The Sun and The Void E-Book

Gabriela Romero Lacruz

• Herausgeber: Daphne Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 841

Beschreibung

#1 Sunday Times Bestseller Enter a lush world inspired by the history and mythology of South America, where twisted family politics deceive, dark magics thrive, and fantastical creatures roam. Reina is desperate. Stuck on the edges of society, Reina's only hope lies in an invitation from a grandmother she's never met. But the journey to her is dangerous, and prayer can't always avert disaster. Attacked by creatures that stalk the mountains, Reina is on the verge of death until her grandmother, a dark sorceress, intervenes. Now dependent on the Doña's magic for her life, Reina will do anything to earn―and keep―her favor. Even the bidding of an ancient god who whispers to her at night. Eva Kesaré is unwanted. Illegitimate and of mixed heritage, Eva is her family's shame. She tries to be the perfect daughter, but Eva is hiding a secret: magic calls to her. Eva knows she should fight the temptation. Magic is the sign of the dark god, and using it is punishable by death. Yet it's hard to ignore power when it has always been denied you. Eva is walking a dangerous path, one that gets stranger every day. And in the end, she'll become something she never imagined.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Timeline

A Note on Names

Part One

1: Food for Tinieblas

2: One-Quarter Valco

3: The Curandera

4: The Benevolent Lady

5: Aguila Manor

6: Gods for Worship

7: Rahmagut’s Legend

8: Tigra Mariposa

9: Mineral Veins Underfoot

10: Sadul Fuerte

11: The Last Smile

12: The Archbishop’s Inquisition

13: When the Demon Is You

14: Damas del Vacio

Part Two

15: Rahmagut’s Servants

16: The Eighth Dama

17: A Hidden Constellation

18: A Convent or a Prince

19: To Plot with a Valco

20: The Caudillo’s Loyal Servant

21: The Duvianos Heir

22: A Contract of Iridio

23: The Fair Demon

24: The Whistling Crossroads

25: Fleeing with the Red Sea

26: The Galio Healer

27: Heart of Iridio

28: The Fallen Star

29: The Plume

30: Ambitions Converge

31: Ches’s Blade

32: The Dreaming Lady

33: Tinieblas

34: The Liberator

35: Tierra’e Sol Amapolas

36: The True Legend

37: Love of Friendship

38: Master of Tinieblas

39: The Sacrifice

40: Hand to Hand

41: The Choice of Family

42: Two Warring Gods

43: A New Valco

44: The Sun Comes Out

Geomancia

Glossary of Terms

Acknowledgments

About the author

LEAVE US A REVIEW

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First published in the UK in 2023 by Daphne Press

www.daphnepress.com

Copyright © 2023 by Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Map design by Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Illustrations by 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: 978-1-83784-008-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-83784-009-0

Waterstones Exclusive ISBN: 978-1-83784-029-8

Broken Binding Exclusive ISBN: 978-1-83784-037-3

Australian Trade ISBN: 978-1-83784-028-1

1

Para Lisbeth y Pedro

Timeline

THE KING’S DISCOVERY (KD)

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

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

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

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

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

368 KD: 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

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, 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 Lucía Serrano Montilla

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

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

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

Food for Tinieblas

There were many warnings about the Páramo Mountains, tales of ghosts and shadows now bound to the land after their tragic demise. Yet no one had warned Reina about the cold. How the air filtered through the inadequate layers of her vest and jacket. How every breath she took was a sliver of sustenance, so thin that each gulp left her starving. They’d never told her crossing the Páramo would feel like a journey without end.

The mountains rose ahead of her with their sugar-powdered peaks showered in the violet hues of the arriving dusk. And they opened up behind her like boundless rolling hills blanketed by cold-burned shrubberies and the jutting frailejón trees, which stood alone on a territory perhaps too cold or elevated to be hospitable to anything else.

An icy wind buffeted her forward. Reina fell to her knees like a scared child, her scabs splitting and streaking red on the jagged rock beneath her, but her prehensile tail looped around the rock, reassuring her with balance. When she gathered the courage to continue her climb, she glimpsed the gray fogginess of smoke far ahead, and it filled her with hope. A fire meant a hearth, which meant civilization wasn’t too far off.

The way forward was treacherous, but so was the way back. One more day on foot, and Reina was sure she would reach the lower valleys. Images of an inn’s warm bed kept her company. She entertained herself with dreams of reaching the farmsteads bordering Sadul Fuerte, when she finally arrived in the city and could share the reason for her journey with the first stranger who asked. She imagined pulling out the invitation marked by the mauve wax seal of the Duvianos family, the elegant loops of Doña Ursulina Duvianos’s cursive beckoning Reina to come meet a grandmother estranged by Reina’s father’s broken heart. From her breast pocket she would produce a golden badge proving the missive’s legitimacy, which had been delivered along with the letter.

The engraved medallion was a metal translation of the Duvianos banner: an orange flower crowned by a red sun rising over a mauve sky. Reina recognized the crest, for she had seen it on jackets and correspondence her father owned from his time as a revolutionary, before he had renounced his old life. Juan Vicente Duvianos had never spoken much of his mother, and when he had, it had been with the rancor and disappointment of a schism. Even after he’d died, Reina had discarded the possibility of a relationship with her grandmother. But after reading the words inviting her to the faraway Águila Manor, where Doña Ursulina was employed, Reina couldn’t be sure who had disowned whom.

When the cold ached her bones and the mountain rebelled against her, Reina clutched her objective and reminded herself why she was fleeing to Sadul Fuerte to begin with. Behind her, in Segolita, she was nothing more than a jobless nozariel living on the charity of humans. The laws enslaving nozariels to humans had changed, but not the attitudes. The streets of Segolita had been her home—all crooked townhomes of peeling baroque façades and roads muddied from shit and the latest rainfall—and her hell. Reina was of age, too old for the family for whom she had worked as a criada and accidentally caught the eye of the oldest son, and too undesirable to be welcomed by any other human family or employer. The invitation gave her an opportunity, and hope.

Her path opened up to a crossroads, where a naked, knobby tree sustained two planks with carved directions: Apartaderos, where she had come from, to the north, and Sadul Fuerte to the west. A chill ran through Reina as the air grew cooler and the shadows elongated. No longer was the sky streaked in the stark mauve she imagined had been the inspiration for the Duvianos banner. Dusk spread through the mountains, and with it came a howling wind and faraway yaps that turned her jumpy. “There’s nothing but frailejones and demons in the Páramo,” the inn owner at the foot of the mountain had warned her, shaking his head in disapproval. She would gladly trade the devils of Segolita for the ghosts of the Páramo.

Camping for the night was the last thing she wanted to do, but the path ahead was long and even more treacherous in the dark. Reina broke off course from the well-trodden road and followed a small creek downstream, looking for a burrow or shelter. The creek entered a patch of frailejones, each tree reaching for the sky with its cluster of hairy succulent leaves. Reina followed the stream, plucking the marcescent leaves hanging from the frailejón trunks to build a fire. The night was still. Her huffs of condensing breaths and footsteps crackling the underbrush were all that disturbed an otherwise deathly quiet, which was odd. Just moments ago she had noted the rising cacophony of night: crickets and the croak of amphibians and the occasional hooting bird. The moon was rising, its light creating odd bipedal shapes in the shadows of the trees she passed.

A branch snapped. Reina paused, thinking it must have been the wind. Then a second rustle set the hairs of her back on end. She whirled around. There was nothing but the moonlight and the shadows it created. Fear fell over her. The shadows breathed. Like they were hunting her.

When the silence was shattered by a second snapping twig, she ran.

Guttural snarls erupted behind her, and stomps. With her blood pumping hot in her ears and her heart panicked, Reina breathlessly pelted through the underbrush. Could there be bears in the Páramo, or lions? The sounds were wet, and the hunting creature sounded heavy. She glanced behind her, cursing when it slowed her down, and saw a shadow crowned with horns. She cried and tripped on a protruding root.

Pain lanced through her ankle, but she had no time to nurse it. She pushed herself back to her feet as several pairs of stomps joined the pursuit. The bared trees closed in around her, their marcescent leaves stretching like claws to pull at her clothes. Thorny bushes sliced her calves and ankles. Fog blanketed the mountain. Unable able to see, she stumbled into a gully. She shot another glance at her pursuers as she scrambled up. They carried the shape of people, bipedal, with long, naked limbs coated in the grime of the wild. They had the ears of a bovine and the curved horns of a goat. Moonlight gleamed off small eyes reflecting a single line of intention: the desire to devour. But the worst part of it all—what made Reina realize this would be the brutal, bloody end of her journey—were the grinning teeth. They were blunt, like a human’s, but with too many shoved into the hanging mandible of a monster.

The first one yanked her by the tail. Its clammy touch leeched all the heat from her. The thing tossed her against a bush, thorns impaling her side and scratching her cheeks open.

Reina brandished her knife, which was a rusty, untrustworthy thing she’d brought for skinning game—not for fighting. She screamed as she slashed at her attackers’ limbs to no effect. They regarded her with snarling laughter, the sounds warped as if they originated from her own imagination. As if they had one foot in this world and another in the Void. Tears flooded her eyes and blurred an already black night. They slapped the knife away, their claws ripping her clothes and skin.

Desperate, Reina kicked at one with all her strength, sending it toppling back. She scrambled to all fours and sprang up for another getaway. One jerked her braid, then clutched her tail; another grabbed her by the wrist; and the third reached for her collar and ripped her jacket open.

“Stop!” she cried uselessly, for deep down she knew there would be no stopping them until they had all of her.

She shrieked as one of the creatures dug its teeth into her flesh. One moment its face was close, blank eyes reflecting nothing but instinct, and the next it was pulling out her skin and muscle and sinew as it ripped her forearm open.

White-hot pain surged through her. Reina’s screams reverberated across the mountain. The other monster tore her cotton shirt open. Her grandmother’s badge flew out, and she caught it, by instinct or by a miracle. The thing was heavy in her hand. She smacked the creature gnawing on her forearm with all her strength, imprinting her family’s sigil on its sickly forehead.

A glow spread from the badge upon impact. A bubble of yellow light swallowed Reina and the creatures devouring her, revealing their hairless bodies covered in black welts and boils. The light burst out of the badge like a spring of water. Anywhere it touched, their hideous skin sizzled and smoked, earning their wet, agonized hisses.

The creatures were relentless. Their claws went for her chest as if digging for a treasure within, scraping her ribs, her final barrier. Reina swung their mucous-covered arms away with the lighted badge. She swiped left, then right, forcing the light to repel them. Bloodied and battered, she twisted around to her feet and scrambled away. The monsters remained at the perimeter of the badge’s light, their growls following her. They wanted her flesh, but something about the light deterred them.

The frailejones opened to a clearing showered in moonlight. Reina limped to it, her wounded arm gripping the remains of her ripped shirt and jacket over the bloody opening on her chest. Her other arm waved the badge like a beacon. She wasn’t sure if the monsters still followed.

Swaying deliriously, she stepped on loose mountain terrain, and the stones beneath her gave. She slipped. Her limbs and head crashed against stone and bramble as she rolled down scree. When the fall finally ended, Reina took a desperate gasp of air, then curled into a ball. Her spine and skull were miraculously unbroken. Somehow, she was alive. But every inch of her ached and burned, and maybe, just maybe, she would have been better off dead.

*   *   *

“Is that another one?”

“No—that’s a person.”

Voices echoed in the vast void of Reina’s darkness, stirring her. Grime coated the inside of her throat when she took in a big gulp of crisp Páramo air. The brightness of a cloudy sky blinded her as she turned her head. She was rewarded with a headache. Reina found herself cushioned by a mossy blanket. A beetle scuttled dangerously close to her eyelashes. She sat up, and a sharp pain lanced her arm. There was a bloody, gaping bite on her forearm.

She had nearly been eaten.

Tears flooded the edges of her vision. Reina felt a renewed vigor to live. She moaned a reply to the voices, which approached with several pairs of squelching footsteps. With the effort came a thunderous ache in her chest, which was crusted with blood, her skin reduced to flaps barely hanging on. Trembling, her hand hovered over the injury. Her broken skin burned, but the ache came from within. A blazing pain. Even the simple act of curling into a ball, to shield her soul from squeezing out of her wound, was torturous. She cried again. She would never make it to Sadul Fuerte.

The footsteps reached her. Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and twisted her around for a better look.

A “No!” blurted out of her from the pain, but she hadn’t the strength to fight them off.

“This one’s basically dead,” a man said.

“But she lives,” the second voice said. This one belonged to a woman who crouched close. Her leather gloves gently wiped the grime from Reina’s cheeks, and she shushed Reina’s sobs.

A pair of blue eyes peered down at her, brilliant, like the sunny skies in Segolita when not a single cloud marred the sky. The woman had clear pale skin and a sharp nose. Blunt black bangs covered her forehead, and the rest of her silky hair was pulled up into a high ponytail. From the crown of her head curled a short pair of antlers, smooth, the color of alabaster.

The young woman was valco.

Reina couldn’t believe it…to be able to see one in the flesh, even if right before her death.

The woman’s hand hovered over Reina’s torn chest without touching the wound. “You were attacked by tinieblas. But you lived—how?”

“I would hardly call that living,” the man behind her said, covering his nose with his jacketed forearm. He was crowned with a pair of antlers, too, but his were taller and better developed, with sharp edges surely capable of being made a weapon to impale. His hair was as silvery as the clouded sky. Boiled leather armor peeked out from underneath his ruana—a black shawl-like covering, triangular in shape, which covered him from neck to waist.

“The wretch is nozariel,” he added, noting her tail with a grimace. A typical reaction from humans when they realized her parents hadn’t cut it off after birth to conform. Perhaps valcos were also in agreement.

The pair had other companions lingering behind, awaiting orders or standing as sentinels.

“The rot is going to get to her one way or another. Leave the creature be,” he said.

Reina reached for the woman’s hand. She gripped it without permission and begged, “Help, please.”

“Unhand her!”

“Oh, hush, Javier,” the young woman said. She couldn’t be older than Reina, but she was beautiful, in the regal sort of way Reina imagined the princesses of the Segolean Empire were raised to be. She was wearing a woolen ruana like Javier, woven in blue and white with fringes decorating the bottom. She took it off and draped Reina in her warmth, and her scent. “Don’t you care to know how she survived the tinieblas? They went for her heart.”

“Not particularly. We banished them. Our work here is done.”

Panic bubbled in Reina’s belly. She knew what the man’s look meant. She’d been a recipient of it time and time again in Segolita—had seen it directed at the starved and wounded nozariels on the streets. They were going to leave her to die because of the part of her that wasn’t human.

Her heart palpitated uselessly. The spasms shot up her chest again, leaving her without the words to beg for mercy. Tears streaked her cheeks as she lifted the engraved badge with her bitten hand. The trinket was half-coated in the red crust of her blood, but the faint light emitting from it was unmissable. Warm magic pulsed from within the metal.

The woman was even more beautiful when her eyes and mouth rounded inquisitively. She took the badge from Reina, despite the dried blood. “It’s the crest of Duvianos,” she said, rising to her feet and taking the badge with her to show it to her companions.

“No—please,” Reina begged, desperate not to be abandoned. Her chest flared again, punishing her. She moaned and twisted in agony like an earthworm under the sun.

“Javier, you must heal her!” The woman’s words were faint and far away. “Use healing galio.”

Reina couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. She knew she was slipping away.

“Do I look like a nurse to you?”

In some ways, Reina was grateful for it.

“Please, act like you have a droplet of human blood in you for once in your life. I command it.”

She had failed in her journey, right as she was reaching Sadul Fuerte. If anything, she was a fool for thinking she could escape her fate at all.

“Please, Celeste, pay no heed to her baubles. The wretch is a thieving nozariel. How else would she get her hands on something like this?”

Reina’s trembling fingers reached into the torn jacket and produced the letter. She had the strength for a few last words. And if this was going to be the end, then she might as well say them. “I am no thief. I’m here to meet my grandmother, Ursulina Duvianos.”

*   *   *

The impact of her head against a hard surface yanked Reina back to reality. It flared every nerve of pain like jabbing knives. She had been thrown into a shadowed room, where the scent of dust and manure pervaded the stagnant air. At least it was warmer than it had been, and the bedding was softer than the mountain ground. Voices approached and someone entered.

Reina bit down the ache to sit up and take stock of her surroundings. The dormitory was small, with plain walls and a wooden rosary nailed to the wall opposite her. The young valco woman named Celeste stood by the doorway. She fidgeted with Reina’s badge, which was the only source of light as dusk settled over the world outside.

As if she’d been waiting for Reina to wake, Celeste said, “Stay here, and don’t go anywhere else.”

“I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.” Her heart pounded in a mad race to outrun the pain. A contest it couldn’t win. “Please return my badge.”

“If you are who you say you are, then I must take it with me.” Celeste didn’t give Reina a chance for rebuttal, and Reina would have howled at her for leaving the room with her badge were she not so weak.

She wished sleep would claim her a second time. Was she going to die? The memory of the shadowed devils with the grinning, blunt teeth returned the moment her eyes closed. So she forced herself to stare at the ceiling instead.

Soon, the hum of a hushed argument filled the hall outside the room. The argument ended the moment the newcomers reached the doorway. Celeste brought reinforcements: a middle-aged woman who commanded Reina’s complete attention as she entered the room. The woman wore a billowing long-sleeved blue dress with fine golden embroidery. She had bobbed black hair, pale skin, and a strong resemblance to Celeste. Her mother, a human lacking the valco antlers.

She approached Reina’s bedside, cautiously, and sat on the stool positioned next to it. Another woman also entered, heralded by the clicking footsteps of heeled black boots on the stone floor. “Doña Laurel?” she said. “What is the meaning of this?”

The second woman was the tallest in the room. Her umber skin was lustrous and free of marks, and her black hair was braided in a circle behind her head. She wore black pants, and her high-necked jacket was partitioned into red silk sleeves and a black silk bodice embroidered with golden laurels down the middle.

“Doña Ursulina,” Doña Laurel said by way of welcoming her to the room. “That is precisely what I’m trying to figure out.”

Stunned, Reina looked to the taller woman, her heart racing again. Suddenly everything about her features became familiar. The high cheekbones; the fullness of her lips. Yet there were other things Reina never saw in herself: the confidence and commanding presence. The opulence of her clothes.

“She was a victim of tinieblas. We found her on our way down from the Páramo,” Celeste said.

“There are tinieblas on my lands?” Doña Laurel raised her voice, accusation dripping off her words. “You found her?”

“Yes, mami.”

“I’ve told you time and time again that I do not want to see you hunting tinieblas,” Doña Laurel said, disappointment and concern simmering beneath the surface. The words took Reina back to that moment with those creatures, reminding her of the determined hunger in their eyes, how their blunt teeth tore chunks off her skin. Every mother should be concerned.

“It was Javier’s idea,” Celeste added, quick like a white lie.

Doña Laurel pursed her lips, her attention drawn to Reina, who was finding it hard to restrain herself from squirming in pain in front of these women. Cautiously, the woman lifted the covers shielding Reina’s chest for a peek at the wound. A metallic stink filled the room.

“The tinieblas’ rot,” Doña Ursulina said.

Doña Laurel clicked her tongue, but her façade was unbothered. She reached out and wiped the sticky bangs away from Reina’s temple, her pity clear in her eyes. “You survived the tinieblas? With your heart intact?” Then she turned to Doña Ursulina and asked, “How is that possible?”

“My badge,” Reina croaked.

Celeste presented Doña Ursulina with the trinket, then the letter. The taller woman’s eyes doubled in size, then her face contorted into a scowl as she recognized the medallion. She hesitated before accepting the letter with fingers bedazzled in fat gem-encrusted rings.

“What is your name?” she asked without lifting her gaze.

Reina choked on her own spit but answered.

Doña Ursulina unfolded the stained letter, her jaw rippling as she read her own words inviting Reina to these cold lands across the mountains.

Reina met her black gaze as a chill shook her from neck to toes. This was the moment she had dreamed of during those lonely days as she crossed the Llanos and the Páramo. This reunion with her grandmother. How flat and painfully disappointing it had turned out to be.

Doña Laurel watched them. “Do you know this woman?”

“This badge belongs to me, just like it used to belong to my father, and his father before him,” Doña Ursulina said, slowly turning it over in her hands. “I enchanted it with a powerful ward of litio protection and bismuto—enough to allow you to see the tinieblas and ward them away. I knew the journey here would have its dangers—I just didn’t expect to be…so right.” She crossed the distance to Reina and lifted her chin for a better look. “A nozariel like your mother, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing the black spots of pigmentation on the iris that made it look like Reina’s pupils were oblong, almost like a cat’s; the caiman-like scutes over the bridge of her nose; the long, pointed tips of her ears. The marks of her nozariel breed, indiscernible from far away but never failing to earn her a scowl or a grimace from most humans. “You actually came.”

“Explain yourself, Doña Ursulina,” Doña Laurel commanded.

“I sent the badge to Segolita along with this letter, to my granddaughter.”

Doña Laurel’s mouth hung open. “As in, Juan Vicente’s daughter? He has a daughter?”

The way they said his name, with the familiarity hinting of a past Reina wasn’t privy to, reignited the agony in her chest. She chewed the insides of her cheeks, tasting her own blood, and forced the words out despite the pain. “I came to meet you.” She tried sitting up again, only to collapse with a moan. A violent spasm shook her, made her want to scream.

“She needs a doctor,” Celeste blurted out from her spot by the doorway.

“The tinieblas hungered for her heart, and they have tainted it. This is dark magic, and it will not be cured by a mere doctor, if at all,” Doña Ursulina said.

It was a blow, renewing Reina’s fears. She let out a shuddery breath. With an angry hiss and the last of her strength, she said, “I came from Segolita—I traveled this far—to be your family. Not to die!”

And the witch who shared her blood smiled.

“Then it must be fated that you live, child, for if there is one person capable of salving a tiniebla’s rot, it will be me.”

2

One-Quarter Valco

There wasn’t a single instance when Eva enjoyed Don Alberto’s company. Their two-decade age difference was too large; their interests too incompatible. And now that she was in his office, enduring his long-winded speech about his profession, she regretted her plan of pretending to visit him at all.

Don Alberto was the keeper of names of Galeno, a dull bureaucratic appointment he tended to with much earnestness and the only thing he had a passion for, really. Presently, it was this proximity to Eva’s official family records that interested her. Nothing else.

Eva tugged on the lace of her dress, feeling sweat roll down her back from the lack of air circulating the stuffy office. Cluttered desks and loaded bookshelves monopolized what little space there was. The only natural light came from the two small windows positioned near the ceiling. Even after so brief a visit, Eva already felt suffocated and longed to leave. Her smile was fake as she said, “I just wanted to see what you have for my family’s records—the format and details—I’ve never properly seen it myself.”

He watched her closely, as if she were a hummingbird likely to disappear in the blink of an eye. Maybe from someone else, Eva would have appreciated the attention, but from him it was unnerving. “I’m sure it’s a story you’re well acquainted with,” he said.

Eva nodded.

“The Serranos’ book?”

Her smile vanished. The Serranos were her family on her mother’s side. And as Eva didn’t have a family name given to her by her father, or a paternal family for that matter, the question landed bitterly. She was, after all, Eva Kesaré de Galeno. She was of Galeno—of the city. A bastard. And he knew this.

“Yes,” she said.

He didn’t notice her displeasure and simply beckoned her down a row of bookshelves. He located the heavy tome with the names, likenesses, and recorded histories of every Serrano born in Galeno. The tome was heavy and free of dust as he pulled it out from the most accessible and centralized location on the shelf. The record book saw much use, as the Serranos were a large lot and were the descendants of Don Mateo Serrano, the governor. With his wife, Doña Antonia, he’d had enough children for every finger on Eva’s hand, and those children had had almost as many offspring. The women were shipped off to families all over Venazia or in Galeno to spread the blood, and the men were given positions in the capitol building. As Eva’s nineteenth birthday drew nearer, she was overdue for her turn. Don Alberto Villarreal was the best consolation prize her grandmother could procure for, in her words, a “fatherless valco girl with an inclination to madness.”

Don Alberto stood closely behind Eva as she leafed to the most contemporary records, where her mother’s name was inscribed. His proximity incensed her, as did his breath, which often had an insidious scent of onion from all the carne mechada his mother overfed him.

One of the few good things to come out of their courting was that she could get a glimpse of the government records on her father. She wanted—no, needed—to know who he was. Without that, a piece of herself would always be a mystery.

“It’d be interesting to see the history of your family,” she lied. “I guess the thought of how we’ll be uniting them intrigues me.”

He cheered up at the suggestion and waddled away to search for said ledger. Eva exhaled gratefully and sought her mother’s entry, looking for clues to whatever brought so much grief to her grandmother.

Dulce Concepción Serrano Monteverde, second daughter of Don Mateo Luis Serrano de Monteverde and Doña Antonia Josefa Monteverde de Serrano. Born in the year 326 of the King’s Discovery, on the day of Saint Dulce of the Provincials. Full-blooded human. Married to Don Federico Daniel Jáuregui Rangel. Mother of Pura Maria Jáuregui Serrano. Mother of Eva Kesaré de Galeno. Widowed. Died in the year 357 of the King’s Discovery. Cause of death: litio.

Eva chewed on her lip, annoyed. It wasn’t anything she didn’t know already. The next page revealed her own record, which was rather bare:

Eva Kesaré de Galeno, second daughter of Doña Dulce Concepción Serrano de Jáuregui. Born in the year 348 of the King’s Discovery, on the eve of the Virgin’s rising. Three-quarters human, one-quarter valco.

Her mouth opened in disbelief. That was it. Nothing regarding her father had been logged. She leafed to the next page and only found records of her younger cousins.

Don Alberto returned, lifting a cloud of dust as he dropped his family’s records on the desk. His lacked the gilded spine, the richly dyed leather.

Eva slammed the Serranos’ tome shut before he could glimpse what she had been looking for. The two masculine voices coming from outside the registry office were the sign her time was up, as was her interest in Don Alberto. “Oh, I completely forgot about Néstor,” she said.

Don Alberto watched her with rounded, disappointed eyes.

“We came together—got a ride from my grandmother. But he didn’t want to stay long, and we have errands to run in town.”

Eva navigated out of the labyrinthine shelves with Don Alberto in tow. She swung the door open right as the voices passed the hall. Luck was on her side. It was true, Néstor was looking for her, accompanied by another young man of his same age.

“Oi, Eva!” he called out.

He was lanky, had dark brown skin, and was dressed in a velvety tunic—his fine downtown clothes. They were all the rage in Galeno, yet they were more practical for the Segolean imperialists in their cold fortresses than in this city perched in the center of the Llanos. As Doña Antonia’s son—her youngest, and the baby of the family—Néstor shared Eva’s brown-red eyes.

Don Jerónimo Contador was Néstor’s companion. He was the youngest grandson of the Contador patriarch. He had olive skin prone to turning a radiant shade of brown anytime he offered to help the ranchers working for his father, and his pointed nose made him resemble the Segolean statues of saints erected within the cathedral. His eyes, which Néstor raved much about, were chocolate colored and kind.

Eva made a show of grabbing Néstor by the hand and offered Don Alberto a grateful smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Don Alberto’s enthusiasm to spend time with her almost—almost—clenched her heart. After decades of being hindered by his introversion, he was desperate for a partner, or so went the gossip in town. Eva knew of him through her grandfather, but she couldn’t fathom ever being excited to spend the rest of her life with someone twice her age, no matter how much she understood his ache for companionship.

Néstor, Don Alberto, and Don Jerónimo exchanged quick and awkward greetings before Néstor turned to her and said, “We’re leaving soon.” Néstor knew Eva’s plan and wouldn’t leave without her. “Jerónimo’s carriage is ready for us and waiting outside.”

Eva opened her embroidered fan and aired her chest dramatically, where the lace concealing her cleavage clung to her from the sweat. “Thank you for the tour, Don Alberto, though I fear I’m not used to the rigors of clerical work. I’m very impressed by what you do,” she said, imitating the tone she knew her female cousins used so freely, acting like they were less than capable, hiding behind the men’s expectations of what they were supposed to do.

Néstor and Don Jerónimo smiled at Eva, seeing right through her façade. Don Alberto ate it up.

“It’s no bother, Señorita Eva,” he said, bringing her hand up to his meaty lips. “I’m just grateful my work interests you and that I get to spend time with you.”

Eva’s smile almost fractured at his honesty. She was rotten—exactly as her grandmother branded her.

Don Jerónimo led the way through the open hallway. The second-story balcony walkway of the capitol building overlooked a courtyard where a team of clerics received lectures on the office’s latest procedures. Pampered hedges brimming with hibiscuses created paths within the large courtyard, allowing private spaces where government dignitaries met for their deals. Ahead of her, Don Jerónimo’s low ponytail swayed with the tickle of a breeze. Eva closed her eyes, breathing in the freedom of leaving Don Alberto’s office behind.

“Did you find the information on your father?” Néstor said softly as he snaked his arm around the bend of her elbow.

Eva’s other hand traveled up to her curly bangs as the wind ruffled them out of place. Her fingers stopped, pressing against the pair of stunted antlers hidden within her rowdy light brown hair. Most everyone pretended Eva didn’t have them, and they could easily do it, as Eva kept her bangs puffy to conceal them. But the physical reminder was always there.

“There was nothing. He’s not even listed under mi mamá,” she replied bitterly.

Instead, the ledgers listed her blood with so much certainty. One-quarter valco. Eva didn’t personally know other valcos. They were a rare species, on the verge of extinction according to her grandparents, with their antlers crowning them, and red irises. Eva’s blood was too diluted for her to have inherited the eye color from her father, but her stunted antlers were her indelible proof that she was unlike her half-sister and every other Serrano of Galeno. No other valcos lived in Galeno presently. Her father must have been here at least once. But this idea proved to be yet another dead end.

Néstor watched her curiously as they descended the steps to the ground floor. Before he could ask what was on her mind, Doña Antonia emerged from an adjacent hall. Eva’s colossal grandmother strolled alongside the archbishop. Doña Antonia wore a layered dark blue dress that could just as easily be confused for black, including the hat and flaps that covered the back of her neck and braided hair. The blue complemented her umber skin tone, and the shade of plum on her lips was modestly chosen, not much darker than her normal colour.

The footsteps of Eva’s entourage piqued the archbishop’s interest. “Doña Antonia, I didn’t know you came with company,” he announced with good humor as they intersected in the hallway, the melody of a nearby troupial flitting with the breeze.

“My dear Néstor is finally considering a position in politics,” Doña Antonia announced with a raised eyebrow, prompting Néstor to do nothing but agree.

“A family of politicians. I wouldn’t expect anything less,” the archbishop said, then turned to Eva with thinly veiled distaste.

Doña Antonia didn’t miss the cue, so she said, “And Eva Kesaré came because she was meeting with Don Alberto.”

Eva said, “We’re courting. But Néstor and I are now leaving.”

Indeed, Néstor and Don Jerónimo led the walk to the stables, but they practically left her behind to be absorbed into the archbishop’s and Doña Antonia’s stroll. The traitors. The last thing Eva wanted was to be caught in conversation with the holy man. Almost as if in reaction to this very thought, the archbishop became very interested in her. He regarded her with his cloying smile and said, “I have noticed you making yourself scarce after Mass, Señorita Eva.”

Eva cleared her throat, counting the steps until the archway to the stables, where a team of workers had set up a scaffolding to repair the red clay tiles of the roof. Why did they have to walk in the same direction?

“Eva Kesaré is one of my quiet ones.” Doña Antonia rescued her, likely because every thought and judgment on her children and grandchildren was only a reflection on her as a matriarch. “She makes herself scarce in most social outings.”

Heat bloomed in Eva’s cheeks, but she kept her gaze fixed on the stables. In truth, Eva would avoid going to the cathedral if she had a choice—which, of course, she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed the bitter nausea crawling up her throat anytime she went to Mass. When she was inside the confining walls of the cathedral, a heaviness always weighed on her, suffocating her. A stifling multiplied by a congregation of people all covered from head to toe in their best attire. She was drowned by a desire to flee the cathedral’s wooden doors and never return, because she feared the Virgin saw the truth in her. She saw the icons of saints standing like sentinels on either side of the entrance and altar and couldn’t help but feel their judging eyes seeing what she was.

“In my experience, I’ve always found nozariels and valcos to be the most reluctant in accepting the Virgin into their lives, with their dangerous inclinations to believe in that geomancia. But the Virgin is good, and Her answers to this chaotic world are more than enough.” He shot a sideways glance at what hid beneath Eva’s curly bangs. “I hope it’s not because of your inheritance that you’re so eager to leave, Señorita Eva, for you are most welcome in Her house.”

“I don’t touch geomancia.” Eva’s lie came quickly to her lips, rehearsed.

“Is that so?”

“You know how young women are these days: more concerned about their dresses and their gossip than about being devout. But it’ll come soon enough,” Doña Antonia added in Eva’s defense. Though her eyes told a different story—one saying Eva better prepare herself for a swift and much-deserved tongue-lashing as soon as they were back home, for no reason other than sparking doubt in the archbishop. “My family and I are very dedicated to the Church. I adore the work you do.”

So dedicated, in fact, that Eva felt she had to wear someone else’s skin in her own home. She was forced to look away from the rifts of light that banded around trees or antique objects like a heat mirage, to ignore how the air charged with a spark when the rains rolled in. For her family’s sake, she had to constantly convince herself the sorrowful calls in the middle of the night were merely fragments of her nightmares and not something that should be called magic.

Eva lived in a constant ache for those things humans couldn’t see. She survived from morsel to morsel, sneaking attempts at geomancia behind closed doors and seeking answers to her parentage in the city records, even though she knew they would only yield more questions. After all, Doña Antonia kept the identity of Eva’s father a secret but not the nature of how her mother, the gentle Doña Dulce, had come to have her. No, Doña Antonia and the biggest gossipers of Galeno never held back in whispering about the ravaging of Doña Dulce. How her father’s dark magic had coerced false love in the devout Dulce, steering her from the right path and shattering her sanity. Not only robbing her of her dignity but, as Doña Antonia shamelessly put it, planting the seed of a devil in her.

Finally they reached the shade under the scaffolding where the workmen exchanged roof tiles. A honeysuckle vine hugged the stone archway, sweetening the air.

“Your family may need the Church more than any other,” the archbishop said. “It is no secret that valcos struggle with a certain inclination…”

He left the words unsaid, but Eva knew he meant to call valcos monsters, lured to darkness. It was the same opinion nearly every human of Galeno had.

“Only the Virgin can protect you from such thoughts.”

The afternoon was sweltering, but Eva scorched hotter. He thought he was being magnanimous when, in fact, he only made her nauseous.

Doña Antonia had a nervous look about her at the insolent way Eva’s eyes met the archbishop’s. Eva’s jaw rippled in indignation.

“If you fully accept the Virgin, then you won’t have space in your mind for the darkness that inevitably consumes your lot—for you, it is only a matter of time. And you have a lot of praying to do, to atone for the actions of the monster who sired you.”

“That makes absolutely no sense!” Eva growled, and the air around her cheeks crackled and sparked. “I am not responsible for what he did.”

With a resounding crack, the scaffolding gave beneath the workers’ combined weights. The wood groaned, rapidly toppling onto itself. Eva watched with wide eyes as the men screamed, throwing themselves to the adjoined balcony to flee the cave-in. A quick thinker—Néstor—yanked Eva and Doña Antonia by their dresses away from the wood and splinters raining over the cobbles. The yard burst with the sounds of the destruction. Eva could taste the detritus in the air.

Once the dust and the exclamations of concern settled, the archbishop and Doña Antonia watched Eva with shocked expressions. Eva, too, stood speechless as her heart thrummed a dissonant tune. She could see in their eyes that they wanted to accuse her of smiting the scaffolding with her anger. As ridiculous as it sounded, Eva wasn’t sure they were entirely wrong.

The rest happened in a blur. Néstor made excuses for her and pulled her to Don Jerónimo’s carriage, where Don Jerónimo also watched her with a gaping mouth. Néstor practically shoved her down on the velvet-cushioned seat and barked at the driver to get a move on, securing their escape. For that, Eva was endlessly grateful.

3

The Curandera

Silence reigned between Eva, Néstor, and Don Jerónimo as the carriage passed Galeno’s plaza, where at its center stood a statue of a man in military uniform riding a galloping horse. People strolled through the cobbled roads, dodging the few carriages and using embroidered umbrellas for shade. The carriage passed houses painted in alabaster, ochre, cerulean, or any other alternative bright enough to reflect the spicy, unforgiving sunlight that was signature to the Llanos.

It was Néstor who shattered the quiet, saying softly, “That was not your fault.”

Eva peeled her eyes from the row of yellow-blooming cassia trees flanking the plaza. Behind them was the cathedral, the tallest structure in the city.

Don Jerónimo raised his eyebrows at him. Their hands were linked over Néstor’s lap, their fingers intertwined.

“You are both mad for thinking so,” Néstor told Eva and Don Jerónimo.

“So it’s a coincidence?” Eva said, her voice breaking. She wasn’t sure she believed it. This wasn’t the first time something inexplicable had happened because of her. This was just the most…catastrophic.

Néstor gave her the straight face parents gave their children when hoping to avoid riling emotions. “Eva, please.”

She ran her hands over her face, wiping the perspiration gathering at her temples. “Whatever happened back there—it only supports their case.”

Néstor looked down at his feet. “You shouldn’t have talked back.”

“For how long must I put up with people saying I have a darkness in me? He said it was my duty to atone for my father!”

“People like to talk, but no one really believes it in their heart. It’s only entertainment.” Néstor shrugged. “Otherwise you’d be worrying about a trial rather than silly gossip.”

Eva grimaced. “Are you trying to console me? That doesn’t make me feel better. What if one day…they do it?”

“You are granddaughter to the governor. No one is going to outright accuse you of dark magic,” Néstor said with a light wave of his free hand.

Don Jerónimo’s gaze traveled up to her bangs. Eva wondered if he saw her like everyone else in Galeno and if he was only civil for Néstor’s sake. “Outside of Galeno there are places where geomancia is seen differently,” he said.

Eva nodded. Like in the southern mountains, the place valcos used to call home before humans had arrived on the continent. The bits of valco history she knew, she had pieced together from what people said—she never had access to any education on the matter. Again, she was struck by the hunger to play with geomancia.

“I don’t want to go home. Take me to Doña Rosa,” Eva blurted out.

Doña Rosa was a bastard of the Contadors’ patriarch, a nozariel half-breed the gentry referred to as the curandera, after she’d gained infamy for spelling back to life the dead avocado tree in the Contadors’ yard, and for curing a Contador baby from the illness of mal de ojo.

“Again? Are you obsessed with making your situation worse?” Néstor said, reaching for her.

Eva withdrew from the touch. Yes, Doña Rosa was an outcast, hidden away in the Contador residence while the people of Galeno formulated horrible narratives about her origins and her openness to geomancia. Eva understood Néstor was afraid Doña Rosa gossip would inevitably embroil her. But she was desperate for a change of pace.

“You have no high ground here,” Eva said, eyeing Néstor’s and Don Jerónimo’s intertwined hands. Néstor and Don Jerónimo’s relationship was a secret everyone knew, yet no one acknowledged, least of all Don Jerónimo’s mother and Doña Antonia, who were both fond of the idea of getting grandchildren out of them. On their clandestine visits to the Contadors’ residence, Eva and Néstor were coconspirators.

Don Jerónimo smirked, and Néstor sighed in defeat.

“Doña Rosa understands me,” Eva added.

“I understand you.”

“No, Néstor, not about this. You don’t have the blood of a monster in your veins.”

They were silent in the carriage: Don Jerónimo pretending to look out the window, while Néstor’s and Eva’s gazes met in conflict. Once upon a time, he would have chided her for speaking of herself that way. But everyone who knew her in Galeno thought this behind closed doors. For once in her life, Eva wanted to stop pretending.

*   *   *

Unlike the Serranos, who lived in a hacienda, the Contadors had a downtown house. Wrought-iron gates shielded a pampered topiary garden and a red bougainvillea that looped around the house’s majestic double doors. The two-story mansion had a façade of white-and-ocher stucco, with window frames and balconies of black-painted iron wrought in filigree designs and curling olive vines, all in a baroque style inherited from Segol. Inside, the house was as stuffy as the capitol building, with polished tiled floors and walls decorated in Pentimiento trinkets—rosaries and icons of the saints and the Virgin.

The main hallway opened to an outdoor kitchen, a courtyard, and another archway leading to a large plot of land, where the infamous avocado tree stood in its center. The yard was big enough to fit a servant house, stables accessible from a different street, and the curandera’s house.

Eva headed to the shanty house on her own. The building was made of red clay, unpainted, and shaded by the canopy of a vast mamoncillo tree. A wicker curtain interwoven with the seeds of moriche palm fruits served as a door.

The scent of tobacco hung heavy in the single-room home. Shadows rose behind baskets, chests of drawers, and a cooking counter populated by herbs and utensils. From the ceiling hung garlic bunches and salted meats. A woman sat across the table, facing the door, her skin the same sun-kissed sandy shade as Don Jerónimo’s. She wore a dress of undyed cotton that wrapped around one shoulder, the other shoulder exposed and showing her nozariel scutes. Her hair was in long braids, abundant and frizzy with curls.

“I’m never getting rid of you, am I?” Doña Rosa said, her voice low, the result of a lifetime being overly friendly to the pipe. She was a beauty around Don Alberto’s age. She had a symmetrical face, plump lips, high cheekbones, and pointed nozariel ears. Her frame was large and well-fed.

“Do you want me not to come back?” Eva ground her teeth at this, stung by the relentless rejections thrown her way.

The woman chuckled. “How can I deny you?”

“I’m not forcing you to see me.”

“You entertain this dull life,” Doña Rosa said.

Eva sat across from her on the rattan chair. The table was covered in a tablecloth embroidered with an eclipsed sun. The iconography belonged to Rahmagut, god of the Void. Doña Rosa revered him for representing the opposition of what was conventional. Like Ches, god of the sun, Rahmagut was one of the few deities who’d survived the arrival of Pentimiento. Only under this roof was Eva free to talk about Ches and Rahmagut, whom Doña Antonia had forbidden from her grandchildren’s lexicon. But Eva didn’t engage in it unless absolutely necessary. Speaking of Rahmagut was an assured way of inviting the Virgin’s scorn or Her abandon.

“I went to the governor’s office today, to see if there were any mentions of my father on my birth records.”

Doña Rosa croaked a laugh at that. “You are naïve for believing you would find anything in the books.”

Eva let her mouth fall open to retort, but she knew the woman was right. “I had to try…”

“Your family will never allow the secret to come out.”

She spoke with so much surety. Eva arched a brow. “Do you know anything?”

“When I was your age and you were this big”—Doña Rosa lifted her palm up to her hip—“your mother, the gentle Doña Dulce, brought you here with a sickness no human doctor could cure. You were vomiting your guts out and shitting them out as well. Don’t you remember?”

Eva smiled graciously but shook her head.

Doña Rosa squinted an eye at her. “The illness has no proper name, and no human physician has treated it. But I’d seen it before, in other little valcos in Fedria.”

Fedria, the sister nation east of Venazia, separated by Río’e Marle and the differences in politics between the Liberator and the caudillos who’d helped him free the land from the Segolean colonists. “You’ve been to Fedria?” Eva said.

“Oh, dear no, I wish. Then my life would have turned out differently. I was born in El Carmín, as my name can tell you. Living close to the border, you see all sorts of folk. I saw with my own eyes a valco or two, during the revolution.” She smiled bitterly at a distant memory.

Eva wondered what life had been like for Doña Rosa, reaching maturity before the Liberator won the war for independence and freed nozariels from slavery. Before the revolution, Venazia and Fedria had been colonies of Segol, and nozariels were bred to serve the human aristocracy, including families like the Serranos. After independence was won and Segol’s influence was ousted, nozariels were sent to Fedria under an agreement between the new Venazian king and the Liberator. Doña Rosa was the only exception Eva knew of, kept in Galeno for being the bastard daughter of the Contador patriarch. Had Doña Rosa been enslaved under the oppression of humans in her youth? Eva swallowed the question, for she hadn’t earned the kind of trust to ask it.

Instead, she reeled Doña Rosa back to finish the tale. “Did my mom say anything, about my father?”

With pursed lips, Doña Rosa shook her head. “I poked and prodded her for a clue of who your father was, but even in her moment of desperation, she wouldn’t confide in me.”

Eva stared down at her wringing hands. Perhaps Dulce had loathed speaking of the monster who’d beguiled her with dark magic, who had forced her to betray her vows to her then husband, father of Eva’s older half-sister, Pura.

Disappointment filled her. Eva swallowed down a sigh.

“Doña Antonia has done a fine job of keeping your father’s name out of everyone’s mouths.” Doña Rosa leaned forward, purring, “Besides, didn’t you call him wicked last I saw you? Why would you want to get to know such a villain?”

Eva scowled, hating the mockery. It made her guard the truth: how she was without a crucial part of her identity. Perhaps she should just drop it and lean on her human side, exactly as her grandmother wanted it.

“So how did you cure me?”

The woman tapped her chin as if in thought. “Well, either one must procure the dance of a virgin, or you can take a tonic of galio.” With a chuckle, she added, “I’m afraid we were short on virgins at the time, so I made you the tonic.”

“Galio,” Eva mouthed, remembering the old rhyme for the major branches of geomancia, which Doña Antonia prohibited Eva from speaking as soon as she learned it:

Bismuto in the sword

Litio for the shield

Galio in the salves

But no matter: to iridio you yield

The prickle Eva often felt in the air stirred, awoken. She rubbed her arms, glancing at the clay icon of Rahmagut sitting cross-legged. It was tucked in one corner of the room, a bowl of black beans and another bowl of midnight-blue powder facing him in offering.

Doña Rosa fished in her drawers for a crystal vial filled with an oily, clear liquid with a fine powder precipitating to the bottom. “Today I mixed a solution of litio. Take it with you, ward your room, just in case. There’s a wicked spark in the air these days. Like something nasty is brewing. Don’t you feel it?”

Eva wanted to scream that she felt this all the time. But maybe she was the wicked thing.

“Do you feel it because you’re half nozariel? The spark?”

“Anyone who doesn’t shut themself off to the spark will feel it. Magic lives around us,” Doña Rosa said plainly, as if Eva was the fool for not believing this already.

“But—the people of Galeno. Someone would have said something.”

“And risk being called a curandera? A witch? Risk reducing your social life to desperate mothers who don’t know how to treat their half-breed children? How many of the proper ladies in your circle are willing to choose this path? You’ve met that wolf dressed as an archbishop, always sniffing for people who are different. The world is changing, and the more Penitent humans there are, the less it’s ‘socially acceptable’ to acknowledge the existence of magic.”