Chapter XIX
XIX
Alba
Alba opened her eyes to darkness. To cold ground beneath her thighs. To the yank of her breath lifting her chest sharp and hard. She had fallen out of bed. How odd.
Someone was holding her. Lifting her.
She twisted away, a cry rising in her throat. The arms released, and she slipped sideways. Struck something soft. Blankets; hard mattress. Bed. Her throat felt ragged. She must have been crying in her sleep.
A figure moved away from the bed. She raised her head.
Elías stood over her, chest heaving, a white sleep shirt clinging to sweat on his skin.
Her mouth dropped open. She was in her nightdress; it wasn’t the first time he had seen her in so little clothing, yes, but in her room? She felt naked. Exposed.
“What are you doing here?”
His brows flew toward his hairline. “Really?” The word was breathless and cracked; his breathing had not slowed. It was as if he had been running. “ Really? ”
“Keep your voice down,” she said, a scold in her whisper as she reached for blankets to cover herself.
Fear lifted at the back of her neck, deep beneath the skin.
Something was not right. She should remember being with him in a dark room.
Had she invited him? “And get out of here before someone sees.”
“You are in my room,” he said, as flatly as his breath allowed. “You were sleepwalking. And you brought that .”
He pointed at the ground.
She lifted her chin to see past the side of the bed. Metal glinted dull in the gloom.
A kitchen knife, big enough for butchery.
That was not possible. She had locked the door and heaved the chest in front of it. This was a dream. She—
She looked around her, loose hair falling over her shoulders.
The window was not in the right wall. The nightstand—wrong side of the bed.
Her fingertips were at her lips and shaking; her hands had risen to her mouth in horror.
“I…I…I don’t understand.” She jumped from one word to the next in staccato leaps, barely making the connections.
She should go back to her room. If she fell asleep again, this would melt into her memory alongside every other nightmare.
It might rear its foul head through the murk of waking once or twice, but it would be banished, and it would be gone.
She wanted to be gone. She wanted dark oblivion to soothe her aching head.
Oh, it hurt . Her monthly blood gave her headaches, but never this bad, not before.
“Who told you about my wife?” Elías demanded.
The word was a bucket of cold water over the head.
“You’re married ?” she cried.
“ Shh .” It was severe. “It couldn’t have been Carlos,” he continued, low and urgent. “Was it Heraclio? How did he know?”
Elías wore no ring, and the way he looked at her…
if he was married, that was sinful. She felt a flash of hatred—and found, to her shock, that it was directed at Carlos, because he had been right.
She had never wanted Carlos to be right about Elías, perhaps because she was young and stupid and Elías’s rough-hewn beauty caught her, his mystery pure temptation, but now she knew better.
“I didn’t know that you’re married,” Alba said. The acidity with which she spoke was clarifying. She was awake, and she ached. Blood throbbed in her skull and, oddly, her forearms.
Seize the knife and end this.
“She died when I was in Almadén,” he said. “But you knew that part already, didn’t you?”
Dead. For years. So Elías was a widower.
“Carlos mentioned Almadén,” she said slowly, absorbing this information. “I didn’t want to bring it up—”
“You know why I was there?”
It was impossible to parse his expression in the gloom, but the line of his silhouette vibrated with tension. He gripped a book hard, held at an angle that made it seem like a weapon. He would not relax. To him, this was urgent. This was important. This needed to be discussed now .
Alba worried her lower lip. It tasted of blood.
“He said that you killed someone,” she said. “That you were a danger to the family’s reputation. He said I should stay away from you, because you were…” She trailed off.
“A convict,” Elías spat. “A murderer.”
She let him say it. The anger in his voice was stark, though strained; mentioning that Carlos had also called him trouble would help nothing.
“I did kill a man,” he declared. “I was young, I was drunk, I was acting out because my mother had died and my wife had tuberculosis, and for that—for a stupid, shameful accident—I was sent to prison. It was the most selfish thing I have ever done. One moment of rashness, one fight that got out of control, and I lost everything. I left Fátima. That was the worst part of it. She was alone and sick and she needed me, and I left her.”
His voice pitched toward cracking, then broke off; the silence that fell in its wake had the weight of a confession.
“So…Fátima was the name of your wife?” Alba asked.
“ Really? ” Elías cried. Alba flinched—his anguish and anger cut like twin knives.
Now it was her turn to hush him. She kicked her legs over the side of the bed and stood, swaying from the rush of blood to her throbbing head.
“You were mocking me about her,” Elías said.
The rush subsided; slowly, the bright specks faded toward the edges of her vision and disappeared. “I’m leaving. Something is wrong with you.”
“ Yes , she was my wife. My mother arranged the marriage when I was eighteen, and I let her because it made her happy.” He saw that she was turning to leave; in two steps, he cut her off, standing between her and the door.
“She was convinced that it would keep me from running off like my father had. I barely knew Fátima and felt I never did, but that was because I didn’t listen to her, not even at the end, not until it was too fucking late.
It was all my fault. And somehow, you knew that. You said that.”
She shook her head. Her eyes stung.
“I swear,” she whispered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t remember what you just said,” Elías said. “But you knew my past. You knew things that I have never told a living soul. You recoiled at prayers. You spoke to me in my mother’s tongue, and I swear, that was worse than you attacking me with a knife.”
“A knife?” she repeated, horror rising in her throat. “I would never.”
You say that now , a voice curled in the back of her head, but what if he hurts you? He stands between you and safety. He wants to hurt you. You must defend yourself. Seize the knife.
It was not her own voice.
“You are possessed, Alba,” Elías said, low and fervent. “And I no longer think you were in danger of being harmed by whoever killed Romero. I think you killed him.”