Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(88)

Hector hisses, reliving the fresh pain. He thrashes so much it is difficult to hold on, but the images flood like rising water in a sealed room. I must regain control, or I will take too many memories. And he will become a Hollow.



The melancholy queen has been dead a year, and the boy’s rage grows greater still. His body is different, even for a young man his age. All he does is eat and endure the grueling trials every king’s man and guard must pass, like he is carving himself until he is stone, unbreakable. But the boy’s heart is impatient. Hector admires the precision of his swordplay. Out of every boy pulled from farms and mills and wharves, he’d be the one to watch even if he wasn’t the crowned prince.

Hector shouts an order. “Line up! Find your sparring mate and don’t show quarter. Don’t worry about bruises, fledglings. No one’s kissing your ugly mugs as it is.”

It elicits bitter grumbles from the recruits. Too young. Every season the justice sends them younger to fight and die.

Hector was like these kids. He watches them spar with each other in sets of two. His small batch of King Fernando’s vast army.

A slim figure watches him from afar. Davida, so changed, with a just-healed scar across her face and delicate throat, carries a basket of apples at her hip. Her deep brown eyes always seem to catch when she looks at the prince. He sees them shining with tears and wonders if she remembers the murderous princeling as he was.

She leaves bits of dried bread for the pesky black birds, hoping that will save the apples. He always admired her kindness. She is still as beautiful as the day he fell in love with her. Her touch always soothed him, like she was parting the dark thoughts from his life and making way for the sun. Of course, that was before he lost his hand to a raid. Before the prince had her punished. His rage at the prince resurfaces, blooms like a putrid sprout in his core. Everything he’s lost has been because of the Fajardos. And yet, he knows he cannot raise a hand to the boy. His future king.

He can never hold Davida again either. Perhaps one day, they will heal enough to return to each other. One day . . .

“Good day, Davida,” he calls out to her.

She starts at the sound of his voice and presses her palm against her chin. Signs her wordless hello followed by his given name. Miguel. Only she calls him that. Only she can.

Hector wishes he were smoother, softer, not a big stumbling oaf with one hand. Even now, the pain of his time in battle is a fresh wound. He’ll never outlive it. Almost like she can sense his anguish, she touches his forearm. Her fingers, though callused, are gentle. It is like being kissed by a cool breeze on a hot day. Is that love he still sees in her eyes? Because there is a swell of turmoil in his heart. It’s a hundred cords knotted into one. He wants to forget his station, forget his duty; he only wants to fall at her knees.

And then the knot untangles. Comes undone like a loose spool in his hands. The fog of his anger parts. For the briefest moment, there is only Davida and him.

Just as he is ready to say more to her, the princeling marches toward him, and Davida lets go. She tucks her head between her shoulders and runs away as quick as her feet can carry her. The absence of her is more than he can put into words, and when Castian stands before him, the anger that is a living thing in his heart returns.

“Hector! What is the meaning of this?”

Hector steadies his breath. He might be Castian’s general, but Castian is still his liege. Murderer or not.

“The meaning of what, Your Highness?”

The boy throws his helmet on the ground, the blunt sword along with it. “This! You’ve assigned everyone else a sparring partner but me.”

“I fail to see the problem, Your Highness?”

“I am your best fighter.” His blue eyes are cold enough to give Hector a terrible shiver as he steps near. The eyes of a monster. Twisted and broken. And yet, Hector can’t help but think of his mother’s face and hear her soft song and think of how different things were. How different he was. “I’m honorary captain of the forces. Do you expect me to ride into Riomar untested?”

Hector’s anger needles at him, and so he says, “Honorary captains do not see battle, Your Highness. How can I allow the king’s son to arrive at the council dinner with a black eye?”

He expects the boy to yell. It would be easier to bear. Instead, his blue eyes are calculating as he stares back and says darkly, “When I retake Riomar, I will be the fiercest warrior of Puerto Leones. And when that day arrives, there will be nothing honorary about my title, do you understand?”

Hector nods. He understands many things about the prince, who will always be a prince, and perhaps earn his title of Lord Commander. But to Hector, he will always be the boy who drowned his own brother.



Hector gasps, awakening from his dream. He cradles his wooden hand as he stands, stepping away from me. I have so many questions I want to ask him. Does he know that Davida still attends the prince? I wonder if Hector found her the night of the half-moon celebration.

“Are you all right?” I ask, shaking. “I found you on the floor.”

“No,” he answers, a stare that sees through me. The guard’s fear of the boy, of Castian, lingers in my heart, and so I stay where I am, watching him breathe. “I do not believe I ever will be. I beg your pardon for my impropriety, miss.”

He’s never spoken to me this softly or this long. Though the anger he felt settles on me like a blanket infested with ants, I want to tell him that I feel the same. That I understand feeling as if you’ll never be whole again. But we go back to being strangers, shadows sailing past each other in a dark that will swallow us both whole.