reenters and holds out a robe for him.
I sit in the dark for a long time and process what I’ve seen.
Castian did have the weapon in his room, but I was too late. I was always going to be too late because that was the day he murdered Dez. I remember the clothes he wore, the pattern of the blood on his face. I remember charging toward him and being stopped.
He came back to his rooms and ran a bath. How could Davida attend to him? Is that why she’s in the kitchens? A place to go when the prince is gone?
When I finally fall asleep, I dream of being swallowed by the sea.
Come morning, Leo and I talk about everything and nothing but finally return to an easy rhythm. He never mentions our run-in at Prince Castian’s chambers again, not to ask me why I was there or to explain his own actions, which leads me to believe I’m safe. He clearly doesn’t want anyone to know about him being a messenger for his old mistress as much as I don’t want anyone to know about me rummaging around Castian’s apartments.
With four days left until the Sun Festival, it’s difficult to search the palace during the day because Alessandro keeps getting better at trailing me. Sometimes, I’ll swear I’m alone, and then I catch him near me. The thing that gives him away is the cloying scent of holy oils. It’s like he bathes in them.