Page 52 of Wicked Endeavors

Her foot caught on an errant stone and she stumbled, nearly tripping off the sidewalk. Hot pain flashed up her arm. Rodrigo had carved a river into her forearm, and it bled through the new hole in her sleeve.

“Okay, okay, stop,” she said, gritting her teeth against the throbbing pain. “Rodrigo, it’s me. It’s Caya.”

His eyes narrowed. “Do I look like an idiot?”

The street was too public for her to lower her disguise—and Gaspar would have killed her for taking the risk. Her arm was so slick that the fabric of her dress was beginning to stick to it. Marisol swallowed. “The matrons sent us to the city center to buy groceries, and I made fun of you for being afraid of the crowd.”

Rodrigo paused.

“Once, you ate so many pumpkin buñuelos that you threw up in Gabriela’s bed.”

His stare was unfathomable.

“You thought Lord Ruiz was going to sell me into slavery in Esquivel.”

Finally, Rodrigo lowered the knife. He shook his head repeatedly, as if he could shake the truth out of it. He scanned her from top to bottom, looking for something he wouldn’t find. “Caya, you’re… you’re a witch? A morpher?”

“I…” She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t. “I guess.”

“You nearly killed me that day, with Lady Galvan. And at the rally, protecting the prince. I’ve been looking for you for months, and you’ve been—” She could see the moment that she lost him. Something inside him snapped, his expression freezing over. Even during their worst fights, he had never looked at her this way. As if he resented her for breathing. “You’re one of them. You left us behind to become one of them. After everything we’ve gone through.”

“That’s not—that’s not what happened.” The words sounded feeble even to her own ears. “How could you join the Criterion? Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”

“More dangerous than surviving on the streets?” Rodrigo snorted. “That day in the city center, someone handed me a pamphlet and I actually read it. The Criterion are the only people who care about making Coventry better. They help people like us find food, shelter, and work. They want to overthrow the witches and put us in charge of our own futures. Of course you’d have a problem with that, you witch sympathizer.”

“I am not—”

“Give me the pendant,” Rodrigo snarled, raising his knife again. “Or else I’ll—”

Marisol would never find out what he planned to do. At first, she thought it was raining, but the moisture had hit her face and chest rather than the top of her head. She looked down to see blood on her chin, dripping toward a larger patch on her collarbone, and it made no sense, none at all, because Rodrigo had slashed her arm.

He collapsed to his knees in front of her, a sword tip sticking through his throat.

Behind him, a city guard gripped the hilt, his face cast in shadow. Beside him, a second guard hovered with his hand by his own sheath.

“You’re safe now, my lady,” he said. “Do you need a ride home?”

The words made no sense, because Kindred was home, and Rodrigo was home, but Rodrigo was bleeding out on the city streets, and Kindred had abandoned them both. She wore fine dresses and attended elegant parties, and Rodrigo had a sword through his throat and his blood was on her chin. How could it be that two people from the same home could have such wildly different fates? It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair.

Her knees were cold. She was kneeling on the ground beside his body, her skirts soaking in the pool of blood that dripped steadily from his neck. She was making sounds that she hadn’t made in years, a hitching sob-howl like a moribund animal. She was here, gripping his body with shaking hands, and she was in the past, hugging him tightly before she left Kindred, and she was even further back, holding tight to Bas’s hand as he led her out of Seaward Palace to an uncertain future.

Rodrigo’s eyes were still open, staring blankly at the sky.

Marisol hadn’t known there were parts of her that could still shatter.

“Poor thing. She’s probably never seen a dead body before. We’ll get you home, Lady Vinyet. Don’t worry.”

It wasn’t fair.

Marisol pressed her forehead against Rodrigo’s and screamed.

She didn’t remember getting home. She saw Rodrigo’s slack face and lightless eyes every time she blinked, and the blood that had hardened into rust-brown patches on her dress was all that she could smell. She wanted nothing more than to go to bed and sleep through the next few years. Unfortunately, there was a figure sitting on the front steps of Wildridge Hall.

Bas Arroyo looked up as she exited the carriage, his hands dangling between his long legs. He stared at her for a moment. “Who hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” Marisol said dully. “I thought you went home with Teo.”