way I did with Jacinta and Hector.
“We have an enemy in common,” I say. “The person who hurt you also took someone from me. I need your help getting a message out so the others know that I will finish what Dez began. If we work together, we can find the weapon before it’s too late.”
Her eyes widen at my words. She shakes her head and grabs my shoulder, glaring at the closed door. The others are busy around the palace and it is well past midday meal. I know we’re alone, but she must be afraid.
“It’s all right,” I assure her. “All I need from you is to know where Castian might keep things hidden—secret—where no one but he would find them.”
She’s flustered, taking my bare hand in hers. She shakes her head.
“I won’t hurt you. I came to say that I can take your painful memory of that day. Of the prince’s cruelty.”
At that her face is overcome with sadness. Her shoulders tremble. A tear runs down her cheek as she guides my fingers to her temples and nods.
“Thank you,” I whisper as my glowing fingertips take the memory she offers.
Davida can never say no when the prince asks for a story.
He’s getting too old for the same tales, already ten, but he loves them, and while the queen mother is in her sickbed, she knows he needs all the cheer he can find.
“Read me the one about the brother pirates.”
“That one again?” She chuckles and settles into the large armchair in front of the fireplace. The first winter winds are beginning to whistle, but at least the queen’s library has a fireplace. “Are you certain you don’t want me to read the one about the Knife of Memory?”
Castian’s cheeks are flushed with cold. His summer-bronzed skin has all but faded as the days grow shorter and darker. “I don’t think I believe in that one anymore. It’s too fanciful. But pirates, pirates are real.”
Davida knows her words are dangerous, but perhaps, if the boy loves stories, then his heart can’t be as wretched and closed-off as his father’s. “How do you know the Knife of Memory isn’t real?”
Castian thinks about it for a bit. He reclines in the chair opposite her, his stockinged feet angled toward the flames. “Because my father says nothing about the Moria is true.”
“Have I ever lied to you?” Davida asks.
“No.”
“Are you afraid of my magics?”
Castian shakes his head. “No, you help me when my father is angry.”
So she starts reading, entertaining the prince with stories to open his mind and his heart. What was done to him was not his fault, and she will use her strength to make him a better man. His face lights up during the Brothers Palacio’s sword fights at the helm of their ship. She holds one of the prince’s toy wooden swords and wields it high above her head. “How could you have betrayed me, brother? The treasure was meant to bring us together!”
“Treasure only tears people apart,” Castian says, finishing the words he knows by heart.
Davida laughs and brushes his tangle of golden curls. “See? You don’t even need me to read these to you. You’ve done quite well on your own.”
“Father says I’m to start military training by week’s end. I won’t have time for stories then,” he says.
The anguish in his voice brings tears to her eyes. She is about to comfort him, to tell him that no matter what he does or where he is the stories will be with him. That she will be thinking of him and wishing that he will keep this heart of his.
But there is a loud smack as the door slams open, and King Fernando strides in, followed by a slender guard riddled with scars on his face.
Davida lets the book fall to the ground as she does her best to kneel before him. “Your Grace. I didn’t expect you.”
“Silence. You’re the reason my son has been crying all over the palace about the start of his training.”
“Father, I—”
The king grabs a vase from the table and throws it against the fireplace. The glass shatters and bounces off the wall. A bit of it nicks Castian’s cheek. The boy wipes the blood with the back of his hand, his mouth open and startled.
“When I say I want silence, I mean it.” Fernando picks up the book at Davida’s feet. Her heart is in her throat as he turns the pages. She knows how this looks. She