The River and the Star E-Book

Gabriela Romero Lacruz

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Warring Gods
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 852

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The magical sequel to #1 Sunday Times bestselling The Sun and the Void, an epic fantasy of warring gods, liberation, and two young women's quest for power. In the gripping conclusion to the Warring Gods duology, two women find themselves caught in an ancient feud between ruthless entities, in an epic quest for power and liberation. Reina is full of hope. At long last, Reina has the peace she's been searching for on the idyllic island of Tierra'e Sol with the lover she's always wanted, and in service to the god of the sun. But she can't quite trust how long this will last. When monstrous creatures of the Void appear on the isle's shores, she is certain she knows who is behind the attacks. Reina will stop at nothing to protect the woman she loves, but it could cost her everything she's fought so hard for. Eva is cherished. Finally reunited with her father, the Liberator, Eva struggles to prove herself worthy of being his heir while keeping secret her alliance with the god of the Void. As destruction, both human and magical, tears across the lands, Eva is thrust into a power struggle she's ill-prepared for. Confronted with the limits of her own ambition, Eva must fight to save herself from the powerful corruption of the Void before she loses the family she holds dear. The warring gods are returning and the only thing between them and absolute power are two young women. But for the first time in their lives, Reina and Eva have something to fight for. And they won't back down.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Timeline

A Note On Names

Part One

1Doña Ursulina’s Miracle

2Ches

3Daughter to Father

4The Galio Rebel

5Deer Skull Piper

6Magic in the Water

7A Roomful of Antlers

8Nightcleaver

9A Temporary Salve

10Rahmagut

11The Perfect Daughter (Who Lies)

12Tugging the Ribbon Undone

13Discord in the Ranks

14The Void Gem

15Duality

16Call to Arms

Part Two

17The Future of Valcos

18Nozariel Strength

19Las Orquídeas Blancas

20The Return to Segolita

21Esteban the Cat

22The Acceptance of Family

23The Bravo Legacy

24Shedding Old Blood

25An Águila Trade

26The Amalgamation

27New Saints and Old Gods

28River Memories

29Two Villains

30Toying with Sin

31The Dancing Devils

32Sunfire

33Caged Tinieblas

34The Calamity

35Valco Stratagems

Part Three

36Catatumbo

37The Monster Inside

38Settling Scores

39The Caudillo and the Liberator

40Up in Flames

41A God for the Godless

42The Returned Lady

43A Willing Copy

44The Man-Eating Caiman

45The Summoning

46The Five Peaks

47Mistress of Tinieblas

48Where the Star Fell

49River Purity

50Darkness, Banished

51A New Benevolent Lady

52A Manor to Build a Home In

53Águila Bravo

54Warm Waters

Geomancia

Glossary of Terms

Acknowledgments

About the Author

AVAILABLE FROM GABRIELA ROMERO LACRUZAND DAPHNE PRESS

The Sun and the Void

The River and the Star

LEAVE US A REVIEW

We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

Amazon.co.uk,

Goodreads,

Waterstones,

or your preferred retailer.

First published in the UK in 2025 by Daphne Press

www.daphnepress.com

Copyright © 2025 by Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Cover design by Jane Tibbetts © Daphne Press

Case design by Jane Tibbetts © Daphne Press

Map and illustrations © Gabriela Romero Lacruz

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-83784-080-9

eBook ISBN: 978-1-83784-082-3

Illumicrate Exclusive HB ISBN: 978-1-83784-079-3

Waterstones Exclusive HB ISBN: 978-1-83784-117-2

The authorised representative in the EEA is Authorised Rep Compliance Ltd

71 Baggot Street Lower, Dublin, D02 P593, Ireland.

Email: [email protected]

1

For Hassan

TIMELINE

THE KING’S DISCOVERY (KD)

1KD: Segol’s voyagers first arrive in the lands that later become the Viceroyalty of Venazia, colony of Segol

326KD: Rahmagut’s Claw becomes visible to the naked eye

344KD: Samón’s and Feleva’s declaration of independence

344KD: Establishment of the sovereign countries of Venazia and Fedria

348KD: Fall of the Viceroyalty of Venazia and Segol’s defeat

368KD: Rahmagut’s Claw becomes visible to the naked eye

MAJOR FAMILIES

SILVA

Seat: Puerto Carcosa, the coast of the Cow Sea

Banner: an onyx crocodile on scarlet fabric, for the red blood of felled armadas over a crocodile coast

Notable Members:

Don Rodrigo Agustín Silva Zamorano, king of Venazia, appointed by La Junta de Puerto Carcosa

Doña Orsalide Belén Zamorano de Silva, queen mother

Marcelino Carlos Silva Pérez

Francisco Miguel Silva Carranza

ÁGUILA

Seat: outskirts of Sadul Fuerte, the Páramo

Banner: a soaring golden eagle on ivory fabric, for the riches amassed beneath the Páramo peaks

Notable Members:

Doña Feleva Lucero Águila Cárdenas, full-blooded valco, deceased caudilla of Sadul Fuerte

Don Enrique Gavriel Águila de Herrón, half human, half valco, born in the year 328

KD

, caudillo of Sadul Fuerte

Doña Laurel Divina Herrón de Águila, born in the year 328

KD

Celeste Valentina Águila Herrón, three-quarters human, one-quarter valco, born in the year 346

KD

Javier Armando Águila de Bravo, half human, half valco, born in the year 344

KD

SERRANO

Seat: Galeno, the Llanos

Banner: three stripes—brown, blue, and yellow—for the rich soil of Galeno, the plentiful rivers, and the nourishing sun

Notable Members:

Don Mateo Luis Serrano de Monteverde, governor of Galeno

Doña Antonia Josefa Monteverde de Serrano

Doña Dulce Concepción Serrano de Jáuregui, born in the year 326

KD

Doña Pura Maria Jáuregui de Valderrama

Décima Lucia Serrano Montilla

Eva Kesaré Bravo de Águila, three-quarters human, one-quarter valco, born in the year 348

KD

Néstor Alfonso Serrano Monteverde

DUVIANOS

Seat: Sadul Fuerte, the Páramo

Banner: an orange flower with a red sun rising over mauve fabric, for the fields of flowers under Páramo dawns

Notable Members:

Doña Ursulina Salma Duvianos Palacios, born in the year 305

KD

Don Juan Vicente Duvianos, born in the year 328

KD

Reina Alejandra Duvianos Torondoy, half human, half nozariel, born in the year 347

KD

CONTADOR

Seat: Galeno, the Llanos

Banner: a diagonal partition of black and white, crossed by a golden key, for the establishment of order in the colonies

Notable Members:

Don Jerónimo Rangel Contador Miarmal

Doña Rosa de El Carmín

VILLARREAL

Seat: Galeno, the Llanos

Notable Members:

Don Alberto Ferrán Villarreal Pescador

CASTAÑEDA

Seat: Los Morichales, the Llanos

BRAVO

Seat: Tierra’e Sol, the coast of the Cow Sea

Banner: two mirrored laurels on a diagonal partition of navy and yellow, for the abundance of Fedria and its sea

Notable Members:

Don Samón Antonio Bravo Días, half human, half valco, born in the year 326

KD

, former chancellor of Fedria, the Liberator

Ludivina Gracia Bravo Céspedes, three-quarters human, one-quarter valco

Doña Maria Elena Céspedes de Bravo

Don Vicente German Días Trujillo

A NOTE ON NAMES

Persons are given a first name, a middle name, and a single family name by each parent. Upon marriage, persons can attach their partner’s family name to their own and drop one of their last names. A single parent only bestows a single family name to their offspring. When neither parent is able to bestow a family name upon birth, persons are given the name of the city or settlement where they were born. Full names are seldom mentioned in everyday speech. Don and Doña are honorifics to express respect. Married persons, heirs, landowners, and elders are addressed by their honorific. When neglected, it is a sign of disrespect.

1

DOÑA URSULINA’S MIRACLE

Moonlight showered Maior. She was radiant in a gossamer gown, like a beauty plucked out of an oil painting. Reina took her in so deeply, half listening to her chatter, too distracted as she considered her good luck. How she could take Maior’s hand in hers anytime she longed for the contact, unhesitant and unafraid. Oblivious, Maior tucked her raven hair behind her ear, revealing the dotted constellation of moles on her neck, the sign that had sent them on a colliding path.

Soft breezes enveloped them as they headed for the docks. Reina squeezed Maior’s hand and delighted in her blushing smile. Two soldiers trailed behind them, following Reina’s lead.

Together, they had spent the day scouring Isla Bendita, the smallest inhabited island of Tierra’e Sol’s cay formation. Reina had organized the expedition after rumors of demons had reached the Liberator’s manse in Isla Madre, of animals found with their chests carved open and emptied of hearts. The gossip sounded like the dangerous first sighting of a tiniebla or two. So she’d enlisted the soldiers to aid with their swords, and Maior to serve as their healer. But their search had come up empty. They’d failed to find any tinieblas. Reina was worn out and ready to return home, though a bit disappointed.

“So you had a bucket of moras,” Reina said absentmindedly, following Maior’s recounting of her past.

“Oh, yes, I was about eight years or so. I ate so many I think I looked like a deranged murderer to Sister Maria—she was a young nun,” Maior said, and Reina offered a soft laugh, imagining it. “I gave her a fright. My whole face was smeared with red goo—”

“A man-eater,” Reina noted.

“And it gave me the worst stomachache—” A sudden agonized scream cut through Maior’s words.

Reina turned in the direction of the sound: the jungle they had just emerged from to reach the docks. With a flick of her fingers and wrist, Reina quickly summoned the enhanced sight and strength of bismuto from her geomancia rings. The spell opened her eyes to the unseen, in case a tiniebla lurked about.

Maior blanched, her beauty interrupted. “Is that . . .”

“What we’ve been looking for,” Reina finished for her as apprehension tightened her chest. The scream could only mean the tiniebla had found a new victim. They needed to move fast.

Reina ordered one soldier to stay with Maior and the other to follow her into the jungle so they could cover twice as much area. Then they rushed after the screams, which shortly quieted. In the jungle, they split.

With Reina’s senses on high alert, every shadow took on an alarming shape. Vines looped over thick trunks, twisting, becoming vipers. Slick leaves the size of banners tugged her clothes like the faint grip of phantoms. Anthills gave under her boots. As the knotted greenery impeded her path, Reina hacked her way through with Ches’s Blade. Her golden blade.

A void emptied the sounds of the jungle. The amphibians and nocturnal critters hushed, as did Reina, pausing. For the first time in a month, since she had emerged from the rubble of Rahmagut’s tomb, Reina’s instincts prickled her skin with a warning. She felt a familiar yet uncomfortable constricting in her chest from the pumping of her iridio heart.

But warmth from Ches’s Blade flooded her with reassurance, even as she was still brittle from the last time she’d fought tinieblas. The thought of encountering the heart-ravenous demons again, how their bodies were amalgamated from parts of random animals, reminded Reina of her grandmother, who’d commanded tinieblas in Rahmagut’s tomb. Doña Ursulina had used them to sacrifice innocent women in the name of Rahmagut.

Reina would never be same after her grandmother’s betrayal. She was changed, fragmented, taking people’s words and turning them around and around in her head, evaluating the true intention beneath them. No longer was she desperate to achieve unimpeachable acceptance—now she knew such a thing was a fantasy. She was not a broken girl begging for love anymore. She was a woman rebuilding from nothing, without a family or home.

Her handle on the golden pommel of Ches’s Blade grew warmer. Despite her grandmother’s plots and lies, Reina had survived. She still had a future, and she was alight with strength and the drive to find atonement by serving her new community.

Maybe it was this actualization, or maybe something else. But since emerging from the tomb, her skin vibrated anytime she wielded Ches’s Blade. She had done the unimaginable for her grandmother, yet her heart blazed with her belief in Ches. If the tinieblas were Rahmagut’s creations seeding chaos into the world, then Reina would be Ches’s agent, vanquishing them. Tierra’e Sol and its people had welcomed her with open arms. In return, she would gladly keep them safe.

She shoved vines away from her face as she entered a swampy clearing. Twigs snapped ahead. Reina plunged forward, circling the pond and continuing down a path that could not have been carved by an animal. She slid down a steep incline and arrived on two shaky feet beside an outcrop where a hunter’s cabin stood.

She crossed a cloud of gnats and glanced around the cabin’s back door. Upon inspecting the hinges, Reina found it had been forced open. She announced her entry, but no one answered.

With her boots tracking in mud, Reina stepped into a small kitchen. As she passed a corridor, her nose wrinkled from the sharp smell of recently spilled blood, intensified by her bismuto spell.

She shoved open a door and found a middle-aged man lying on a bed soaked in an overflow of red. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, mouth agape. His fingernails were lifted and bloodstained from a struggle. His robe was torn open in the middle, the fabric mopping up the blood leaking from his chest. His ribs had been snapped, his chest carved empty.

Reina covered her mouth with her fist, swallowing the nausea. She didn’t bother inspecting him further. This was the work of a tiniebla.

Fuming, she whirled on her heels to search for it—to give the tiniebla an end befitting its actions.

The house was silent, save for the gentle twinkle of wind chimes coming from the porch. Reina tore into every room, finding each one empty. A door squeaked from the back patio, followed by the clatter of hooves on tiles. She rushed out and immediately met the bipedal fiend.

The moon lit a creature with the upper body of a man and the legs of a goat. The head was in the twisted amalgamation of a jaguar and a capuchin, with flared nostrils and a spotted forehead. The dead man’s blood was still smeared across the tiniebla’s sneering mouth, with tendrils of red sticking to the edges of its lips.

The tiniebla swung a pustulated arm at her, entering Reina’s reach. Time slowed to a crawl, as if her bismuto-dilated pupils and swollen muscles could react to movements far faster than these.

Reina’s blade severed the arm with ease. The monster let out a deserving howl. She swerved back for a finishing blow and nearly threw her body with a strength she didn’t know she had. Surprised, she found her balance and cut a life-rending gash through the tiniebla’s middle. The monster faded into nothing. As a creature of shadow, it left no physical remains.

The lack of challenge was . . . disappointing. If not for the need to see the tiniebla, the use of bismuto enhancement felt unnecessary.

After sheathing her blade, she slipped out of her leather gloves. She lifted a hand before her, inspecting her bismuto-ringed fingers under the moonlight. This strangeness in her body unnerved her. The strength—could this be the result of training with Don Samón’s soldiers? Had she truly not challenged herself completely since entering the Liberator’s service?

She scowled. Ever since the night at the tomb, Reina had wistfully nurtured the idea that its destruction would bring the end of tinieblas. She had worked under Ches’s guidance, smiting her grandmother and causing the sanctum to collapse. She’d hoped this had been enough to counter Rahmagut, the god of the Void whom Doña Ursulina had nearly sacrificed Celeste and Maior for. True, it was a naïve wish, but she’d reasoned that if Rahmagut had no altar to be worshipped, then surely his manipulations of the physical world from the Void would end. But a tiniebla in Isla Bendita turned this theory on its head.

Just as Reina was wondering how it had made it to the island, and if it was alone, another scream pierced through the night and right into her heart. Reina sprinted back into the house. She drew her blade and followed the cries, finding she had missed a door to an underground cellar, which was slightly ajar. She kicked it open and was assaulted by a metallic scent she knew all too well.

The cellar thundered from the toppling of furniture. Reina descended and found another feral tiniebla towering over an adolescent nozariel boy. The room was in disarray, as if from a mad chase ending with the boy using a small crate as the only barrier between him and the canine mandibles snapping for him. He used the crate as a shield, terrified and blind to the threat, for without bismuto he was unable to see the tiniebla that had already bitten a large chunk of his arm.

Reina tackled the tiniebla off him, shoving the boy away as the creature swiped at her. She swung, decapitating it in a single strike.

Afterward, she knelt by the boy, who heaved as he held his bleeding arm. “Something—I couldn’t see—something bit me,” he said.

Reina’s breath caught upon seeing the large bite. Her own healed arm itched with the memory of the tiniebla attack she had endured a lifetime ago. “Who else lives in this house?” she asked.

He was too horrified to answer, so she moved closer, shushing him while gently wiping tears away. His cheeks and pointed nozariel ears were splattered with blood. “It’s all right,” she said. “The tiniebla is gone. Another one will not get past me.” Which raised the question: How many had made it here? “Does anyone else live with you?” she asked.

He nodded and sobbed, “My father.”

Reina held her breath. “What is your name?”

“Juan Pablo.”

Gently, she inspected his wounded arm. The ring on her middle finger carried a solution of galio with enough potency to allow her to cast simple first aid spells. But Reina didn’t have the expertise to mend such a bite, with its concave emptiness revealing tendons and bone. Suddenly, Juan Pablo curled on the ground, as if struck by a pain more immense than just his injured arm.

Reina cursed. Her hands trembled as she moved him to get a better look. Moaning, he shut his eyes in agony. He gripped her wrist, seeking reassurance, but Reina’s chest fissured even more.

“And my father? Is he all right?” His big, teary eyes bore into Reina. “Please—he is all I have.”

Before Reina could answer, he screamed in anguish.

Reina knew exactly what that felt like. She had nearly died from a tiniebla bite when she crossed the Páramo Mountains in search of a better life. She knew the tiniebla’s corruption was going to take his heart.

The devilish whispers in her iridio heart rejoiced, awakened after a monthlong slumber, mocking her.

*   *   *

Reina hauled Juan Pablo over her shoulders and sprinted back through the jungle, enraged. Despite her search, the tinieblas had still taken a life. What if there were more? How were they supposed to scour every cay of Tierra’e Sol? And where were the wards guarding against them? Had Reina’s arrival or the events in Rahmagut’s tomb triggered attacks never seen in these parts before?

She returned to Maior’s and the soldier’s shocked faces.

“I found tinieblas,” Reina said, gently lowering Juan Pablo so he could sit on the docks’ briny steps.

He watched her with big, confused eyes. She understood his bewilderment better than anyone. She tried calming him with whispers of hope that sounded like lies to her, for she knew no words would be enough.

Maior grabbed her bag of supplies from the canoe. She brought bandages and several vials sloshing with different galio solutions. The soldier lit a torch while Maior’s galio healing made quick work of stitching whatever she could of the wound. Then she yanked Juan Pablo’s shirt off to inspect the source of his pain. Stunned, they stared at the varicose black stains crawling from his arm to his heart, as darkness claimed the healthy tissue and replaced it with necrosis.

“Reina?” Maior looked to her for reassurance.

“One of the tinieblas got to him,” Reina said with gritted teeth. She hated admitting it aloud, while the poor boy was still conscious and desperate for some reprieve. “I was too late. Maior . . . the darkness—it’s going to corrupt his heart. It’s what tinieblas do. It’s what they did to me.”

Scowling, as if refusing this fate, Maior summoned a different galio spell to her hands. Reina’s bismuto high lingered, allowing her to view the manifestation of Maior’s geomancia—a soft lavender hue—as it twirled around her fingers like satin laces and curled within her palms before she pressed them against Juan Pablo’s chest. There, the galio spell tried to take root, digging. But as Juan Pablo groaned, it was rejected. The darkness only spread farther.

“We should go back to Isla Madre,” Reina said as the second soldier returned from the jungle. She felt a panic rising in her throat. She’d lived because Doña Ursulina had acted quickly after her tiniebla attack.

Maior ignored her. She tried a different vial of galio. And another. Splotches of red spread about her neck. She switched through several pairs of rings from her bag to fight the rot. And Reina watched with a hollow growing in her belly as she realized Maior’s geomancia couldn’t hold a candle to the roaring firestorm of Doña Ursulina’s dark magic. Her beating iridio heart was a miracle bestowed from darkness.

They were wasting time.

“We have to go to Dr. Baltasar! This is not enough,” Reina snapped, wrenching Maior’s hands away from the boy.

Immediately Reina realized she’d overreacted from the reflection in Maior’s wounded eyes.

Juan Pablo howled in pain, and there was no time to apologize. They ushered him into the canoe and rowed back to Isla Madre at full speed. Maior faced away on the ride, her wavy hair surfing the air. When Reina placed a tentative hand on Maior’s lower back, aching for her attention, Maior flinched and didn’t meet her eyes.

*   *   *

Dawn arrived in Isla Madre. Reina paced the halls as Juan Pablo’s screams echoed through the infirmary. There was no escaping them. She could be a coward and leave. She could pretend she wasn’t affected, but her very bones understood the pain ravaging him. And his likely fate.

Dr. Baltasar, Maior’s employer, had sequestered her and a few other nurses to aid him with Juan Pablo. The boy’s cries seemingly went on for hours. Until they suddenly stopped.

When a hush quieted the infirmary, Reina stormed out, the need to retaliate blazing through her veins. But how would she? How could she stop these creatures that seemed innumerable and unstoppable? The moment she slayed one, or a dozen, another came back. She’d thought the blood she spilled in Rahmagut’s tomb would be the end of her violent path, yet the bodies kept piling up.

She walked without thinking and took a detour behind the infirmary. She stopped beside a window, drawn by the familiar voices coming out of its halfway-open shutters. Dr. Baltasar said, “You must learn to let go, Maior. The mercy was to stop his heart.”

Reina gripped the handle of her blade as the adrenaline from her earlier fight resurged.

Around her, Isla Madre’s bustle came alive with the arriving morning, unaware of the lost life. Music flowed from one of the houses sitting on cobbled roads. The wind lifted wayward sand around Reina’s legs and brought the smell of baked bread. A trader passed by her, guiding a donkey and his cart of freshly harvested mangoes. When he offered good morning s and waved, Reina had no choice but to let go of her anger. She offered him a meek wave back.

This was her community now. In the short, first month of her stay, the people of Tierra’e Sol had welcomed her with the same openness Don Samón afforded her. Reina wore a pained smile as she considered how innocent they seemed, isolated from the mainland’s conflicts. If Reina, Maior, and Eva were going to make this town their new home, they needed to shield it from the darkness they brought due to their involvement with the god of the Void.

Desperate for answers, she took the all-too-familiar canopied path to the tomb. Sweat clung to her back, her lips were chapped, and a headache hammered her. She ignored the discomfort as she rushed toward the caved-in opening of the tomb. Until now, she’d avoided returning out of cowardice. But this was where she needed to be to better understand the aftermath and why tinieblas were drawn to the islands. She knew she needed to swallow her own anxiety, if she truly believed herself a protector of this community.

Dense greenery encroached on the dirt path. The air smelled sweet and bitter from the rotting sea grapes hanging off surrounding bushes. Reina hacked an opening through the leaves. She met the lagoon facing the tomb’s mouth, with its crystalline waters reflecting prisms over her skin and clothes. A man sat on the largest boulder flanking the lagoon. He rose, as if awaiting her. He had dark brown skin and long, straight white hair crowned by two magnificent antlers, thick, like those of a pure-blooded valco.

Reina froze. The clearing quieted. Her heartbeats thrummed in her ears.

Then a name rolled out of her mouth, and Reina wasn’t sure if she’d been the one to put it there.

“Ches?”

2

CHES

As soon as she said it, it felt right. But it was a shock to see that her god of the sun was a valco—entirely unlike the way she’d imagined him.

He was dressed simply, in a white cotton shirt and ankle-length fishing pants. His unmoving smile confirmed it all. “Reina,” he said.

His voice sent chills through her.

She did the first thing that crossed her mind. She collapsed to her knees for a deep bow, her forehead grazing the packed dirt beneath. How else was she supposed to revere he who gave light to this world?

A soft hand on her chin lifted her head. She hadn’t even heard his approach, as if his steps were made of sunlight. But it made sense that he had the power to be everywhere all at once.

“There is no need for that. And it is much too late for reverence. I have been with you for some time now.” His words filled the clearing, coming from all angles.

Reina rose, meeting his red eyes, which were curiously devoid of pupils. It unnerved her for a moment.

His smile widened. She shuddered from being perceived by him, rocked by a surge of emotion she didn’t know she’d been bottling up.

He looked at her the way her father, Juan Vicente, did—filled with love and empty of the judgment everyone else held for her half-breed nozariel existence. It was like a homecoming. Reina shrunk to the size of a child and pressed her grimy palms against her eyes as tears rushed out of her. The ache for her grandmother, whose life she had brutally ended, crawled out of her heart. Guilt constricted her throat, preventing her from breathing. Reina shook as she recognized how vulnerable she was once again, starting from scratch, without the family and home she’d once thought guaranteed with Doña Ursulina and the Águilas. How could she, the fragmented creature she was, be worthy to face a god?

Ches squeezed her shoulder until she had no more tears to give. When her breath returned, it was clean, free of the weight she’d carried all month. Reina wiped her face. She couldn’t even muster embarrassment for breaking down before him. Perhaps he had planned this.

“It takes courage to pick yourself up,” Ches said. He motioned her to join him on the same slippery boulder where he’d sat.

“Thank you,” she said, and he nodded. “I am confused—surprised,” she said, quickly correcting herself, “that you are valco.” Though she wondered if she was being shallow, for being disappointed that he wasn’t of her kind.

His upper lip twitched. “Everywhere, mortals depict me in their likeness. With antlers and without antlers. With tails and without. Those who built the tomb where you saw my statue were fallible. Do not take their portrayal as the ultimate truth. How I appear is not what is important, but rather that I am able to appear at all.”

Reina frowned, not understanding.

“I hope by now you are comfortable with me,” he said.

“I’ve always been.”

He raised his bushy brows. He wielded otherworldly beauty, with his high cheekbones and smooth, thick lips. “No. You renounced me. You claimed Rahmagut as your patron.”

Reina’s cheeks warmed. Indeed, soon after Doña Laurel’s death and darkness had descended over Águila Manor, Reina had convinced herself that Rahmagut would be the god to solve her suffering. But like any cheap remedy, it was never true.

She shook her head. “I was wrong.” She almost bowed again, but Ches’s gaze arrested her in place. “You were always my patron.”

“I am more than that now. I am inside you.”

Reina squeezed her shirt, breathless. She froze and searched his eyes, finding nothing but unwavering truth.

“I am presenting myself so there is no doubt. I was gone, but I have returned. All the power my banishment denied this world is here, in your body.”

Reina cleared her throat, remembering to breathe. “You were gone, and now you’ve returned, through me?”

“I can take over your mind, bring you here or anywhere, whenever I wish. I am back, Reina, imprisoned in you, as you are chained to me.”

Her chest faltered. The elation she’d felt after crying crumbled into confusion. “I’m your vessel?”

He nodded. “This is not an invasion. But that is a capability I wield.”

Reina’s stomach turned as she remembered how Doña Ursulina had controlled her. The moments that weren’t her own. The terror of being trapped in her own body, performing someone else’s actions. She hated what Ches was implying. But what was she to do against a god?

He leaned in closer. “Now listen to me. You are my host for as long as you live. I chose you. But you are not unique. There have been others before you. Do not squander your life. I command it.”

“I won’t,” she replied. “I’m ready to fight.” She’d lost everything, except her strength, which was as sharp as the golden blade hanging from her hip. She knew she had to protect the people of Tierra’e Sol, and Maior. She’d promised, after all.

Ches nodded, satisfied. “The events resulting in my sealing destroyed my physical body. Thus, I am forced to exist in the bodies of mortals, like yours. But it is important that you never doubt or forget: Your death does not mean the end of me. I will simply find a different host, and our bond will have been a waste of my time. This holds true even for the person that charlatan chose.”

“Rahmagut returned, just like you?”

A strong gust lifted the leaves strewn about the clearing. Ches’s anger was answer enough.

“And he took someone else?” Reina guessed. By mere process of elimination, she supposed it had to be someone who was in the tomb with her. Reina’s stomach clenched, hoping Maior’s possession by Doña Laurel had barred her from also hosting the god of the Void.

“He chose the person best suited to wield the power of iridio.”

Reina sucked in a deep breath as she immediately knew the answer.

“Eva?” She grimaced. “But how could this happen? I thought my grandmother meant only to commune with Rahmagut. She couldn’t have known she would be unsealing him.” She didn’t add or you at the end, but as scorn flashed through his eyes, it was clear he knew her thoughts.

“After our sealing, I slumbered in the Void.” Ches’s voice echoed in the clearing. Gusts whipped at Reina’s braid. “But that man—that viper—instead of admitting defeat and slumbering with me, continued to intrude into the physical world.” Ches rose, giving Reina his back, as if he wanted to avoid showing the ugly hatred on his face. “He continued making tinieblas, knowing their devastation undermines the faith mortals place in gods. He planted dreams in people, fabricating stories of our strife, pretending his power matched mine. From the Void, he behaved as a patron to practitioners of Void geomancia and seeded tales of his Claw. Soon enough his legend gained validity, and it served as a motivation to offer him sacrifices every forty-two years.”

Ches faced her, and she knew he was challenging her to see if she understood the ties that fundamentally brought him and mortals closer together. “Gods gain power from sacrifices,” she said.

“The damas your grandmother butchered in the tomb, both during your time and when she assisted her lover forty-two years prior. The babes you abandoned in the mountains.”

Reina’s cheeks blazed with shame. She would never be able to erase the dark stain of what she had done. Even to this day, she carried those deaths with her.

“Eventually, I grew strong enough to break free from the seal.”

Reina knew she would be blasphemous for pushing back, but she couldn’t stop herself. “How did you gain power from those sacrifices?”

Ches’s lip curled in dissatisfaction, and a chill of fear stirred through Reina. “Rahmagut survived the Void because he bound himself to me. Every sacrifice made to him also fed me. Now listen, I am not here to bring you fame, riches, or conquest. I am not your tool. I may not share the ambitions of a mortal, nor the desire to reign over your life, but I will not be undermined.”

Reina shook her head. “I wouldn’t—”

“You couldn’t,” he barked, and the words were a tremor that shook the clearing. Moist leaves collapsed from the canopy. The lagoon shuddered. “Let this moment be an introduction. Remember my likeness. You will need to grow strong with me. Rahmagut cannot be left unchecked. He threatened this world once, and I fear he may do so again.”

Reina’s pulse quickened as she stared at her hands. More questions threatened to bubble out of her. But to a god, every question could be a challenge. “But why now? If you came into my body after I destroyed this tomb, why are you appearing to me now?”

Her heartbeats were loud in his silence. Had she angered him again, in daring to demand answers?

She stared down at her boots, and he replied, “Because it is now that you chose to return to the tomb. It took you all this time to muster your courage to face me. You were not ready, so I gave you time.”

In that moment, Reina’s heart filled with love for him. Ches was a god. He didn’t owe her anything. He behaved in ways she couldn’t comprehend, and it was nonsensical to assume she could. But he understood her. This was enough.

She glanced up, offering a smile of gratitude, but he was gone.

The lagoon was once again silent without him. Feeble rays of sunlight filtered through the canopy. She extended her arms to feel the sun on her brown skin and realized that since emerging from the tomb, she indeed had been experiencing the world differently. She wielded heightened senses. It was why she ran twice as fast, even without bismuto. Why she’d nearly cut herself from the fierce swings of her own sword. Breezes rustled around her, tickling trees that appeared brighter and more saturated to her eyes. The lagoon’s surface shone, more crystalline than ever. The jungle smelled wetter.

She was bound to Ches forever.

Reina searched within herself, prodding for him, wondering if she would feel it. She only sensed his company, like an unseen presence in a room where she wasn’t alone, and it was how she knew she hadn’t made this up. She knew Ches would be silent unless he chose to show himself, which was fine with her.

Bound, until death.

She wished she could ask him how he felt about this. How would he feel about going through her life by her side? Living as she lived?

Perhaps he had chosen her out of convenience, but that didn’t diminish how special he made her feel. Hosting him was an honor, and now, her greatest challenge. She was not going to disappoint him.

3

DAUGHTER TO FATHER

Every afternoon, the sun left Tierra’e Sol in a salty haze. Eva reveled in the idleness as she approached Isla Madre’s plaza with her hair salt-wild and her espadrilles muddy from the day’s gathering of geomancia reagents. The townsfolk were silent, retreating to their homes to prepare supper. Babies cried distantly, as did seagulls. Even on the cobbled path from the plaza to Don Samón’s manse, one could hear the waves. They carried a healing rhythm. A coming and going, its predictability bringing the comfort Eva so desperately needed after the chaos she had encountered when she left Galeno.

The path to the manse hugged Isla Madre’s burial grounds, a resting place for the island’s inhabitants long before Don Samón moved in. Every time Eva passed the grounds after sunset, curiosity and apprehension would fill her, raising the hairs on her arm. The grounds weren’t empty.

Sometimes, from the corner of her eye, Eva thought she could see the ghosts. They clung to the land, hiding behind the mango trees planted by the island’s first settlers. She saw them in the gardens surrounding the Pentimiento chapel as well, shooting furtive glances before disappearing around a corner. Men with mustaches, espadrilles, and jipijapa hats. Children and grandmothers. Just as the Benevolent Lady Laurel Águila still haunted Maior with her perfectly healthy countenance—save for her ghostly, see-through pallor.

These were people who had died yet were not truly gone. Eva wondered if the same was true for gods, who supposedly left remnants of themselves as traces of power for people to fear or exploit. It was how Rahmagut could dip his influence into the world to create his tinieblas, even before he had the good luck of residing in her body. Eva shivered at that and pretended not to notice the strange sense of amusement stirring within her. She did that a lot these days, since Javier had attested that she had emerged from the tomb with something clinging to her shoulders. (Again, she shuddered at the thought.) She hated never being alone. She hated toying with the possibility that the shivers running up her spine and the heat flushing her ears weren’t innate reactions of her body, but rather proof of the Void god’s return. She’d rather believe she was ill, stuck with an ever-recurring fever, than accept any other truth.

Eva wasn’t afraid, not exactly. Rahmagut’s icon in Doña Rosa’s house signaled he was misunderstood and not at all how the Penitents painted him. But why would someone so powerful choose her?

The cobbled path forked near the construction site of a new house, which was cluttered with half-laid bricks and a wheelbarrow. It was the lot Don Samón had granted Reina. Every time Eva passed by, she caught a glimpse of something new: Reina’s helpers hacking down the tall grass, shoveling clay from the foundation, or wheeling imported materials from the docks, Reina hard at work alongside them in sweat-drenched clothes. A month had passed since their arrival to the island and it already felt like they were living entirely different lives. Reina hadn’t wasted a second carrying on. In comparison, Eva felt lazy and aimless, spending her days chasing reagents to tug and expand her knowledge of geomancia. A spoiled, comfortable woman.

As she arrived at the jasmine-entwined gates of Don Samón’s property, she took a deep breath of that sweet air, accepting that this was now her new life.

If she had ever started off as a guest, the staff had quickly adjusted their routines to make her feel at home. Her plate was always served beside her father, Don Samón, at the dining table, across from her half sister, Ludivina. The cooks noted when she requested her arepa be made extra toasty and repeated the favor for every breakfast. In the courtyard with the caged parrots, where she took to withdrawing with one of Don Samón’s many manuals on geomancia, the cooks snuck her small plates of guava bocadillos wrapped in dried bijao leaves and replenished goblets of the day’s juice, a small wildflower of matching color plopped in as garnish.

A breeze caressed the palms flanking her, then lifted her curls. Distantly, dark clouds ferried closer to the island. It had stormed the night before, but perhaps the skies weren’t through with the nightly rain.

In that moment, Eva tasted freedom. She was on top of the world. And she was rotten, for enjoying it alone. Javier was prisoner and she was free. Four stone walls were his everyday companions, while she could enjoy the paradise that was Tierra’e Sol, even though they had both caused Celeste’s near death in Rahmagut’s tomb.

The inside of her right forearm itched. Eva raked her fingernails along the rash. The skin was red and tender where yesterday it had not been. She ought to leave it alone and let it heal, but part of her believed she deserved it. For her inaction. For having this perfect life, mostly out of luck, and avoiding broaching the topic of Javier’s release with her father, while Celeste was still recovering.

Eva had idled long enough. She was ready to open her heart to her father, as she had promised she would. It was time she sought justice for Javier.

Eva met with Don Samón as he emerged from a path leading to the surrounding jungle. His gloved hands carried a heavy rock. Likely extracted near the tomb’s entrance, the slab was carved with a depiction of a solar eclipse. Don Samón smiled upon Eva’s approach, and together they walked toward his outdoor workshop.

“Is that a solar eclipse?” Eva asked conversationally.

“Oh, yes, the tomb is filled with them.”

“I’ve always wondered why that’s his symbol,” Eva said.

Don Samón looked delighted to be the one to teach her. He said, “Well, some folklorists say the god of the Void performed his darkest deeds under the veil of an eclipse. When the moon completely blocked the sun, he felt he was shielded from Ches’s scornful eye. You can only imagine what darkness Rahmagut had been dabbling in, to want to hide.”

The back of Eva’s neck pinched, as if bitten by a mosquito. She massaged the spot, feeling indignant. “If he was so concerned about Ches’s opinions, couldn’t he just do his work at night?”

Don Samón offered her a warm smile. Eva liked seeing it. “Even at night, the sun still shines elsewhere. Physicists, voyagers, and cartographers have confirmed it. It just so happens at night, we are merely facing away from the sun.”

Eva nodded. “An eclipse would block the sun’s rays completely.”

“And Ches’s power, if such a thing exists.” As if struck by the thought, he added, “I was sent a missive by an astronomer in Segolita. He believes there will be another eclipse. You might be able to see it with your own eyes.”

It sounded fascinating. “I would love that.” She motioned at the slab, chuckling. “So what are you doing with that? Preparing for it?”

He scratched his beard. “No. I’m keeping myself busy. I’m trying not to think about that boy in the infirmary, Juan Pablo. The one who died from the tiniebla attack.”

Eva had heard. She’d consoled Maior, who had succumbed to tears after her shift with Dr. Baltasar. The presence of tinieblas made Eva equally uncomfortable. “I’m surprised a tiniebla made it to Isla Bendita. Does that mean they could come here, too?”

Don Samón sighed. “I’m sending Dr. Baltasar to set up wards on all the islands. This one is already protected by the chapel and by my soldiers. We just have to remind folk not to go deep into the woods. I know you’ve been tinkering with new geomancia reagents, but I don’t want you straying far either.”

What would he say if he knew Eva had had a personal encounter with a tiniebla nest? Would he be impressed? “If there’s a way to hunt them, I could probably do it. I can help,” she said.

He shook his head. “Please, Eva, I need peace of mind, especially this week. I have some lingering anxieties about Enrique.”

“You must meet with him?”

“I cannot send his daughter without even bothering to escort her. In fact, it has been discourteous not to offer him passage to the island this whole time.”

Eva frowned. She didn’t need an explanation. Having the caudillo and his battalion on the island, where they easily outnumbered Don Samón and his soldiers, filled her with unease.

“We can only be glad for the sea,” she said.

“Indeed. But I will not let Enrique take me for a coward. I will meet with him.”

Eva followed him along the sandy path, her ankles brushing the palm trees felled by a storm just the night before. Violent rainfalls were expected in the islands. As if answering her, the skies thundered.

“Is there history between you?” she asked.

Don Samón’s eyes creased in a small smile. “Yes, but of the good kind, I suppose. We campaigned together when we were your age. More than once, we saved each other’s lives.”

Excitement swirled within her as she imagined what it must have been like, when more valcos still roamed the continent. Before the war had decimated their numbers and when geomancia was still practiced without shame, reservation, or scorn from Penitents.

A fat drop of rain landed on Eva’s nose. She wriggled it away but was rewarded with a half dozen more.

They scurried to the workshop as rain showered the grounds. Eva exchanged a glance with her father. They were trapped together.

Don Samón deposited the slab on a worktable, slightly out of the rain’s reach. They stood under the awning’s shade, tucked beside a red brick turret housing his smithy. Other pieces of the tomb were arranged like a collection. There were slabs with antique writings and hieroglyphs of valcos, nozariels, and the extinct yares. A cracked skull and rusted swords. Pieces of clay decanters and broken stalactites that Don Samón’s men had dug up from the collapse. This extraction from the tomb was part of his obsession with Rahmagut and his suspicion that the Void god was no longer sealed within its depths. He cataloged his findings quietly, without Eva’s input, as she avoided broaching the subject.

“You have good memories of the caudillo?” Eva inquired to fill the silence.

Don Samón let out a chuckle that could be confused for a scoff. “You could say that. He certainly has a reputation. Some people meet Enrique and incorrectly take him for a cold man, but he has strong opinions and passions. He followed my cause not just because Doña Feleva expected it of him. He was also hungry for legacy.”

“And were you?”

He shot her a long, shrewd look dampened by his smile. “I expected some kind of recognition for all the trouble I went through,” he said, acquiescent. “But only because I knew I risked losing everything. My family’s fortune—I pillaged the coffers to pay for the cause. Your inheritance . . . it’s nearly all gone now.”

Eva looked down, in case he caught the blush in her cheeks.

“My life was fractured. My feelings were not spared. People I thought I could trust turned on me. I lost a best friend, and the love of my life.”

Eva didn’t fail to notice his breath hitching. Her own chest constricted, bracing her for the overdue conversation.

He pointed at a nearby lopsided palm tree pelted by the rain. One of its branches had been snapped in half by last night’s storm. He said, “After the papers were signed and Segol agreed to permanently withdraw, I was like that tree. There was barely anything left of me. And yet the work was not done. I had to take the position of chancellor immediately after, to make sure our young government didn’t fall to Segol’s lingering influences still encroaching on our new borders. They tried to blockade us, and they tried to plant spies. There was so much internal bickering between the major families of Fedria and Venazia—infighting between those who believed governing should be an inherited family affair and those, like me, who’d had enough of kings and monarchs. So many debates and disagreements about our stance as freed nations. Families like the Serranos who were not happy to lose the economic advantage of the institutionalized slavery of nozariels.”

Eva nodded gravely. She was glad she had left the Serranos behind.

“I don’t tell you this to admonish you, Eva. I just want you to understand that I worked myself to the bone, until we rewrote the constitution and the first president was elected. Enrique and I do not control the way we were lionized. We didn’t seek fame. It was just a natural consequence of our very visible contributions to these nations. And now, I’m just tired . . . and ashamed I never reached out to you.”

She understood—she could sympathize. But that didn’t stop the bitterness from clawing up her throat. The part of her that refused to forget how miserable it was to spend her life unwanted, when all along she had a place where she could belong. Her heart was still broken from pretending to be someone she was not. She had grown up with the Serranos’ privilege, but that didn’t make her ache hurt any less.

“I wish you had come for me. I really do,” she said.

Don Samón startled. For a moment, in the brightening of his carmine eyes, Eva thought she saw an unwillingness to apologize.

“I admit that after I married Maria Elena I couldn’t bring you into my life anymore. Doing so would have been improper. I married her soon after the war ended—it was a political move, so that the society of Segolita would be more willing to accept a valco as their leader. And despite my failure at having a successful marriage with her, I really did try at first.” He glanced down, wounded. “But I guess the heart doesn’t care for politics, does it? She could tell mine belonged to someone else.”

It was Eva’s turn to glance away.

“Even if I had come for you, Eva, Doña Antonia would have stood in the way.”

“She made everyone believe you had bewitched my mother. That you put a baby in her without her consent.”

A flash of anger overtook his face, but it was gone in an instant. “And you believed it?”

“When spun the right way, the story is credible,” Eva said with a cocked brow, aware of the lack of compassion in her answer. “For as long as I knew my mother, she lived with melancholy.” The memories angered her. She felt cheated of a childhood with a happy mother and father. “The way I saw her, it made sense to believe that it was because you put a dark spell on her.”

Don Samón squared up, antlers and shoulders facing her evenly. “I abhor the implications.”

She knew she was being a disrespectful creature. But with everything she’d been through, she allowed herself to impart some of that pain to someone else. “I wouldn’t be telling you this if I believed it anymore.”

Surprise returned to his eyes.

The raindrops filled the silence, growing louder as they hit the puddles on an island already saturated by yesterday’s rainfall. Eva’s heartbeats were riotous. “Obviously, I didn’t know her before you,” she said. “But when I did know her, she was smart, and loving, and there was clarity in her eyes. She was only befuddled in the stories the gossipers made up about her. She raised me as best as she could, despite my grandmother’s disapproval.” The corners of her eyes stung. “Can you tell me how someone can be so loving, yet so sad?”

“We are complicated creatures.”

Eva squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “No. She was trapped. She was suffocated. I know that must be it because I also lived in that cage. But unlike me, she had daughters anchoring her to Galeno. I’m sure she couldn’t just leave, like I did.” This was a conclusion Eva had arrived at in her days in Tierra’e Sol, when all she had were empty moments to ruminate on the things she regretted. When she thought back to her mother, her uncle Néstor, and her half sister Pura. Even her grandmother and the aunts and cousins—despite their mistreatment. How she missed them.

Eva didn’t divulge that the only reason she’d had the courage to flee Galeno was because Javier had been there with her, guaranteeing a future with the Águilas. The opportunity for a new life. She would never have undergone such a journey if she’d had children to think about.

Don Samón said, “If I had come back for her—”

“She might still be alive.”

He wiped his face with his hand and turned away, perhaps to shield Eva from the hurt in his eyes.

“I get it: It was a person for a country.” The back of her neck burned as she let the words escape her. She was being awful. And she was going to lose everything if she let her emotions push him away.

“That is unfair.”

Eva swallowed down the sudden desire to hurt. She hugged her arms, fending off the idea of prodding him more, seeing how far she could go. “I know. I’m sorry,” she said, sighing. “But if we’re going to start afresh, have a proper daughter-and-father relationship, we shouldn’t have resentments between us.”

“You resent me?”

“I resent not having you in my life sooner.” She waved at the manse behind the large flowering gardens, with its brightly painted walls and mosaics. It was true she was even jealous of her own little sister, Ludivina.

His cheeks and neck flushed. “I’m sorry I abandoned you and your mother.”

The apology left her feeling empty. She didn’t need him to apologize, not anymore. She just wanted an honest relationship, unlike the twisted love she’d experienced with her maternal family. The Serranos loved her but disliked her, and she hated that.

Eva held his gaze, but this time she was disarmed. She hoped he saw her ache and, hopefully, her desire for more.

“Will you take me as your father?” he asked. “Will you allow me to guide you, to make up for the years my politicking and cowardice robbed us of?”

Eva took a deep breath, softening. “You are not a coward.”

“There are so many things I would do to make it up to you. I will write to the president, or we will go to Segolita, and I will make sure you are written in the books of my family.”

Eva waited, her jaw tightening.

“I will give you my name. You will be recognized as my firstborn.”

The corners of her eyes began to burn. She nodded, fighting to hold herself together.

“You are to be acknowledged as the heir that you are. Everyone wants to give me accolades, to send me gifts and thank me for how I’ve stripped myself into a skeleton of a man. But the war is over. Everyone else is rebuilding. And you and Ludivina are the legacy that matters to me now. I want that.”

He stepped closer, then took her hands in his big, warm pair. She never imagined that taking the reins of her life would lead her to a clashing path with this man. Her father, whom Doña Antonia had slandered until even Eva had believed he was a monster.

There were little habits about him that reminded her of herself. How he held his quill in his right hand and penned extravagant calligraphy just like hers. How his forearms were covered in a quilt of hairs, and Eva’s own forearms were hairy, unlike those of the Serrano brood. How the shape of his antlers angled outward like her stunted pair, unlike Celeste’s and Javier’s forward shapes, confirming they hailed from different valco lineages. Even a few nights ago, while she and Maior whispered secrets to each other under blankets, Maior had told her how she’d noticed that Eva and Don Samón walked with the same gait. Eva couldn’t deny that Don Samón was her father.

“I want to stay with you. I want to be treated as your daughter. I want to act as such. Back home, my education only went as far as what was needed to become some useless, docile wife.”

He laughed, and Eva’s smile broke free.

“But I see Celeste, and she’s been raised like someone who’s meant to succeed the great Feleva Águila,” she added.

He cocked a brow.

“I want Tierra’e Sol to know me as your daughter, and to become an expert at geomancia. I want to use iridio like valcos are meant to.”

At this, something in her stirred awake. Her eyes became hyperaware of everything around her. She knew that if she looked up at the sky, it would take no effort to observe the gulls flying away in the far distances, in great detail. Or to count and catalog the raindrops splashing on a nearby puddle, as useless as that was. Eva knew why, but she hated to admit it to herself.

Don Samón’s gaze flicked to her antlers, which Eva now tried to keep out of view to avoid his seeing how they’d permanently turned black. He said, “Iridio is destructive—”

“Are you going to condemn Reina to her death, then? You know she needs it to live.” Eva wasn’t sure of the words, but she needed to make a case while keeping the attention away from her own cravings for it. “Half of the instruments you have in your workshop—they need some iridio to work properly.”

“They’re not necessary—”

“Do you refuse to use geomancia? You said it yourself: It was part of our culture before Penitents turned it into a bad thing.”

“I don’t denounce geomancia,” Don Samón said. “But I have already told you what would happen if that god returned—if he can even be truly called a god.”

Heat lanced through Eva.

“Rahmagut left a dark legacy. You crave the education of an heir? I will show you what I know of him. After supper, I will run you through the history that’s been archived through generations. He lusted after iridio like you now, but his ending was not a happy one.”

Eva raked the rash on her forearm, indulging in the pain. She had him in the palm of her hand. She knew he longed to become the perfect father, to make up for years of separation and heartache. But how would he react once he discovered the truth? That she was the corrupted one—that Rahmagut wasn’t safely tucked away beneath some godly seal anymore . . .

Don Samón pushed back his ash-gray hair, which was frizzed by the rain. He stared at the arriving night as crickets chirped around them. “This land was nearly destroyed by his ambition. I would never let that happen again.”

Eva followed his gaze toward the blackened jungle. “You would give everything of yourself again to stop that? Let someone else worry.”

“Who, Eva? Who will realign a world without balance?”

“Not you. Your new focus is us. Family, remember?”

He smiled in agreement and opened his arms. Eva only hesitated for a split second before entering his embrace. Her chest warmed. It felt right.

As he held her, Eva wondered if maybe she ought to confess outright. Offer it as her part in this new bond they wanted to cultivate. Something burned up her belly, like the indigestion of a particularly flavorful meal. Eva scratched the rash on her arm again, feeling something within her. She reminded herself that she could admit the truth to her father if she wanted to. She was in control, and her nonadmission was her choice.

But first, she wanted time to accept what it truly meant to share a body with the god of the Void.