Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

THE BLACK SMOKE IS EVERYWHERE.

" Sebastián! " I call into the dark, but I hear nothing back. " Felipe! "

The silence is as thick as the fumes—and when the air finally clears, the scene looks frozen in time. Felipe lies limp in Sebastián's arms.

I sob.

The sound fractures the silent tableau, and Sebastián's gaze snaps up. Felipe's blood smears his mouth and chin.

His silver eyes have darkened to a deeper shade, making his gaze weightier. I wonder if I'll be the next corpse in his arms.

"We need to talk," he says. Even his voice sounds heavier, more measured.

"I have to get Bea on the couch," I say, unable to look at his face, which is coated with Felipe's death.

The shadow beast reappears at Bea's side, his mouth by her neck as he reaches for her. "Stop!" I shriek, but his arms go right through her body, and I realize he was trying to carry my aunt, not kill her.

And yet how will I ever know the difference?

I focus on Bea's body as I slide my arms under her back and thighs, then try to lift. But I'm too weak.

Useless, stupid tears form in the corners of my eyes, and I bite down on my inner lip until I taste blood to keep from crying. After dragging Bea by the shoulders to the sofa, I manage to roll her up onto the cushions. I spend a lot of time adjusting the pillows, and when at last I can't avoid him anymore, I look up.

But the shadow beast isn't here.

I return to the corridor where Felipe's corpse lies, but he's gone, too. A shadow darkens the wall, and Sebastián steps out from it. He's cleaned the blood off his face, but he can't lighten his eyes as easily.

"Where's Felipe?" I ask, my voice creaky.

"I buried him in the jardín de sangre. Your aunt will know what to do."

I'm too numb to answer. I have no idea how to tell Bea that Felipe is dead because my boyfriend ate him.

Sebastián holds out a hand to me. Inside is a black seed.

I take it and swallow the pill, my throat so dry I feel its progression.

"I need air," I whisper.

Sebastián lifts me in his arms without warning, and I gasp as the castle blurs around me, and our surroundings settle into the graying twilit sky.

As he sets me down on my feet, I look around in awe. We're standing on the balcony tower.

"I thought you couldn't come here," I say, aghast.

"I could not. Nor was it nightfall yet when I appeared."

"How then?" I ask.

"I believe it is your aunt's pills. They are affecting the parameters of the spell."

I keep my expression neutral, but I'm sure he can hear the speeding of my heart as I wonder what else these seeds could change. What happens if Sebastián gets free of his chains and can roam the planet?

If a shark bites a bleeding swimmer, is the shark a murderer, or is it just obeying its nature?

Sebastián stares up at the stars, and I wonder when he's going to ask me to tell him who he is and where I've hidden the book. Or maybe he'll skip talking altogether and suck the answers from my blood.

After all, he's the Iron Prince other monsters fear, and he's been stuck playing house with a human. A human liar who discovered his identity and withheld it from him. I don't imagine I'll make it through the night.

And maybe I don't deserve to.

"I remember," he murmurs. " Everything. "

I trade one gray horizon for another as I look at him. "What are you talking about?"

"There was something off about Felipe's scent." It might be the first time he's used Felipe's name. "It was being masked by the rotting odor of death coming from his condition. When he called himself a messenger, I understood. The same thing that made it possible for me to interact with him was what was killing him— your blood. "

" What? " I ask, breathless.

"Your uncle performed blood magic. He dosed Felipe with your blood, which contained my memories. Your friend was already dying when he got here, even if he did not know it."

"Are you sure?" My voice is barely audible, but Sebastián hears me clearly.

"I used his blood to access the jardín de sangre." It's decisive proof Felipe was dosed with Brálaga blood.

I breathe in deeply a few times, tasting winter's early chill in the air. Felipe was already dying . And my uncle denies being a murderer.

Every part of me is shaking. "Why do this?"

"That is a question for your uncle." His voice is colder, a little more like the shadow beast from the first night. "How long have you known who I am?"

"Three days," I admit.

"Since I kissed you."

Guilt twists my gut, and I nod.

"Why did you keep it from me?"

There's no point in holding back now. "I didn't want to let you go."

He looks unmoved, and I rebound the question. "How long did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That your memories were in my blood." His expression doesn't soften, but his chin tips up just a little in surprise. "That's why you haven't fed on me again since the first time, isn't it?" I press.

"I suspected it."

"Why?"

"When I drank from you, we both saw memories from my childhood. I only had access to that information through your blood." His eyes darken as the shadows deepen around him. "Yet I sensed that if I recovered those memories, the unburdened version of me—the one you named Sebastián —would cease to be. Like any creature, I was only trying to survive."

I want to ask if that's what's happened now, if Sebastián has ceased to be, but I can't stomach the answer. So instead I say, "I'm sorry I lied to you."

"I am too much of a monster not to forgive you."

Yet his expression and tone don't lighten. This new way he speaks and the heaviness in his gaze are hard to take. Even the particles of air seem to exert weight on his shoulders.

This isn't my Sebastián. This is Prince Bastian.

"You know what they call me?" he asks.

"The Iron Prince."

His lips curve up in a cold imitation of his old smile, only this one offers no light. "Then you know I come from a world even your most darkly imaginative artists could not conceive. Sebastián was a lie that could only exist as long as I did not bear the burden of my past."

"That's not true," I whisper. "You can choose to be different."

"You speak of me as if I were human and capable of your full range of emotions. I am the future king of my kind. I crave power, blood, violence. I do not sacrifice for others—I only sacrifice others."

"And still you've been taking care of me—"

"Because it was in my best interest. But if you are expecting me to do the right thing, I will let you down."

I sigh in exasperation. "So this is it then? You're going home and leaving me here?"

"I do not know how to break the spell," he says, and I wait for him to add that he doesn't want to leave because I'm here.

But he doesn't.

Obviously.

"What do you remember?" I ask, trying to speak over the cracking of my heart so he won't hear it. "Of your home?"

"That I am as trapped there as I am here," he says, the edge in his voice growing sharper. "All the knowledge I hold, all the worlds I know, every great battle, I have learned it all from afar. I am always entangled in others' games. Even here, with you. I am an inmate shuffled from one prison to another, without any say in where I go."

"Fight back then," I whisper.

"What?"

My heart pounds in my chest. "Against all odds, you and I have met. We come from literally different worlds, and yet our paths have crossed. Against all odds, you didn't kill me on our first meeting. Our entire relationship has been impossible, but it's happening. We can change things—"

"Not anymore," he says. "This is over."

" No, " I breathe, and then I can't say more because the rest of my frame is splintering. The slightest movement will shatter the illusion that I'm whole, and I'll crumble into a million broken pieces.

"Go rest," he says, surveying the view, his back to me. "I will keep watch for your uncle."

Daylight makes everything more gruesome.

Bea and I stand in the jardín de sangre, where Felipe's corpse is buried, and I can't understand how we got here. Felipe wasn't perfect, but he didn't deserve a death sentence.

"How did this happen?" she whispers.

"Teo did a blood spell on Felipe using the blood he took from me, after promising him Antonela's hand in marriage—"

"Antonela's—?"

"Yes. All Felipe had to do was carry a message for… Sebastián."

"Who?"

The shadow beast may have broken up with me, but as long as he's stuck haunting this place, it's going to be hard to keep him hidden from Beatríz. "Someone else has been living in this castle."

My aunt's gaze grows murderously grave. "Did you invite a friend—?"

"No, he's not human. Besides, he was here when I arrived, but you can't see him."

She blinks, and the hardness is gone from her face, replaced by a concern I recognize well.

"It's not like that, either," I hasten to say. "I'm not imagining him."

"Let's start with who is he ?" she asks, adopting a neutral tone.

This is already not going well.

I sigh and let it out: "He's a vampire from another realm who only appears at night. He arrived the day of the subway attack, so he's part of the spell that killed my parents, and I'm the only one who can see him."

She doesn't say anything.

I'm not sure she's even blinked.

"I named him Sebastián because he lost his memories in the spell," I go on, "but he's really Prince Bastian, future ruler of the vampires. We think Teo brought him here, but we don't know why."

I keep hoping that giving her more details will prove I'm telling the truth, but I can hear that it's sounding less and less believable.

"Estela, forgive me for asking, but if you're the only one who can see him, how can you be sure he exists?" Beatríz cringes like it causes her discomfort to ask the question, but I can't blame her. I was questioning the same thing a few days ago.

"Let him prove his existence to you tonight," I say. "Okay?"

She nods in assent. "So, what exactly happened? This Sebastián killed Felipe?"

"No, Sebastián said Felipe was already dying, and he could smell my blood from the spell Teo performed. Then he drank Felipe's blood—which was spiked with mine—and that's how he got his memories back." I look around for a shovel just to turn away from her horrified expression. "What if we dig up the body and you can see the puncture marks?"

Beatríz has a hand pressed to her chest. She looks nauseated. "No" is all she says.

"What do we tell Felipe's parents?" I ask, thinking of Felipe's loud, happy family, and their colorful faces fade to gray as I picture them receiving this news.

Even though things soured between us by the end, I feel a deep sadness that I won't share any more attic sessions with him, or see his crooked smirk when I get something right, or watch his eyes light up with excitement over a book.

"They can't know Felipe died here," says Beatríz. "If this place becomes a crime scene investigation, the castle could assume it's a blood offering, like in the old days." Chills race down my spine at her words. "And with you involved, the sole survivor of the Subway Twenty-Five, the news would be all over it—"

"Felipe's dead?"

Bea and I spin around at the sound of the new voice.

Teo has joined us in the blood garden, blocking our path back to the shed. I look to my aunt in alarm, but she's locked into a staring contest with her brother.

Even though they're silent, unspoken conversation zaps between them, the air charged with emotion. They're the same height, and beneath Teo's piercings and tattoos and facial hair, their features are mirror images.

"Así que estabas aquí," she says to him. So you were here.

"English, for our niece," he says in an ironic show of chivalry. "I came when I learned you were having a family reunion and didn't invite me."

"You're making a mistake, Teo," she says to him, ice in her words.

"That's all I've ever heard from everyone. And yet you've gone along with so many of those mistakes ."

"I'm making amends. You should try it."

"Looks like it's going great. Did you bury the dead boy here?"

Bea approaches her brother slowly, hand in her pocket, probably grasping the syringe. "What did you do to him, Teo? Did you attempt to transfuse Estela's blood? What equipment did you use?"

Once she's within a foot of him, she strikes—but Teo's hand juts out, shoving her arm back into her pocket.

"Don't even try it, Sombrita. If I go down, so do you. And this time there is a body."

She seems stricken, and he looks past her, to me. "Poor Felipe," he says in a mock mournful tone. "He didn't have to die."

"Why are you doing this?" I ask.

"I just want to bring your sister back. Don't you?"

"She's dead . You killed her."

"Is she? Only one person can find out for sure." I frown at him questioningly, and he says, "As her twin, you share all the key components."

"That's enough!" snaps Bea.

But she's too late. I'm already hooked. "What do you mean?"

"There's a spell—"

"The last thing she needs are more of your spells!" Bea stands between Teo and me, as if her body is a wall that can protect me from his reach.

"If she doesn't do this, Nela's story will be lost forever," he argues with his sister. "Is that what you want?"

"How dare you put this on Estela when it's our fault Antonela's gone!"

"Is she, though?" he asks, eyes overbright, and I'm so reminded of Felipe that I understand why Bea never warmed to him. It must've felt like seeing the ghost of her brother.

"Stop," warns my aunt. "I won't let you traumatize the girl any further."

"What do you think happened to Oli and Raul?" he whispers, and every part of me stills at the mention of my parents.

"You tell me," she threatens, narrowing her gaze like a detective zeroing in on a suspect.

"I thought it had to be the curse," he admits, all traces of humor gone from his face. "But what if we're wrong?" The spark is back in his gaze and blazing brighter than before. "What if Nela is trying to come home to us, but someone won't let her cross over? If there's something we can do, if she needs us, we owe it to her to find out ."

I don't bother looking to my aunt to see if my uncle's words have worked on her. Because they've already worked on me.

"I'll do it."

"No!" cries Bea, her face drawn in despair as Teo's splits into a smile.

I can feel the hardness in my chest that tells me I'm not going to budge. I came to la Sombra to close my parents' case, and even if the castle's curse is what doomed them, there still has to be an identifiable culprit, weapon, and motive. If Teo wasn't the brujo behind the Subway 25 spell, who was?

And why did they do it?

Felipe is dead, and Sebastián has abandoned me. Prince Bastian is back, and he's made his priorities clear: he wants to break the spell.

Teo's methods may be out-there, but he knows a lot more about Brálaga magic than the rest of us, and if he's not a suspect, then he's my best source. I couldn't save my parents, but if there's even a minuscule chance that Teo is right that Antonela is alive and possibly in danger and we have the chance to do something, then I need to act.

To hell with caution and rules.

"She was my sister," I tell my aunt, knowing she will understand after everything she's done for her brother. "I need to know."

"Let's get to the mirror." Teo is already springing into action, and as he strides out of the garden, I follow him.

"How do you know the spell we need to use?" I ask, without waiting for Bea.

"I found it in the journals long ago," he says. "I have just been waiting for you to return to the castle to try it."

"But I thought Brálagas could only do magic under the full moon."

"That's for big outdoor spells," he says. "The rules are different in the castle because la Sombra is fueled by our blood."

He's really read through the journals carefully. "Who restocks the journals when they run out?" I venture.

He looks at me with a wry smile. "Now you're asking the right kind of question."

"What's the right kind?" I ask as we cut through the string of doorless rooms.

"The ones without answers."

I roll my eyes. "I bet you've tried stealing journals from the attic."

"I have, but they're impossible to remove. I even tried photographing them, or tracing them over, but the pictures came out blank, as did the ink in my pen and the lead in my pencils. So I settled for reading through all of them, some over and over again until I memorized as much as I could."

"Why did you kill Felipe?" I ask when we reach the fork in the road.

Teo stops moving. "I'm not a murderer."

There's a harder edge to the declaration now, which only makes him sound guiltier.

"Aren't you?" I ask, forging ahead of him to the mirror room.

I have to wait a few seconds for him to join me, and he's back to all-business. "This glass can be used to channel Antonela's memories," he says, facing the mirror. " If she made it to the other castle. You won't get everything, but enough to know she lived."

Bea enters the room and looks at me pleadingly. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

I nod in assent, nauseated with anticipation. "What do I have to do?"

"Look in the mirror, and wherever your reflection leads, follow it," says Teo. "Think of it as a high-security vault. You're the only one who can access your twin's memories because you share the same DNA, so the lock can't differentiate between you two."

He holds out his hands to his sister, who grudgingly joins her fingers with his. Then they begin to chant in low voices, like they're praying: " No hay luz en Oscuro, no hay luz en Oscuro, no hay luz en Oscuro…"

I look deep into my own eyes, wondering if this will work. How might it feel to see my face on someone else's body and hear my voice come out of someone else's mouth? Will she speak like me? Move like me?

I blink when I realize my reflection is waving me forward. I touch the mirror, and the texture is watery. When my fingers slide through the glass, I press my nose in to test if I can breathe—

And the mirror sucks me inside.

My surroundings shift to utter darkness, and my aunt and uncle are gone. I'm in a vacuum of space, floating.

"Hello?"

My greeting is soundless. I lost either my voice or my hearing or both. I look down at my hands, and they don't seem substantial. I'm a ghost.

I gasp as the scenery begins to fill in.

I see myself at various stages of childhood and adolescence, hundreds of memories jostling for space in the air, all of them unfolding simultaneously.

Only I don't remember any of these moments.

Teo was right.

Antonela made it to the other side.