Page 94 of Mistress of Bones
She thought he might mock her, laugh at the lack of awareness on her part. Instead, he kept his voice measured: “A conjecture so far. The ossuary falls under the marquess’s purview”—Azul jerked back as if slapped—“and he is your half brother. Knowing I am from Valanje, he probably grew cautious and hid his living corpses from my sight and thus from yours as well. That made it harder to confirm.”
Azul’s mind was a moving puzzle, trying to make all the pieces fit.
“I thought… You said you could recognize the other necromancer.”
“His foulness is different, undetectable, unlike you. It could be he’s already lost what makes you unique, from using it too much.”
“A necromancer?” Esparza exclaimed. He ran a hand through his hair. “Do such things truly exist?”
Enjul’s attention remained fixed on Azul. “If we kill him, will it end his creations?”
Azul sputtered at this. “You can’t. He’s my brother!”
“He’smurdered, don’t you understand? One or two: accidents, perhaps, as with your sister. But this many? He must be stopped.”
“Not by death! How would you be any different from him, then? Take him to your Order, lock him somewhere like you planned to do to me. Allow these people he’s brought back to fulfill their lives. It is their right.”
“Their right is to rest with the Lord Death.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I carry his will within me!”
“And why is your god’s will more important than theirs? That’s what makes you so enraged, isn’t it, Enjul?” She spat the words. “You’ve seen death all your life and resigned yourself to it, and now you’re scared to hope there’s an alternative, that your faith has been for nothing. Prove to me I’m wrong.”
“You mean to say that they are still people?” Esparza said, his nervous hand roaming over his stubble, over his neck.
Azul glared at Enjul. “Of course they are.”
To her surprise, instead of sneering, Enjul’s eyes widened at her words. She didn’t quite understand why until she looked down and saw the tip of a rapier sticking out of his chest.
XXXIIHEARTS
ONE YEAR EARLIER
“Have you ever been in love, Azulita?”
Azul looked up from a lovely spread of daggers on sale at the local market. The seller was on her way to Valanje, so none of the hilts sported any Anchor. This suited Azul fine—to have a hilt adorned with Anchor only attracted thieves and trouble.
“Solis Monte, two years ago. You bet my heart in a game of cards, then chased him out of Agunción with Maravillosa after you lost.”
Isadora laughed. “If he had truly returned the depth of your feelings, he would’ve stayed put.” She bumped Azul’s shoulder with her own, uncaring of the wonders spread on the linen cloth in front of them. Daggers were nothing to Isadora but rapiers cut short. “But, then, I don’t think your feelings went that deep, did they?”
Azul remembered the nights spent with Solis’s letters under her pillow, the afternoons looking inside the patio and imagining their future house. The Lady Dream had cast a spell on her, and it had disappeared when Solis did, leaving nothing but a small feeling of loss and a lot of bafflement.
But Azul had too much pride to admit as much. “What was he to do? Meet you in a duel at dawn and risk harming my older sister?”
“Ah, Azulita. Love makes you risk everything!”
Azul would agree, remembering how she had sneaked into the inn’s pantry to cut Isadora’s finger. But her sister was talking about another kind of love. A kind of love Isadora had experienced over and over—sudden, bright, and powerful like the hottest of fires, then ashes after a few days.
To risk everything for such a love seemed inconvenient at best and unwise at worst.
“Perhaps one day I will meet a person like that,” Azul said, unconvinced.
“I think you will. Someone who makes you want to be close even if you don’t understand why. Someone you want to meet again and again, to exchange swords with, to place bets, to goad into submission. Sometimes you will hate them for it, and you won’t understand why you cannot think of anyone but them. And sometimes you’ll think you’d be nothing without them.”
Isadora’s gaze grew distant, and Azul followed it to the pink sky of winter.
