Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(92)

Davida signs, but I don’t quite understand when she says, Good heart. Protect us all.



I run back to my room, sweat soaking the underarms of my dress. I’m confident I removed Alessandro’s memories of our encounter, but he’ll still have his suspicions. Eventually I’ll be caught. I can’t repeat what I’ve done today. Davida is not the Magpie, she’s a Moria working in the palace. That means the spy is still out there, and I don’t feel any closer to finding them.

I stop when there’s a pinch at my side. A cold breeze blows against me, and for a brief moment I hear voices coming from the end of the hall.

All the memories I’ve stolen are taking a toll, playing tricks on me. When I get to the library door, the voices get louder, the ache in my temples returns harder than ever. There’s something here. I can feel it. An ache wedged like a knife between my ribs.

I try the library door. It’s locked. I fish for the clip in my pocket and the door sighs open with the right turn of my wrist. White rays filter from the windows, illuminating the dust in the air. The room is cold. As cold as Lady Nuria’s rooms downstairs, but without the lit fireplace to help. The windows here are not barred like mine. There’s no need, I suppose.

As I stand here, I can’t breathe. It’s like I’ve stepped into the Gray. The color is vibrant at first and then washes out from the books lining the walls, and the chaise where I sat watching the city, my home in the woods, fall to flames. I stumble to the window and fumble with the latch. I open it and let in the cool air. Down below is the maze of royal gardens. I breathe the scent of freshly cut hedges and filth of the capital that can never truly be masked.

I grip the sill for support. Memories press into the forefront of my mind as if trying to break down a wall. I shut my eyes, but I can’t escape the images flashing by.

Trays of cakes and pastries. Roll of a die. Dez asking me, “What are you doing here?” A book burning in this very fireplace.

Why would the prince of Puerto Leones have a book filled with Moria legends in this library? Why was he here? This was my favorite place. Can’t I have one thing without Castian staining it with his whole existence?

My breath comes in short, fast pants and I let myself fall. I sink my face into my folded knees.

Stop, I think to the Gray. I need you to stop.

I wish I could carve out my own thoughts the way I do others’. I wish I’d never returned here. Every thread I pull unravels something else.

I hear Dez’s voice. Trust me.

“I do,” I whisper to an empty room, to a boy who is dead.

Suddenly, I want to see him. I want to conjure Dez amid the terror of my thoughts. I find him in small memories tucked behind others. The one that I want is the one of the night he rescued me. It is unfinished, wedged in the Gray. Breathing fast, I wade through the dark of my thoughts, like retracing the paths in the dungeons, the halls of the palace.

But I know what else I will find there. Dead eyes gaping back at me. A little girl eating sweets. My own hands, small, covered with the beginnings of the scars and whorls I bear now. I promised Illan once that I would work on unlocking the Gray, but that was a different time. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t in a palace full of the Arm of Justice. Dez was still alive. He would have helped me through it, told me that I was strong enough to face a lifetime of stolen pasts. Right now I can’t even face one. Shouldn’t seeing him be enough for me to try harder?

“I miss you, Dez,” I say. “But I can’t go there alone.”

I’m not going anywhere because tomorrow is the Sun Festival, and I have run out of time.





Chapter 21


The queen’s courtyard has been made exquisite for her garden party, decorated like the Second Heaven reserved for those whose truest virtue is love. As the princess of a foreign kingdom, and queen of Puerto Leones, it is clear she does not want to spare any expense for the first celebration of the day. Leo said it is tradition for the queen to host a party for select guests, though everyone seems to have noticed the absence of both the prince and the empress of Luzou.

The young queen sits under a canopy with her handpicked favorite ladies of court, radiant in Dauphinique violet under the afternoon sun, while the king sits on a newly erected throne covered in bright green ivy and flowers. He stares at the crowd, simmering in a mood so foul, not even Justice Méndez, who just returned from Soledad this morning, approaches him.

The Hand of Moria stands directly behind the king on two out of four marble pedestals. I’m surprised to see the new Ventári without Méndez in sight. She’s gaunt and seems familiar because I see myself in her and the Persuári beside her. Everything about them is clean, stiff, their eyes so still they don’t even seem to blink. It’s as if they’re almost made hollow but hold just enough memories to perform their duties. I look at the empty pedestals. That’s where I’m supposed to stand, after my demonstration. When I become one of them and Justice Méndez unwraps my bandage and fits my hands with manacled gloves that only King Fernando will have the key to. They tell me my power is a curse, but they keep presenting me as a gift.

Fear floods my stomach as I linger behind a hedge. I can’t stay in this manicured garden surrounded by the swish of silk gowns and twinkling jewels, mouths stuffed with delicacies and nobles drunk on fizzy cava, swaying to the musicians in the corner.