Page 10 of Wicked Endeavors

Her mind drifted back to Ofelia. Her heart gave a pained lurch.

After she washed up, Caya went upstairs to investigate Ruiz’s gifts. The wrapped package was leaning against the wardrobe, so she opened it first. It was a portrait in a round frame, an oil painting of three generations of a brown-skinned family. The painting was old, so she could barely make out their features, but she could tell from the care taken in capturing them that they were each beautiful—or wanted to be remembered as being beautiful. Even the eldest among them, standing in the back of the crowd, was distinguished and elegant with her textured silver hair and barely lined skin.

Curious, Caya set it to the side and went through the wardrobe. None of the gowns she’d received were in her size. She held one up to her chest, where it sagged as if waiting for someone with more ample décolletage to fill it. The shoes were smaller, the skirts longer, and the waistlines pinched. How was she meant to infiltrate anything if her patron hadn’t even bothered to get her measurements?

The final delivery was a corked glass bottle the size of her pinky, with a swirling liquid the color of turquoise inside. It sat innocuously beside her new hair products, as if trying to conceal the fact that it was magic. Ruiz had explained that this potion would give her the power to become someone else, someone new, someone capable of getting close to Bas Arroyo and taking him down. He had promised her that victory, just as he had promised her that he could get Prince Tomás and Bas to attend the next Coronet. He had no reason to lie… yet.

But her hand shook all the same.

Trust, for her, was as delicate and intricate as a spider’s web. It took more time to weave every time it was destroyed, and soon she had tired of trusting at all. Ruiz could poison her here and now; there was no one alive to miss her. But if she didn’t trust that she was at least useful to him for now, then she would never get her revenge.

Caya thought of Bas that day in the city center, his fine clothes and relaxed posture. When she had known him, or thought she had, he had never once looked so soft. At eight years old, Bas had carried the world on his shoulders, if he wasn’t carrying something else, and Caya had been one of the few capable of getting him to smile. It had been a game to her, figuring out the best way to invert his frown and send him back to work with his lashes still wet from laughing so hard he’d teared up. She had spent most of her time with Yoselin, but Yoselin had been both sister and benefactor. She and Bas had been on equal footing, two children whose places in the castle were secured only by the goodwill of the Seawards. She’d felt at ease with him from their first conversation.

It was only now that she realized he had never been at ease with her. Not really. Maybe their entire friendship was the invention of a desperate, lonely girl.

Her wrath hardened her resolve. She downed the potion in one gulp.

Pain lit her blood, making her gasp. Her head snapped back. Her vision swam. Even after she pressed her eyes shut, lights still danced across the backs of her eyelids. By the time she could breathe again, Caya had accepted her long overdue death.

And just as with every time before, she survived instead.

The bottle rolled along the floor beside her. She grabbed it with shaky fingers, setting it back on the nightstand. Her body felt warm, but it was a bearable warmth; something new had settled within her, and her soul had accepted it as part of her essence.

Eventually, the room stopped spinning, and her legs no longer felt weak. The bed beckoned, tempting her to regain her strength. Ruiz was likely waiting, but if he had waited this long, then he could wait a little more. Caya kicked off her shoes and crawled back under the covers.

The salon at Ruiz’s manor was a gallerylike sitting room, with several armchairs sprinkled around a low wooden table and framed portraits on the walls. The maid who brought Caya inside left a silver tray of tea, sugar, and honey, all surrounding an aquamarine-painted brass teapot. Ruiz was reading in one chair, illuminated by the sun that stretched through the drawn curtains.

“Did you take the potion?” Ruiz asked in lieu of a hello. “You’ll need to practice sooner rather than later.”

Caya waited until he set the book aside to answer: “I took it.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Should I just do anything, or…?”

His answering smile was faint. “Try to look like the people in the portrait I sent you. If you can.”

In anticipation of something like this, Caya had studied the features the family had in common: their high cheekbones, their casual attractiveness. Brown skin with deep red undertones, large eyes that lent them the deceptive innocence of baby animals. When she concentrated, she could feel the power at her fingertips, waiting for her to direct it outward.

Beauty was a weapon that Caya had wielded all her life. She’d been five the first time a man had told her to smile in the marketplace, and she’d been ten the first time she’d understood why he’d thought that was something he was owed. Her personality was a thing to be suffered through, so that she would spend the currency of her beauty on them for a while. Some men didn’t care whether her smile had teeth, as long as it was directed their way.

As a young girl, Caya had found it dehumanizing. Now she would make it her sword.

Carefully, she drew on that hum of magic beneath her skin, unwinding it like yarn to knit her body into something new. At first, nothing happened, as if the strand was too tangled to expand into anything useful. Caya tugged harder, thinking of the people in the portrait and the way their features differed so drastically from hers. Her eyes enlarged, spreading across her face with a curious tickling sensation. She did her breasts next, sculpting them until they were in danger of snapping the strings of her bodice. Her neck followed, elongating until it was an elegant, almost swanlike arch.

Scarlet droplets hit the ground at her feet.

Caya reached up to touch her face. Her new eyes were bleeding.

Before she could decide what to do, her features snapped back to normal, as if she’d stretched her new power too far too fast. Her lungs were tight, her head swimming. She stood still until the sudden nausea passed, swiping at her face until her fingertips were stained crimson.

The entire time, Ruiz watched her silently from his chair.

She blinked the last of the red from her vision. “I—can do better than that.”

“Then do better,” Ruiz said. “Again.”

The magic came easier the second time. Instead of enhancements, Caya focused on reductions. She narrowed her waist and thinned her nose. She lightened her skin by two shades but made her eyes darker—a small rebellion. Dark eyes were not the beauty standard in Domingo, too common to be considered attractive, but this made her feel more like herself. As if she wouldn’t compromise everything for revenge.