Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(96)

At her hip is a fan.

From my place on the podium, I see a brief glint and my breath catches. Though I’m not sure that I’m right. This is too bold, too reckless. I look around the garden, where even the guards are transfixed by her long, supple limbs and graceful arms. The singer falls into a sharp wail, lamenting his broken heart, and the dancer throws the shells into the grass and grabs her fan. When she unfolds it, I know I’m right.

There, concealed between the paper-thin folds, is a flash of slender steel with a delicate rose hilt. Only one person I know owns a hairpin dagger. I did see Sayida. Then this dancer must be under an illusion.

She turns to the king, pulling her skirt, distracting everyone from the weapon in her hand. My stomach twists with revulsion.

I have a choice. I could let her kill him. It is what I want most of all. But his death, after the speech he just gave, would ruin everything I came here to do. The weapon would be used before I could get to it. Nuria is right. Lozar was right. I came here for more than my own vengeance.

The guitar strums as fast as my heart. The woman spins, her dress like the bloody red spill of death around her, and when she stops, her arm is raised high.

King Fernando sees the blade too late. Everyone does.

But I didn’t. I’m already moving, lunging between the dancer and the king, arm poised to shield my face.

Pain blooms. Her eyes, familiar and blue, are full of hate. Not toward the king who is screaming orders, or the guards who pin her to the ground. The illusion she’s created around her holds strong, keeping her blond hair dark and cloaking her in front of all these strangers.

“Take her away!” King Fernando shouts. “Take her! I’ll deal with her later.”

“Renata!” Leo shouts, running to me from the other side of the garden.

Where did he come from? Justice Méndez is already at my side. The blade is driven right through my forearm.

There is too much confusion, too much blood, too many people touching me and calling my name. Bells ring throughout the entire kingdom and I know I hear people shouting.

But as the medic tends to me, all I can see is the hatred in Margo’s eyes as she is dragged thrashing and screaming out of the garden.





Chapter 22


I’ve felt worse pain.

One time, on a mission outside the Memoria Mountains, past the Sedona Canyons, I fell into a nest of ice vipers. I nearly died from their poison. It was Margo who knew a cure. A root that grew in the same desert. Dez spent all night digging for it, and she spent the night keeping my body from freezing as the venom lowered my body temperature.

Then there were the thorn reeds that gave me the scars on my back. A group of young boys from a different unit pulled me out of my tent and onto a raft, where I woke, startled, and fell into the tangle of river thorns. Those boys were sent to a separate safe house across the country, but that’s when I started keeping to myself around the Whispers’ stronghold.

There was the burn on my right thigh.

The slash on my neck from Esmeraldas.

The poison after that.

Watching Dez die.

“I should’ve died a long time ago,” I say as a guard carries me into the medic’s chamber.

“You’re not dying, do you hear me?” Leo trots alongside us to keep up. His green eyes never leave my face. There’s worry there, and I know that I don’t care if he’s the spy or just a very good actor or a fabrication of the unraveling threads in my head. He’s the only friend I’ve got within these walls and he’s here.

“Was the blade poisoned?” Justice Méndez asks, pushing something off a bed.

They lay me on it. I don’t look down because there’s blood everywhere. There’s always blood everywhere.

A decrepit old medic peers at me, but he doesn’t touch my skin. Doesn’t get within an arm’s distance of me. I can smell the fear bubbling through his pores, and it smells like—aguadulce.

“Move aside,” Leo says, frustration overpowering his usual pleasant demeanor. “She had three glasses of cava and she’s lost a lot of blood.” He holds my arm and sniffs. “If there’s poison, it’s odorless.”

“Bring me the girl!” Méndez shouts at someone.

Leo lowers himself to my face. His warm fingers brush my hair back. “This is going to hurt.”

It’ll hurt, I told him. I know, he said.

Perhaps it was the drink, but when Leo grabs the end of the hairpin dagger, it doesn’t hurt. There’s a deep numbness stretching from my shoulder to my fingertips. But when I feel hands hold my feet down, my waist, something within me snaps.

“Don’t touch me!” I snarl at the guard—Hector—but he doesn’t let go.

White-hot pain sizzles inside my flesh, the pain of my latest wound making itself known with a vengeance as Leo makes cuts around the dagger. His beautiful soft words apologize over and over again. Someone holds a weak poultice over my nose to help calm me. Manzanilla and other herbs. But all it does is give me whiplash memories of Esmeraldas. Was it just over two weeks when my life was shaken by the root? Unearthed and splintered. Then the numbness returns, slick wet warmth coating my skin.

I know I’ve blacked out when I wake to silence.

The splash of cold water.

The rustle of fabric.

Leo is re-dressing my bandage, his shoulders shaking with silent tears.