catches his eyes. There is no sound, but the dice roll onto the table. They vanish. When the prince opens his hand, the dice fall out again, perfect sixes. When Cebrián blinks awake, the prince is no longer there.
Cebrián screams. He pushes me back and expels me from his mind painfully. “What did you do to me?”
I gasp, still in the grip of the memory. No. I won’t believe it. I can’t.
“Get out of my head!” I shout at Cebrián.
The Gray rises all around me, and I sink deeper into the past, trying to recall the boy’s face, but there is only shadow. I close my eyes, concentrate, push past the suffocation and delve deeper, further than I’ve ever gone—into my own past.
The Whispers are setting the capital on fire.
The door opens, and footsteps make their way across the room. There is the hiss of a match igniting, the burn of sulfur, and then his face appears behind smoke.
A young boy.
The one who did the little magic tricks for me. Our secret.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. There’s a bruise on his cheek, a deep cut above his brow.
“What happened to you?” I touch his cut with my finger.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter,” he says, trying to keep his voice strong. “I’ll get you out.”
He takes my hand in his and starts to tug.
I pull back. “Where are we going? What’s happening?”
He takes a deep breath, that familiar divot between his brows. “The Moria are revolting. It’s not safe for you here. Please, Nati. Please, you have to go.”
“I don’t want to go. There’s fire outside. I want to stay here with you.”
“Don’t cry, Nati. You’ll be fine.” He takes out a small key from his pocket.
“No!” I withdraw my hand. “Justice Méndez says I’m not supposed to—”
“You can’t go out there with Robári gloves,” he says.
“I want to stay,” I whimper as he unlocks my gloves. “Don’t make me leave. I’ll help—”
He grips my shoulders. His face becomes blurry until I blink. “You don’t belong here. You never did. You don’t know what my father is like.”
I let him guide me through the dark room with nothing but a candle in his fist and a small blade at his side. He draws back a tapestry, my favorite one of the Pirate Brothers Palacio on their ship. There, a brick is slightly darker than the others, and with the brush of his finger, the bookshelf gives way to a secret hiding place.
A secret room.
I gasp and take a step back.
“Come, Nati. We don’t have much time. Don’t you trust me?” His face is golden with firelight.
I grip his hand because when I am with him, I feel safe.
“I trust you, Cas.”
I brace myself on the windowsill and hold on for balance, because it is as if the floor has dropped from beneath me.
I trust you, Cas.
The phrase repeats, over and over in my head. His name—Castian—on my tongue. Castian as a child. Castian, my friend.
Castian, who saved me that day.
No.
This is wrong. Perverse. This is not my memory. It can’t be. I could never have pushed something like that so far down. It isn’t possible. He’s the Lion’s Fury. Matahermano. He’s a hundred curses I have yet to speak. The vile, hated killer of Dez.
This can’t be true. Something is wrong with my memories.
“You did something,” I say, turning to Cebrián’s ghoulish face. “Fix it.”
The little boy from my memory—it was always supposed to be Dez. It was Dez who found me during the raid. Dez who helped me up on the horse and stole me away from the palace. It was Dez. Only Dez.
I pull at my hair. I never let myself think about that night, because I always knew that thoughts of it would tear through me, rip me apart. The night where thousands burned. The night of my own doing. The night Méndez used the secrets I’d scouted for him, from prisoners’ memories, to expose the Whispers’ camp. The Whispers’ attack against the palace. Countless innocent lives lost. All of it because of me.
But Dez was there outside the palace with Illan, where Castian couldn’t follow.
I press my forehead on the floor. My memory must be warped. It fused them together. Where one memory ended, the next one began.
It must be.
I think of the way Castian looked at me when we were dancing. I shudder hard, sinking against the wall, barely able to stand. And still the thoughts pummel me. The secret study, why it called to