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“With a child, she’s locked in. We have her. We have the De Léon name.”
“We no longer need it. That’s my point.”
“And what about your father’s sister and what those men did to her?”
“You’re talking about revenge for my aunt? For a woman you have no connection to. A woman who died before I was born.”
“She’s your blood.”
“That’s the point. She’s not your blood. I can understand Dad wanting to take it further. But I can’t wrap my brain around why you would. It doesn’t fit.”
She studies me, and it’s almost like this is news to her, like she hasn’t thought about this part. It tells me something. This isn’t her motivation. It’s something else.
“Don’t you want a child after what happened to Alexia? To your baby?” she asks.
I stop. Blink. Because I’m not expecting this. This is too far, even for her. But I’m caught off guard, and she misreads my silence.
“Don’t you?” she pushes. “Maybe you should be thanking me.”
But then I realize something. “How did you know about that?” The only person I’d told about the pregnancy was Caius.
She shakes her head, then looks down into her nearly empty glass. “Caius told me after everything. He asked me not to tell you that I knew.”
“Caius told you?”
“He was worried about you. We all were. The way you found her, the wordwhorespelled out on her stomach, she didn’t deserve that. And for you to have seen her like that, seen what her father did to her, knowing she was pregnant with your child.” She shakes her head. “I could better understand the violence that followed.”
My brain rattles inside my skull at this very vivid forced memory.
“Caius blamed himself for not being there with you. And then not protecting you against the Commander. He acted like a coward, at least in his own mind. We all love you very much, Santos. I think sometimes you forget that.”
“I don’t forget it,” I say the words and I’m looking at her, but I almost can’t see her. I’m seeing other things. Remembering other things.
“Your brother isn’t doing well since the night you fought. He’s drinking. A lot. And he’s back in that Ana’s bed. She’s no good for him.”
I scan the room for him but don’t see him.
“He didn’t have anything to do with Fairweather,” she says. “That was my plan. Only mine. Don’t punish him for what I did.”
I push my hand into my hair just as Cummings walks up to my mother with a couple in tow.
“Evelyn, there you are. I want to introduce you to…”
I walk away, walk out of that ballroom, and come across one of my soldiers. “Where is my brother?”
“Went outside about twenty minutes ago, sir.”
“Outside? Which way?”
“Said he was going to take in the views.”
“Shit.” I walk out the way Caius went because I’m pretty sure of the views he means.
Wind howls like it always does out here. It sounds like banshees screaming. I banish the thought, force aside the feeling of foreboding their warning carries as I glance up at the looming structure of the lighthouse. I can’t see it separate of its history. First Madelena’s mother, then Thiago. Madelena almost dying out there once when she was five and once just weeks ago.
I stop for a minute and look out over the black night, the blacker waters. Waves punish the cliffs, and I wonder how many centuries it will take for the salt to break down the rock. For the sea to swallow the town of Avarice up along with its residents and its history.
Madelena is right. I am different here. I don’t like myself here.
