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Victory and vengeance.
Thiago had returned to Loramendi.
Chiro’s hands fluttered so that she had to steady them against the window ledge. Madrigal saw her sister’s excitement, even as she fought her own rising bile. She had chosen to take Thiago’s departure and absence as a sign—of fate conspiring in her happiness. But if his absence had been a sign, what did his return signify? The sight of his ba
She shivered.
Chiro noticed. “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of him?”
“Not afraid,” Madrigal said. “Only anxious that I gave offense, disappearing like I did.” Her story had been that she’d drunk too much grasswine and, overcome by nerves, had hidden in the cathedral, where she’d fallen asleep. She studied her sister’s expression and asked, “Was he… very angry?”
“No one likes to be rejected, Mad.”
She took that as a yes. “Do you think it’s over now, though? That he’s through with me?”
“One way you could make sure,” said Chiro. She was glib, jesting—surely—but her eyes were bright. “You could die,” she said. “Resurrect ugly. He’d leave you alone then.”
Madrigal should have known then—to take care, at least. But she hadn’t the soul for suspicion. Her trust was her undoing.
59
T HE W ORLD R EMADE
“I can’t save you.”
Brimstone. Madrigal looked up. She was on the floor in the corner of her barren prison cell, and didn’t expect saving. “I know.”
He approached the bars, and she held herself still, chin raised, face blank. Would he spit at her, as others had? He didn’t have to. The simple fact of Brimstone’s disappointment was worse than anything others could hurl at her.
“Have they hurt you?” he asked.
“Only by hurting him.”
Which was worse a torture than she could have believed. Wherever they were keeping Akiva, it was just near enough that she could hear his screams when they crested into full agony. They rose, wavering audible at irregular intervals, so she never knew when the next one was coming, and had lived the past days in a state of sick expectancy.
Brimstone studied her. “You love him.”
She could only nod. She’d held up so well until now, high dignity and a hard veneer, not letting them see how inside she was dissolving, as if her evanescence had already begun. But under Brimstone’s scrutiny, her lower lip began to tremble. She crushed her knuckles against it to still it. He was silent, and once she thought she could trust her voice, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what, child?”
Was he mocking her? His ovine face had always been impossible to read. Kishmish was on his horn, and the creature’s posture mimicked his master’s, the tilt of his head, the hunch of his shoulders. Brimstone asked, “Are you sorry for falling in love?”
“No. Not for that.”
“Then what?”
She didn’t know what he wanted her to say. In the past, he had told her that all he ever wanted was the truth, as plain as she could make it. So what was the truth? What was she sorry for?
“For getting caught,” she said. “And… for making you ashamed.”
“Should I be ashamed?”
She blinked at him. She would never have believed that Brimstone would taunt her. She had thought he just wouldn’t come, that her last sight of him would be on the palace balcony as he awaited her execution along with everyone else.
He said, “Tell me what it is you have done.”
“You know what I’ve done.”
“Tell me.”
It was to be taunting, then. Madrigal bowed to it. She gave him a recitation. “High treason. Consorting with the enemy. Endangering the perpetuity of the chimaera race and everything we’ve fought for for a thousand years—”
He cut her off. “I know your sentence. Tell me in your own words.”
She swallowed, trying to divine what he wanted. Haltingly, she said, “I… I fell in love. I—” She shot him an abashed glance before revealing what she had so far told no one. “It started at the Battle of Bullfinch. The fighting was over. It was after, during the gleaning. I found him dying and I saved him. I didn’t know why; it felt like the only thing. Later… later I thought it was because we were meant for something.” Her voice dropped and her cheeks flamed as she whispered, “To bring peace.”
“Peace,” Brimstone echoed.
How childish it seemed, considering where she was now, to have believed there was some divine intention in their love. And yet, how beautiful it had been. What she had shared with Akiva could not be touched by shame. Madrigal lifted her voice to say, “We dreamed together of the world remade.”
There followed a long silence, Brimstone just looking at her, and if she hadn’t made a game of trying to outstare him as a child she would have been ill-equipped to endure it. Even so, she was burning to blink by the time he finally spoke. “And for that,” he said, “I should be ashamed of you?”
All the cogs of misery within Madrigal froze. It felt as if her blood stopped moving. She didn’t hope… she didn’t dare. What did he mean? Would he say more?
No. He breathed a heavy sigh, and said again, “I can’t save you.”
“I… I know.”
“Yasri sent you these.” He thrust a cloth bundle through the bars, and Madrigal took it. It was warm, fragrant. She unwrapped it and saw the horn-shaped pastries Yasri had been stuffing her with for years in a vain effort to fatten her up. Tears sprang to her eyes.
She laid them gently aside. “I can’t eat,” she said. “But… tell her I did?”
“I will.”
“And… Issa and Twiga.” An ache swelled in her throat. “Tell them…” She had to press her knuckles to her lips again. She was barely holding it together. Why was it so much more difficult in Brimstone’s presence? Before he came in, anger had kept her hard.
Though she had yet to give him a message to relay, he said, “They know, child. They already know. And they aren’t ashamed of you, either.”
Either.
It was as close as he would come, and it was good enough. Madrigal burst into tears. She leaned into the bars, head down, and wept, and she felt his hand settle on her neck, and wept harder.
He stayed with her, and she knew that no one but Brimstone—save the Warlord himself—could have overridden Thiago’s direct order that she have no visitors. He had power, but even he couldn’t overrule her sentence. Her crime was just too grave, her guilt too plain.
After she had cried, she felt at once hollow and… better, as if the salt of all her unshed tears had been poisoning her, and now she was cleansed. She leaned against the bars; Brimstone was hunkered down on the other side. Kishmish started chirping regular little snips that Madrigal knew were a combination boss/beg, so she broke off bits of Yasri’s pastry and fed them to him.
“Prison picnic,” she said, with a weak effort at a smile, which then bit off abruptly.
They both heard it at the same time—a scream of such pure wretchedness that Madrigal had to fold over herself, press her face to her knees and her hands to her ears, pitching herself in darkness, silence, denial. It didn’t work. This fresh scream was already in her skull, and even after it stopped, its echo stayed inside her.
“Who will be first?” she asked Brimstone.
He knew what she meant. “You. With the seraph watching.”