This time, my arrival went unannounced. I slipped into the kitchen where Paloma and I had agreed to meet. When she bade me sit, I hesitated. I should give her the herbs and instructions and leave as soon as I could. But the warmth of the kitchen coiled around me. Paloma’s promise of a mug of warm atole would make the long, cold walk back to town more tolerable . . . I gave in. She put a pot on the embers of the kitchen fire, stoking it enough to warm the liquid contained within.

When Paloma turned her attention back to me, I placed the small pouch of carefully selected herbs on the table. I had prayed over them as they dried, imbuing them with the correct intent. Ideally, I would have brewed them immediately. Titi had the luxury of being able to brew cures in her own home; as a priest, I had neither the privacy nor the impenetrable disguise of a woman hiding in plain sight in her kitchen.

Fortunately, Titi had predicted this might be a problem I would face, and gave me alternative instructions. These I began to recite to Paloma, beginning by stressing how important it was to brew the herbs in the correct order.

“Stop,” she interrupted. “I can’t remember all that. Write it down.”

“No.”Written instructions, if found, could implicate Paloma and Mariana, even though Mariana could not read. The girls could be punished. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What if I confuse the instructions?” Paloma said when I voiced my concerns. “That’s also dangerous.”

“Titi would not want us to get caught,” I said.

“Titi would not want Mariana to die on our watch,” she hissed.

I had no reply to that. Titi made that explicit when she first taught me the recipe—error could harm the recipient, perhaps irreparably.

Sensing my weakening resolve, Paloma rose. “There’s paper in the drawing room,” she whispered.

“Paloma, wait,” I said, but she was already gone. She slipped into the hall, her bare feet whispering along the flagstones. I was achingly aware of how hard my frightened heart beat as I waited for her return; it was so loud it nearly drowned out the sound of a door opening and softly clicking shut. Let this not be a mistake, I prayed silently. I sent the prayer up to the heavens; it caught in the rafters of the house like a cobweb. Voices of the house approached it, cooing with curiosity, passing it from presence to presence like children with a new toy. Before I could scold them, ask them to release my prayer to the heavens where it belonged, Paloma returned.

She set charcoal and paper on the table crisply.

“Be quick about it,” she said.

I kept my instructions shorthand and as spare as possible. Paloma knew the names of the herbs; it was a matter of which ones to crush in a molcajete and how much broth to boil. What symptoms Mariana should expect after drinking the mixture. That the cramping would pass within a week, but if the bleeding continued for longer, to send for me.

No sound but the scratching of the charcoal on paper disturbed us. I did not notice how silent the voices in the rafters had fallen until a new voice—a real, mortal voice—shattered the peace of the kitchen.

“What is this?”

Paloma and I jumped, our faces whipping to the door.

Doña Catalina, the patrón’s wife, stood in the doorway of the kitchen, the lit candle in her hand illuminating her frighteningly pale face.

“Padre Andrés came to discuss my mother’s illness,” Paloma blurted out. “She has a weak heart but is quite proud and often refuses help, doña. He is our kin, so—”

Doña Catalina swept into the room like a cloud of white smoke, a dressing gown swathing her like a saint’s robe. She narrowed her eyes at me; seeing I was in the middle of writing, she drew close enough to read. When I moved my hand and forearm in a vain attempt to conceal the writing, she snatched the paper away.

Even in the light of her candle, it was clear how color rose to the high points of her pale cheeks as she read.

She put the paper down, then seized Paloma by the forearm with a sudden violence that brought me to my feet. “Is this for you?”

“No!” Paloma and I cried in unison.

“Silence,” Doña Catalina spat at me. “Get out of my house.”

I stepped forward instinctively, meaning to put myself between my cousin and the snake that bared its fangs at us, ready to strike.

“Release her,” I said. “This has nothing to do with her.”

Doña Catalina took a step back, yanking Paloma to her feet with her. She was tall and had no trouble looking me dead in the eye.

“That is enough.” Her voice was deathly soft. Paloma yelped; Doña Catalina’s long fingernails dug into my cousin’s skin. “You have no business contradicting me before my servants, nor encouraging them to sin. I knew when I first came to this godforsaken place that a mestizo priest meant corruption among the villagers, but I expected drinking and licentiousness. I did not expect this.”

“I protect their health and their souls, doña,” I said archly. Stung pride goaded me, loosened my tongue. “It is not easy, when they suffer so at the hands of their patrón.”

“You dare speak of my husband that way?” she said.

“Let her go,” I snapped.

“I think not, Padre Andrés.” Then her face shifted, mercurial as smoke. Anger carved the delicate lines of her face deep, transforming her beauty into something brutal as a coy, sharp smile played across her lips. “Leave. Or I shall tell Padre Vicente you not only trespassed on my property, you spread satanic beliefs among the villagers.”

This robbed my reply from my lips. Padre Vicente was just waiting for an excuse to condemn me, and I had just put all the proof he needed in writing. All my years fighting to remain hidden would be for naught; already robbed of my grandmother, the villagers would be robbed of me too. If the Inquisition was merciful, I would be removed from Apan and appointed elsewhere after a thorough reeducation. If not . . . I could be imprisoned. Tortured.

Fast as a snake’s strike, Paloma twisted out of Doña Catalina’s grasp. She snatched the paper and the cloth bag of herbs and flung herself across the kitchen.

“Don’t!” I cried.

Paloma threw the dried herbs and paper into the fire. The embers flared, leaping and devouring evidence of my work like kindling. Even if Doña Catalina held true to her word and told Padre Vicente I had been on the property and what I had intended to do, neither he nor inquisitors would have any evidence with which to condemn me. In moments, only the acrid smell of burning herbs clinging to the air and soot would remain.

Doña Catalina crossed the room and slapped Paloma across the face.

The breath left my lungs. Paloma had hinted that the patrón’s wife was cold and unpopular among the villagers. She had said outright that Ana Luisa loathed her and would do anything to be rid of her white-knuckled control of the house. Now I understood why. I understood why Paloma rarely spoke of her, why Mariana flinched at sudden movement.

I sprang between them, fury leaping bright and hungry as the kitchen fire in my chest. That box I kept locked in my breast strained until its bindings loosened; tendrils of what lay within seethed out and rippled off my skin like heat.

“Don’t touch her,” I shouted.

The fire matched me, licking high as it devoured the darkness that began to roll off me. It reflected in Doña Catalina’s light irises, opening a window into Perdition. I loathed her then. I hated her with more wicked, burning power than I had ever felt toward any living being.

“You should leave,” Paloma murmured behind me. I glanced at her. She held a hand to her face, a weary resignation heavy in her posture. “Go.”

But I couldn’t leave her in the hands of a woman like this. There were tlachiqueros who whipped their donkeys with more shame than Doña Catalina possessed. Paloma was in danger in this house.

“I’m taking you to your mother,” I told her. “Come with me.”

“Stay,” Doña Catalina commanded.

I moved toward the door, but Paloma did not follow.

She hung her head, her hands loose at her sides as Doña Catalina took her by the shoulder and yanked her away from me. Paloma did not protest, though her plaits swung from the force of the movement.

My anger died in an instant, as if drenched by a bucket of cold water.

I gave in to my temper and my hatred of Doña Catalina. But it was Paloma who would now suffer because of it.

“Get out of my house,” Doña Catalina said. “And pray that I don’t tell Padre Vicente of your visit.” At the look on my face, she added: “My word against yours, Padre—to whom do you think he will listen?”

There is no draft more bitter than that of helplessness. It bruised my throat as I looked at my cousin held fast, her proud head hung.

Doña Catalina marked my pause. She smelled my fear, my hesitation, my grief at knowing Paloma’s pain was my fault. She found the most tender part of my body and struck her final blow:

“I banish you from San Isidro,” she said coldly. “If I ever find you have been here against my wishes or hear that you have sent messages or otherwise brought Indian superstition to this place, I will give Paloma to the Inquisition.”

The smugness in her voice struck me like a physical blow.

“Go, Andrés,” Paloma begged. “Just go.”

I retreated into the dark of the kitchen garden, stunned, then turned on my heel and strode away. I had caused Paloma pain, and now there was no way for me to protect her. No way for me to fix the damage I had wrought.

I had tried to do precisely what Titi would, but I failed. I had put Paloma in harm’s way. I had not helped Mariana. I had failed them all.

A light rain began to fall. It struck my burning cheeks like ice, mixing with the tears of rage it found there. A hooded figure passed into the kitchen courtyard just as I left it; Doña Juana, the daughter of old Solórzano, pulled back her cloak’s hood to frown at me through the rain.

“Villalobos?” she said, genuine surprise coloring her voice. My surname smarted; it was what old Solórzano had called my father, when he was San Isidro’s foreman. What old Solórzano called me or any of my brothers. The Villalobos boy. As if we had no other identity but the legacy of the Spanish foreman forcing himself on an hacienda maid and being ordered to marry her. That name was a living, breathing scar of the criollo stranglehold on this land. At times like these, I wanted to strip it from my body like so much flesh and burn it. “What are you doing here at this hour?”

I could feel more than see how Juana’s look swept me appraisingly, from the thunderclouds on my brow to my balled fists.

My family had lived on this land longer than the Solórzanos had even been in Nueva España. To be banished from my home, forbidden from contacting my family . . .

I shouldered past Juana, leaving her unanswered in my wake. I had no patience for any Solórzano. Not tonight, not when loathing raked the inside of my ribs as I strode through the night. Loathing of the Solórzanos, of Doña Catalina. Of myself, for putting Paloma in danger.

Paloma was not safe here. Not with these monsters.

I would find my way back to her, to this place, if it was the last thing I did. No Solórzano could keep me from my home. My grief crystallized the thought into a white-hot prayer, branding it on my bones like a promise.

God help me, I will be back.