Page 38 of Wicked Endeavors

Her future was hers to create.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Bas asked. Flames danced in his dark eyes. Red and orange light painted his brown skin. He felt less like a target or an enemy. He felt attainable, and that was more dangerous than anything else she could have thought. “Your entire demeanor just changed.”

“Stop watching my demeanor,” she deflected. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that you stand like you’re carrying all this weight… and I just saw you put it down.” Bas turned away, facing the ocean. “It was nice. That’s how it should always be.”

It would have been easy to point out that he was the reason she carried anything at all, but she didn’t want to fight. It wasn’t even true: Her parents’ deaths had been the first weight. As quickly as the Seawards had taken her in, she’d never quite shaken that feeling of isolation from losing the people who had first loved her.

For the rest of her life, loving her had been a choice—and most people had chosen not to.

“I did think about you, you know,” Bas continued, so quietly that the waves could have carried his words away. “In every quiet moment, I thought about you. I missed you. I still miss you.”

“I’m right here,” Marisol said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

“You are, and you aren’t.” The smile that crossed Bas’s face was sad. “It’s not the same.”

“No. It’s not.”

Teo chose that moment to return with an armful of dry wood. There was no tension for him to pick up on. Instead, there was only weary defeat. Marisol and Bas hadn’t fought, but it still felt as if they had lost something vital. Maybe accepting that was the only way to move forward. To rebuild.

“One of you needs to help me,” said Teo brightly, “because I will set myself on fire trying.”

“It’s putting wood into a flame. It’s hard to mess up.”

Bas sighed and climbed to his feet. “Marisol, you’d be surprised.”

Teo and Bas traded places. The prince settled onto the log beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. His smile, while Bas’s back was turned, was downright devilish. Marisol knew at once that he’d just wanted to sit down, and the realization made her laugh.

It felt so good to laugh.

When she managed to get herself back under control, it was to find Teo staring at her, his lips parted. There was something in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read, but then he blinked and it was gone. The smile returned, bringing the charming prince with it.

“Once we get back to Cloverdale, I’m going to sleep for an entire day,” he declared, leaning back and staring at the sky as though his rented manor was waiting among the stars. “But, for now, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Marisol watched Bas’s muscles work as he fed wood into the fire, hiding a smile of her own. “Me too.”

WITH A WEEK AND A HALF BEFORE HOUSE CAMBIO held their midsummer festival, Marisol traveled to Domingo with the vials in a bag she kept in her lap.

Gaspar was waiting out the Coronet in a Domingan border city called Alta Lira, which was bisected by a wide river and filled with cathedrals, plazas, and towers. The first and only time she had visited this manor and the urban sprawl that surrounded it, she had thought of it like a captured painting, quiet and picturesque with none of the troubles of everyday life. It had been as beautiful as it was unsettling.

Most of their time and their lessons had been spent in Estrellad, but Alta Lira was closer by horse and carriage. Gaspar had a summer home there, so no one would ask questions, but it made him more available if Marisol needed him.

She needed him badly now.

Technically, she could have entrusted the vials to one of her servants. There was no need for her to make this trip when she could have been planning a way inside House Muerte’s garden, deepening her bonds with Teo, Bas, and Noelia, or even practicing her magic so that she would perform better under the pressure of nearly being caught. But even considering the appearance of Novoa and Baylin—who, Teo had grumpily explained, could not be persuaded to remain in the ballroom—the heist had been wonderfully done. On the carriage ride home from the beach, they had shared a glass of champagne, and Marisol had returned to Wildridge with a smile on her face that cracked when she remembered that she was having fun with the boys she was meant to kill.

She was slipping again. Gaspar would talk some sense into her.

Golden walls caught the sunlight as they approached the house. There was a small cemetery on the grounds, with three rows of off-white gravestones hemmed in by a squat wall that was weatherworn and layered with moss. Cypress and laurel trees circled the area. The rooftop was covered in ceramic tiles, as blue as the ocean, and the rest of the yard was divided into several well-kept gardens protected by marble walls.

Gaspar waited for her on the covered porch, snipping a few loose stems of potted purple fountain grass. He wore a camel-colored jerkin and sepia breeches, his sleeves rolled up to allow his tan skin to get some sun. He wore no hat, but he had the beginning of a beard along his jaw. The smile that crossed his face when she exited the carriage felt like home.

“Don’t tell me you’re done early?” he said, setting down the scissors and removing his gloves.

The carriage pulled away to the stables as Marisol ascended the stairs, bag still in hand. “I brought you a present, but it isn’t that good.”

Gaspar reached for the bag, using it instead to reel her into a hug. Marisol’s arms tightened around him, her eyes closing involuntarily as she inhaled his familiar scent. The world was a terrifying and isolating thing, but not when she was here. Not when she was with the closest thing she had to family—someone whose hatred matched and honed hers.