Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(86)

“Would you come with me?” His voice is a whisper.

She draws herself to him, brushing her lips against his. “Where? To your secret room or to your uncharted land?”

“We can start in my secret rooms. I’ll show you all of them. We can mark each and every room with our love. Starting with the one in your chambers.”

“What’s gotten into you?” She laughs and they kiss again. He holds her harder than ever, like he’s afraid to let her go. Is he scared? Unsure of her? “Promise to return from Riomar whole,” she says.

“Would you not have me otherwise?”

She doesn’t want to talk of such things. She doesn’t want to imagine him not coming back at all. “I would have you, Castian.”

There is a flash of sadness in his eyes, but it’s replaced with something else when he watches her, like she is made of wonder, a promise yet to keep. She would give anything to have him look at her like this always. Her prince. No, her king.

She tugs at the sheet that covers him.



The memory undulates like light on water.



Castian stands in the garden. He’s avoiding her. Their wedding is in ten days, and he hasn’t completely healed from Riomar.

“Cas,” she says.

She startles him. He grips the branch of a tree for support instead of her. She wants to go to him but can’t. He won’t look at her. He won’t speak to her.

When he turns around, she hardly recognizes him. He doesn’t smile the way he used to. His eyes have lost their warmth. He looks at the space between them and neither takes a step to bridge the distance.

“I can’t do this,” he tells her. “I can’t marry you.”

“Cas.”

Cas, she says, over and over. Each time she says his name her heart breaks.



I stumble back, wrenching my fingers from Lady Nuria’s mind. My heart races, just like hers did. Her lingering feelings of desire and heartbreak cling to me like sewage water. I grab a glass of water and drink it in a continuous, long gulp.

Lady Nuria smirks, pouring herself more wine from the carafe. “Are you quite all right, Renata?”

“Yes, my lady,” I say, breathless.

“Please, call me Nuria.” She reaches for a tiny round cake puff filled with custard and licks her fingers. “It’s strange. I thought there would be something left of what I wanted to show you. But it’s more as if there’s an empty room, cold. Is that what it’s like for everyone?”

I shake my head. It shames me that I’ve never asked. “I’m not sure. Everyone can be different.”

“Please stay and eat,” she says, her voice soft. “I hate these rooms. I can hear the wind in the middle of the night, and it always feels like there’s someone there.”

It’s a relief to know that it isn’t just me that feels this way. We eat in silence at first, but I think Lady Nuria feels she needs to fill space, and so she talks about the queen’s reception and the Sun Festival following it. At some point I’m sure she says she’ll send me a new dress, but my mind is consumed with her memory, now flashing through my mind as if it were my own.

Nuria was different. More innocent in her love for him. Did she look back on that day and see the misery in his eyes? What did the prince have to run away from when he secured his own rule long ago? Still, I understand her need to feel like she could have changed things.

I can hardly believe that Castian changed his course. He worshiped her. He looked at Nuria the way Dez looked at me. That was real. Then he went to Riomar, nearly died, and returned a different man. Dez did, too, and he still managed to pick himself up. Something else happened. I feel it in the marrow of my stolen memories.

Castian said he spent his whole life trying not to fear the water, but why? Does he see his dead brother every time he’s near it? And what did he say about the hiding places in the palace? I know all of them.

“I owe you a favor, Ren,” Nuria tells me as I leave. “Don’t forget it.”



That night in my bed, I listen for the arrival of the guards outside my door. They’re coming from somewhere. A trapdoor. A hidden stairwell. I’m sure I never hear them walk the corridor.

In my dreams, I see Castian. He’s that boy in my memory about to kill Dez on a balcony one moment and the next he’s holding flowers in the dark, running from me.

I will find what you’re hiding, I promise.

I will uncover everything he’s locked away, and there will be nowhere safe for him to hide.





Chapter 19


The next day, I steal moments alone to touch the stone walls of Lady Nuria’s former chambers, searching for hidden doorways. I wonder if the prince made good on his offer to show them to her. I long to ask her, but it’s too great a risk. I look behind every painting, every rug, drapery, book. I push against the brick walls and wooden panels. I rummage under the bed. When, at the end of my search, all I end up with is dirty fingertips and a splinter, I lie down on the floor. I fish Dez’s coin from under the mattress and hold it for strength.

Castian wouldn’t have lied to Nuria. Not in that moment. There has to be something I’m missing.

“What are you doing?” Sula asks.

I scramble off the floor and smooth my deep blue skirts. “Nothing.”