Page 48 of Wicked Endeavors

Bas hugged him back, and, for the first time, Marisol felt annoyed by their closeness rather than left out. Sometimes, they made her feel as if she didn’t exist, as if her relationships with each of them would never matter as much as their attachment to each other. It shouldn’t have bothered her as much as it did, especially considering that their love was a key part of her revenge plan. But she wanted that. And she wanted it with—

No. Careful.

Teo had dropped her dagger on his way to Bas’s side, so she recovered it and placed it back inside its holster. This gave her the opportunity to look away from their display of affection, to get her head on straight.

Bas had never answered her question, but he would be on edge now. Worried about what she would do next. Scared of what she would say and to whom. In his final days, that was what she wanted: emotional turmoil.

“We should finish shopping,” she said once she’d flattened her skirts back over her thighs. “Rally or no rally, Noelia won’t forgive us if we come empty-handed.”

MARISOL HAD EXPECTED NOELIA TO HIDE THEM AWAY in one of the rooms, but it seemed even a small dinner party meant playing by different rules. They were in House Muerte’s massive dining room, sitting at a long table. Teo and Bas were on one side, Noelia and Marisol were on the other, and the food that sprawled between them was an impressive array, considering that Noelia had cooked it all herself.

If Marisol had minded doing her shopping for her, the resentment would have disappeared at the first sight of this lavish feast: mutton stew with ground hazelnuts and fine spices; sea bass fillets wrapped in toasted bay leaves; fritters coated with honey and rose water; sliced mountain ham on small pieces of bread, topped with goat cheese and peppers.

“Where is everyone?” Marisol asked, spearing a potato with her fork. “I know you said this would be a small dinner party, but I didn’t realize you meant ‘small’ as in ‘empty.’”

“They’re around. Next week is the play, if you recall, so some of them are at rehearsal. But most are preparing for what comes after that.”

“An encore?” Bas said. He had pried his sea bass free of a bay leaf and was digging into the bone-white skin—a task that, apparently, left him with plenty of time for sarcasm.

“The closing ball,” Noelia said, rolling her eyes. “It’s incredibly boring, and I’d rather skip it.”

Marisol chewed her potato, enjoying the seasoning that Noelia had layered onto it. “Why is it boring? Is it different from the opening ball?”

“It’s more private. While everyone enjoys the dancing and the food, all of the aspiring witches are taken away to receive their coven marks. Haven’t we been to enough balls this season?”

Marisol tried to imagine attending so many social gatherings that they began to seem boring. The Vinyet family probably had a similar problem, and that was why they had withdrawn from Domingan court. All Marisol could think of was how good the food had been at each dance and how wonderful it must have been to be born into such a fairy-tale life.

“Washroom,” Teo said, standing and leaving the table before anyone could even tell him where it was.

Marisol stared after him, puzzled. He had been oddly quiet on the carriage ride to House Muerte and even more so during the dinner. She had assumed he was still shaken up by the Criterion rally and what could have easily turned into a second attempt on his life, but now she wondered if she should have investigated more.

She went back to her meal, asking Noelia about the best balls she had attended, during the Coronet or otherwise. Every so often, she and Bas would lock eyes, and the worry that she saw reflected in his gaze only made things worse. This wasn’t part of the plan. She and Bas lacked Teo’s charm. They couldn’t keep a conversation going long enough to cover for Teo’s absence.

When she had cleared her plate, and the prince still hadn’t returned, she placed her napkin on the table and stood. “I’m going to make sure he isn’t ill. Where is the washroom?”

Marisol waited long enough for Noelia to tell her, smiling until the other girl turned her attention back to Bas. Then she nodded once, a silent promise to figure out what was going on as discreetly as possible, and made her way into the hallway. The nearest washroom was by the entrance of House Muerte, but Marisol had a feeling she didn’t need to look there. Instead, she followed her mental map back to the inner courtyard. The door was cracked open, and she could see a shadow cutting through the illumination of the lamps there.

She peeked outside to make sure that the garden was otherwise empty. Then she closed the door behind her, just in case.

Somehow, the garden was even more beautiful than the little she had caught a glimpse of before. At night, torches in sconces lit the paths in flickering golden light. The hedges and trees were menacing in the shadows, but the reflecting pool glittered with captured stars, making the black water look more like a small sky. Beyond the water was a cobblestone plaza, surrounded by orange trees bursting with pearlescent flowers. Blue light, ebbing and flowing like the tide, skittered over the petals.

Spirits-blessed, all of them.

So this was what they looked like, before they were converted into ink. Gaspar’s sketches hadn’t done them justice.

Marisol found Teo standing in the center of the plaza, holding two orange blossoms so tightly that they had begun to bruise. She touched his arm, and he looked down at her with haunted eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just—we need these plants. We need as many of them as we can get. We’re running out of time.”

“We won’t have any time if we don’t get away with it,” Marisol reminded him. “And if we’re the only ones here when the orange blossoms go missing, we won’t make it out of Coventry with them.”

“There are so many. How will they be able to tell?”

“You’ve been gone for nearly an hour, Teo. They’re going to make sure everything is in order as soon as you leave.”

The wilted blossoms fell from his hands. Weak blue light seeped from the petals and faded into the night. She could no longer feel the magic of it, as if it had been damaged too much to retain a single spark.

Teo pushed both hands into his curls. “It seemed so simple when we were just discussing it. To rid the world of magic. To depower the witches. To change the world for the better.”