Page 32

CHAPTER 32

Carolina

“They’ve taken him where?” Carolina stood frozen in the doorway to her parents’ room.

After the tongue-lashing she received for causing a scene—multiple scenes, really—Carolina escorted her mamá inside so she could rest her feet. Her last birthing had been hard. The twins had been willful, even in the womb. It was the most frightening moment in Carolina’s life. Well, before sedientos had struck down her abuelo.

Mamá eased onto her bed, and said, “It was Rafael’s idea. Clever boy thought Lalo needed to understand our world a bit better.”

Carolina’s mind screamed at the idea of Lalo being left in the hands of Rafa and the men in her familia.

She spun on her heel. She needed to get to them before Rafa said anything incriminating but stopped when her mamá’s voice called out, “Do not even think about it, Carolina Fuentes.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Amá.” She batted her lashes sweetly.

“Don’t act innocent with me. I can see mischief in your eyes from a thousand paces away. You will stay here, in this casa, or so help me I will…” Mamá winced and clutched her belly.

Carolina was at her side in the span of a heartbeat. “What is it? Is the baby coming?”

Mamá shook her head, her face still twisted in pain. “Just a little kick.” She took Carolina’s hand and placed it on the side of her round stomach. “Feel that?”

Squinting, Carolina waited. And then…She gasped. “That’s not just a little kick. My sibling is strong.”

Mamá’s eyes sparkled. “Sí, they are.” She squeezed Carolina’s hand. “Please, this once. Listen to me. Stay put. Tend to your little brothers. Read. Sleep. Go back into the barn and dance to your heart’s content. Do whatever you wish. Just don’t go beyond the hacienda walls.”

Worry bloomed inside Carolina for Lalo. She searched her mamá’s face for a clue that something was amiss.

“Will Lalo be safe?” she asked.

“Of course, Carolina. Lalo will be fine.” Mamá brushed a wayward hair from Carolina’s face. “It is you I worry about. You are as headstrong as your papá and I love that about you both, but it will be the ruin of me. I must sit here and fret over him every night. Every time he steps out of this room.” She sniffed. “I’ll have to fuss over your hermanos. And this baby. I cannot worry over you as well right now. It’s simply too much. Do you hear me, mija?”

Carolina wiped her mamá’s tears. She felt bad for making her mother uneasy and she understood the dread. She felt it whenever her papá, hermanos, and tíos left, too. But why should she have to be the one to stay back? Because she was born a woman?

Mamá rarely looked this tired. She was usually ready to battle Carolina into submission. Or simply pretend she didn’t notice when Carolina was up to something. Like the time Mamá caught her sneaking a gopher snake into the house to nurse it back to health after a rooster kicked the poor creature. Mamá had held in a smile and turned away when Carolina scampered by. This felt different. There was no fighting or turning a blind eye. Mamá was asking her to listen for a change.

The baby kicked again, hard, and Mamá winced.

“I will do as you wish,” Carolina said, rubbing Mamá’s belly.

“Thank you, mijita.”

An object on the side table caught Carolina’s attention.

“What is that?” she asked.

Mamá’s eyelids were already beginning to droop. “Hmm?”

Carolina reached over and plucked up the familiar dagger. The hilt was curved and had a single emerald stone forged into the tip.

“I found it in your papá’s things. I cleaned it up for him. It’s rather pretty, no?”

The blade gleamed in the candlelight. “Pretty indeed.”

“I believe it’s a lover’s blade,” Mamá said. “Usually, they come in pairs. The blades are given to a bride and groom for luck. Very rare to find one so intricate. Rarer still to find the set.”

This had been the dagger inside Vidal’s empty grave. Carolina had wondered where Papá put it when he took it from her. She squinted. Where had she seen a dagger like this before? She stilled.

“May I…” Carolina stopped. Her mamá’s eyes had shut, and she was fast asleep.

Carolina silently eased off the bed. “I’m just going to borrow this blade,” she whispered. “I hope you don’t mind.”

As soon as she shut the door to her parents’ room, Carolina raced toward the last place she had seen a similar dagger. She took the steps leading to her abuelo’s room in twos. Her chest was heaving, battling against the corset she’d been forced to wear.

She burst through the door to Abuelo’s room and thrust open the armoire. Shoving aside her abuelo’s things, Carolina reached deep into the recesses of the dresser and found the cloth bundle. Heart thundering, she placed the gleaming blade in her hands on her abuelo’s bed, then unfurled the bundle.

A gasp escaped her. They were nearly identical. One blade was slightly larger. One had a ruby in the hilt while the other had an emerald. But aside from that, they were the same. The metal they were made from was so silver it almost appeared white, and star lilies had been etched into the spines of both blades. They were beautiful on their own, but together they seemed almost magical.

“Holy hells,” she whispered. These must’ve been Vidal’s and Alma’s. Their lover’s blades.

Carolina placed them on the bed beside each other and stared at them in the low light. Was this the tool Alma used to call upon the god of death? Lalo said the weapon used to appeal to Tecuani, to help create the first sediento, would be the only tool to break the curse.

There, lying on cotton sheets, might be the very thing that had brought destruction and death to Del Oro.

“Did you know what these were, Abuelito?” she wondered aloud.

Her brow furrowed.

The Fuenteses were nothing if not honorable. They were pillars of their small community. Beacons of integrity and pride. Her grandfather and father would not hold on to these blades knowing they could potentially destroy the monsters they were hell-bent on protecting the valley from. Would they?

She rushed toward Abuelito’s armoire. Surely there had to be something else hidden inside. A clue about what he knew. About why he had the blade in his closet rather than in the storeroom with many of their other family heirlooms.

Her fingers traced over the wood lining the walls of the dresser. She pressed on the right and left, but nothing gave way like the hidden compartments where they stuffed their training weapons often did. Carolina placed her palm on the rear panel. She shoved. Her eyes widened when she felt it spring ever so slightly and open a small crack.

His clothing blocked the panel from opening fully. Frantically, Carolina pulled out his shirts and jackets in handfuls and threw them behind her.

When everything was clear, she stuck her fingers into the crack and pried the panel open the rest of the way. A stack of papers and canvases tumbled out. Shakily, Carolina plucked the tattered canvas first. She turned it around and clamped her hand over her mouth.

The young woman in the painting had Carolina’s same round eyes, her same full lips and stubborn chin. Even their hair was a similar shade of black. If Carolina didn’t know for certain it wasn’t, she might have believed she was gazing at a portrait of herself. But it was what was lying on the woman’s lap that had Carolina’s focus. The ruby-embellished lover’s blade.

“Alma,” Carolina whispered.

She ran a finger over the painting.

Growing up, Carolina had been taught that Alma was the first victim, the pour soul doomed by some evil monster that happened upon their lands. But Alma had been the monster. She had rebuked el Cielo and made a deal that would unleash an unholiness upon Del Oro.

Carolina placed the portrait down and began sifting through the parchment covered in writing by her abuelo’s hand. The blade, it would seem, was found by Alma’s body. Along with a single note. Chills rippled over Carolina’s skin.

Please forgive me for what I’ve done.

I took my blade and sliced a deep gash against my palm. As my blood dripped onto Vidal’s grave, I called upon Tecuani. I was incensed! I didn’t know what I was doing. I was so desperate. So empty and lost without my Vidal. Dead after hunting, of all things.

The god of souls heard my cries and appeared when the moon was at her fullest. He offered me a deal. He said if I accepted, he would bring my lover back.

I should have said no and run. I should have gone home to baby Inigo. But what was a life without my Vidal?

I took Tecuani’s deal. Days later, Vidal rose from his grave, but he was changed. His skin was blanched of color. He was my love but not. Vidal said he must feed. He said the only thing that would give him strength was the blood used to revive him. My blood.

I tried to quench his thirst for weeks by offering a few drops on the tongue here and there. His thirst only built.

If you are reading this, I fear, the monster inside him has finally won. And yet, even as I write this, I cannot find it in my soul to plunge my dagger into Vidal’s heart. Even though he begs of me to end his torment.

I am selfish and greedy and so very sorry. My sins against nature have brought Death to our doorstep. I have unleashed darkness. I offered what was never mine to give, and I have ruined us all.

Take this blade and do what I could not. It is the only way to end the death curse.

The paper slipped from Carolina’s grasp. It fluttered onto the bed, landing beside a slip of parchment with an entry written in her abuelo’s hand. Heart hammering, she snatched the note up.

Vidal must have turned her. I cannot say whether it was on purpose or if he was purely trying to revive his wife after draining too much blood. Either way, a Fuentes was to blame for the creation of los sedientos.

Carolina’s knees went weak, and she slumped onto the floor.

Abuelo knew the truth. He had this information, but he’d kept it hidden away. Had he known he could end all vampiros by killing Vidal? Surely not or he would have slayed him. Or at least spent his every waking moment searching for the man. Wouldn’t he?

She looked up at the portrait hanging in his room of him and her abuela.

For the first time in her life, Carolina wondered if she’d ever even truly known him.

“Why would you keep this a secret, Abuelito?” she whispered. She thought of his death, the guards’, and the countless others she’d experienced in her short lifetime. “My ancestors’ silence has made murderers of us all.”