Page 93 of The Familiar

“That would be the price.”

“Then tell me you haven’t considered it.” It was a plea, pathetic really. Lie to me, let me believe in you a little longer.

But Santángel had promised her truth and he would not relent now. “I have. Every day and every night.”

No anguish. No disgust at his own selfishness. And yet, even in her grief, there was some satisfaction too. There had never been shame between them. There never would be.

“I should have told you all of it,” he said. “I should have spoken sooner. I didn’t understand the trap fate had made until it was too late.”

“Víctor has made a fool of you, Santángel. He would never settle for such a trade. I’m no immortal. I can’t serve his children or his children’s children.”

“What is death to a woman who can heal any wound?” he asked gently. “A woman who can cure any sickness—even time?”

Luzia felt the breath go out of her, a door slamming shut. The morning was cool; the sun bright. She saw herself, a woman in black beside an autumn wood, framed with her lover by the mirror of the lake. The stage, the guests in their velvet and feathers, Vázquez brooding beneath a canopy of silk.

Last night, Víctor had been taunting her. He’d said her gift could heal any bruise or mark. A wonderful convenience.

Now she recognized the pity on Santángel’s face. She had seen it in the courtyard on the day she’d made the vines grow, when she’d first felt his influence on her, when she had first begun to grasp what her power might become. What would it mean to live forever? How was she to know when she had barely lived at all?

“I won’t do it,” she said at last. “I won’t make his bargain. Not for you or for anyone.”

“I would not ask you to. But Víctor has a gift for impossible choices. He will connive and maneuver until he is your only protection, until he has your very life in his hands.”

Was this why he had sent Hualit away? To close off every avenue of escape? “I can still refuse him.”

“You won’t. We are too alike. For all the miseries of this world, you don’t want to leave it. To survive you’ll make the bargain I once made. You’ll give up what you value least.”

But what was that? The magic that had come so effortlessly, with none of the misery of Latin or arithmetic? The freedom she had never known?

“And you?” she demanded. “You must give up what you value most to break the curse. How can that work when it’s freedom you prize most highly?”

“It was, Luzia. For a very long time. But curses are cruel.”

She felt as if she’d thrown herself off a cliff. For a moment she had the illusion of flight. His words were wings and she was carried by their meaning, by the elation of being wanted in return. She was what he treasured. She was what he valued most.

But there were no wings. There was no flight. She was only falling. He had planned to trade her to Víctor de Paredes for his freedom, just as Tello had once betrayed him. Could she not even have the promise of love? Why could this belong to the women in ballads, to poets and playwrights, but never to her?

“What if I killed him?” Luzia muttered. “What if I ended all of this talk of curses and bargains with a knife to Víctor’s heart?”

“Even if you had the will for such bloody work, it would be no use. I have seen countless enemies seek to strike down De Paredes. They never succeed. They’d be better served by harming me. But if they can’t see a target, they can’t take proper aim.”

“Then I should kill you?”

“It would be an end to things. If you could manage it. Luzia … there is another way.”

“Tell me.”

“Lose. Fail and fail spectacularly, shamefully. Disgrace yourself so thoroughly that Víctor will want nothing to do with you.”

“That’s your answer? You would see me humiliated?”

“I would see you free.”

Trumpets sounded from the lakeshore and Luzia saw the Prince of Olives press a kiss to Doña Beatriz’s hand. Pérez’s red-bearded courtier was waving frantically for her to take her place by the water.

On the raised platform, Vázquez pushed reluctantly to his feet to address them.

“Go,” said Santángel. “Win or lose. Do what you must.”