it’s best he doesn’t get too good a look at me. After all, I’m still a Whisper.
The boy starts screaming. “Mamá! Mamá!”
I didn’t realize what I might look like to a child trapped in a house about to collapse—my face and hands covered in soot, my dark eyes rimmed with kohl. Daggers at my hips and black leather gloves reaching for him. I was about his age when I was taken, though the palace guards wore decidedly finer armor.
“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He doesn’t stop screaming. His panic makes him choke and cough even worse until, for a moment, he pauses to gasp for air. And in that pause, I can hear a sharp metallic whistle pierce the sky. Esteban’s signal—the Second Sweep has arrived.
Over the pop of fire, the terror of the boy’s whimpers, and the thunder of my own heart, there’s a rumble of hooves pounding the parched earth.
I pull down my scarf, breathing in short, shallow gulps of air. We need to get out—now. Holding out my hand, I show the child that I want to help.
“Don’t be afraid,” I tell him.
The words don’t mean anything to him. I know that. But I also know that I can’t leave this boy behind to die—and I can’t wait for him to calm down before the Second Sweep finds us.
The gallop of horses is getting closer.
I grab the boy by the wrist. The elders have warned me against using my power unless it’s on people they choose. They don’t trust that I can control my magics. But its side effect is one sure way I know to put him into a painless stupor long enough that I can carry him out to safety.
The boy’s screaming louder, unable to do anything other than call out for his mother. Keeping hold of his wrist with one hand, I bite the tip of my glove and pull, my hand now exposed and clammy. The glove falls to the ground as the cry for a mother who won’t answer pierces my eardrum.
So I do what I must. What I am feared for. Why the Whispers distrust me and why the king’s justice used me.
I steal a memory.
The raised scars whorled on the pads of my fingers heat up, stinging like a match on bare flesh as a bright glow begins to emanate from my fingertips. When I make skin-on-skin contact, my power burns its way through the mind until it finds what it’s looking for. The magics sear fresh scars onto my hands as I grapple with something as slippery and transmutable as a memory. When I was a girl, I screamed and cried every time I used my power.
But now the heat and pain focus me. Entering someone’s mind requires complete control and balance. Once the connection is made, a number of things can go wrong. If I let go too soon, if we’re interrupted, if I steal too many memories, I could leave his mind hollow.
As my power latches on to his most recent memory, I brace for the shock of seeing into the child’s mind.
He can’t sleep. Papá and Mamá sent him to bed, but Francis wants to wait for Aunt Celeste to return from one of her adventures. Then he hears footsteps.
Clang.
The noise comes from the kitchen. Maybe Aunt Celeste is back! Francis pulls off his covers. Cold toes touch the stone-tiled floor. Maybe she’ll keep him company, tell him one of her stories of ancient princesses from the long-gone kingdoms of Memoria and Zahara. Or of the old glowing temples of the magical Moria. Last time she put her finger to her lips and made him promise to never repeat those stories.
He tiptoes to the door and twists the doorknob.
He freezes.
There are strange men in the kitchen. Francis feels his voice creep up, wanting to scream for Mamá and Papá. But a twisting fear in his heart tells him to stay quiet.
There’s a crash. Glass breaking.
Then fire.
Men screaming. One of them catches flame, flailing and running across the room.
He sees Aunt Celeste. Wants to call out to her, but then she turns and does something very strange: While the guards try to put out the rising flames, she takes a glowing stone the size of a crab apple from her pocket and swallows it.
The boy’s scream gathers in his chest as Aunt Celeste falls like a bundle of wheat. When she doesn’t get back up, Francis’s cry finds its way