but Margo has done it for me. It’s not enough that she already sees me as a danger; she wants to align me with something so monstrous? My hands ball into fists. “You didn’t see what became of Lucia. She was standing. She was lucid. But her eyes held no life. When I made a Hollow—”
“Ren, you don’t have to—”
“I do,” I say. “When I made a Hollow, it emptied the mind of all memories. The body was left alive, but the damage done to the mind was permanent. They fell into a deep sleep. I never saw them again. So no, it’s not the same thing, Margo.”
“But you live with those memories,” Sayida says. “Where did Lucia’s power go after it was taken? What does the king do with it?”
“Forget the ship to Luzou,” Margo says. “I say we go to the palace at first light. Let’s end this. Break in. Kill the king. Kill the Príncipe Dorado. The palace burned once—we can do it again. I’m sure you remember, Renata.”
I think of my room in the palace filling with smoke, watching from the window as the capital burned. Sayida reaches for my knee and squeezes. Everything in my body wants to run away, to scream, to leave this place and never come back. But I made a promise to myself that I would do everything in my power to right the wrongs I committed. I shut my eyes and see the man who threatened Rodrigue. I knew him well once. I knew the palace.
Rodrigue escaped the bowels of that place and got a message to us. He died for it. Celeste died for it. An entire village burned. I remember what the guard said in the boy’s memory.
“Margo is right,” I say, surprising everyone, but especially Margo. She frowns, as if I’m playing a trick on her. “We should go as soon as possible. When I took the memory from the boy, Francis, one of the guards said that no one could know they were there. Why not parade Celeste in front of everyone in Esmeraldas? Why not use the weapon on her?”
“They’re protecting it,” Sayida says. “The Bloodied Prince likes a spectacle. I say they’re waiting for the right time.”
“All the more reason to head them off at the pass,” Margo says.
“We’re outnumbered,” Dez says.
“We’re always outnumbered!” Esteban throws up his hands. “You once charged the Matahermano himself in Riomar with no one behind you.”
“And I lost,” Dez snaps. “We all lost that day. I won’t make that mistake again. The mission was to get the alman stone and discover what was so urgent Celeste was willing to risk exposing herself. Now we know this weapon can detect Moria magics. Destroying this weapon is our first priority, but we have to be smarter than the king and the justice. We won’t get a second chance. Believe me—going back to ángeles is difficult for me, too, but we can’t afford to fail. This is too important. Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” Margo says without hesitation. And the rest of us follow.
Dez’s brow is set with a tense frown. I don’t foresee any one of us sleeping tonight.
“It’s settled, then. We keep making for ángeles at first light.”
For every league we travel, we sink into a different kind of denial.
Denial that we’ve lost the war to King Fernando and his justice. Denial that each and every one of us is going to end up like Lucia. For most of us, the worst the king could do was lock us up and torture our bodies. But that was before. The idea that our very magics are at stake—the core of who we are? It’s unthinkable. And yet there’s no other explanation for the memory I witnessed. Are they out there now using this weapon to find us? Justice Méndez’s face floats in my vision as we move. His sharp cheekbones, his meticulously groomed black hair shot through with streaks of silver, and gray eyes that noticed everything. I have countless blank spots in my memory, but I could never forget him. The man who was both a captor and a father to me.
I fall back behind the group to compose myself. My heart races too quickly, my breath too sharp. Dez is far up ahead of me, but he hasn’t spoken a full sentence since last night anyway. He still strides with the confidence of a general. Sometimes when I see him, his build, his posture, the way he walks, from