Page 60 of Wicked Endeavors

It would be easy to fall apart. That might even be what the Castellans wanted. But Marisol had spent too much time forging herself into something that caused pain instead of simply being the victim of it. Piece by piece, she built a wall between the crush of emotions and the clarity of her mind, until she could almost breathe again. She had never needed Teo for her plan to work. He was here to die, and he had bluffed his way out of her clutches. That was fine. She could still win.

After all, every witch in Coventry was here in this room—which meant that House Muerte was virtually empty.

No one was looking at her as they lined up to receive the crown mark.

Even Noelia had left her side and was waiting in line for her turn to make her Magister proud.

She wanted to look for Bas, but she didn’t know how much more her heart could handle and still beat on. He had to have known. This had to have been one of those secrets that “weren’t his to tell.” It was easier to villainize him again than to look for the truth.

No more distractions.

No more waiting.

Marisol looked at Teo one more time, mourning the boy she’d thought he was and the relationship she’d thought they had. Then, she went to end this once and for all.

HOUSE MUERTE WAS A MAUSOLEUM, FULL OF GHOSTS.

The ghosts were only in her head, but they haunted her all the same. The first time she had stepped into this grand manor, she had been confident: in herself, in her purpose, in her place in the world. Now she crept across the stones, eyes frantic in their search for lingering servants, her heart a useless rock in her chest.

Marisol wanted to move forward. To live her life fully, without being weighed down by loss. But how could she move forward when she kept losing? She’d thought she was the queen on a chessboard that she and Gaspar had painstakingly created, but she was a pawn in overlapping plans. She had never been in control. She’d just been surrounded by people who benefited from letting her think she was.

She was the same lost child she’d been when Bas had led her out of the burning Seaward Palace, but this time she could save herself. She held on to that fact as she unlocked the garden and began pulling spirits-blessed orange blossoms from the trees.

In the dark, everything seemed louder and more fragile. Every branch she touched seemed to snap with a cracking sound that carved through her body. Every noise she didn’t recognize was a servant coming to check the courtyard for people like her. Her own breath was loud in her ears, too fast ever since the revelation of Teo’s treachery.

She stuffed five different orange blossoms in her pocket, feeling the magic zing through her fingers and up her arm. In the end, it had been easy to be in the right place at the right time. She’d just needed another distraction, and, whether he’d meant to or not, Teo had given her one.

Marisol left as quickly and as quietly as she had come, debating between returning to the gala to keep up appearances or fleeing back to Domingo before she had to face more of Teo’s lies.

Unfortunately, her luck had finally run out. There was someone waiting for her in the entrance hall.

“What,” asked Noelia Galvan, “are you doing?”

Marisol paused, glad she’d taken the time to hide the flowers away before she left the courtyard. She lifted her hands in a placating gesture. “Looking for you. I lost sight of you at the gala, and I thought you might have come back here.”

“The doors were locked.”

“A servant recognized me and let me in.”

“My room,” Noelia snapped, “is that way.”

“I—”

“I know you’ve been stealing from the Houses.”

This brought Marisol up short. Her mind emptied of any excuse, and her lips pressed together. She wouldn’t confess to such a baseless accusation. She would need to be confronted with irrefutable proof first.

“What I don’t know is why.” Noelia was coming closer, her hands clenched at her sides. Marisol kept her own hands near her daggers, just in case. “At first, I thought you were trying to help the Criterion somehow, but none of them have ever heard of you.”

“And how would you know that?” Marisol asked as all her suspicions came to the forefront. “Why have you been working with Bas, Noelia? What have the two of you been working on?”

The other girl stopped. Her pale skin flushed with obvious guilt. “How do you—”

“I saw you at the regatta last year, and Bas more or less confirmed that you had a shared secret. He said it wasn’t his to tell… but I think I’ve finally figured it out.”

Noelia was a member of the Criterion, and Marisol had no idea how she hadn’t seen it before. The rebels who had robbed them hadn’t been fighting to kill, even though they had no reason to keep two retaliating nobles alive. She was busier than she reasonably should have been during a social season like the Coronet, giving “tours” of House Muerte that there were more than enough other witches to handle instead. She sympathized with them beyond any other witch, claiming that it was because of the parents who had sold her as a child. Marisol had been too wrapped up in her own plans to notice that nothing Noelia said had quite added up.

Once again, she’d been made the fool.