Chapter 26
Minerva
I waited for Sara and the other girls in my room to drift off. Waited for their breathing to deepen and even out, a sure sign that they were falling into dreamless sleep.
It took the same amount of time as it did every night. It was my nerves that made the minutes stretch into hours.
My heart pounded in my ears as I awaited Ygnacio’s signal.
The house settled. The moon rose.
At long last, the whisper came. A disembodied voice next to my ear:
“Go now.”
I slipped from under my blankets. Swiftly, I bunched sheets and the spare blanket that I stole to make it look as though there were a small body curled up on the bed. At least to a sleepy eye in the dark. It was not much cover.
I had to be quick.
I slipped my weapon from beneath my pillow and went to the door. I had oiled its hinges right after the siesta, when everyone was stretching and yawning on their way to the kitchen. It opened with barely a touch, swinging into the hall gracefully, like a dancer.
The dark yawned before me. I decided to take the servants’ stairwell, which was just to the right.
“Where’re you going?”
My limbs freeze. The sleepy murmur rose from somewhere in the direction of Sara’s bed.
“Bathroom,” I whispered.
A mumbled reply.
I shut the door.
“She’s asleep,” Ygnacio whispered in my ear. “Lightly, though. She might wake again.”
I gripped my weapon: a pair of mending scissors, barely the width of my palm.
I walked as quickly and as silently as I could to the stairwell and ascended to the second floor. Ygnacio’s footsteps echoed beside mine. I floated down the hall, ghostlike, to Octaviana’s rooms.
My palm was clammy against her door’s crystal handle.
I waited.
Not a sound. Nothing but my pulse drumming a panicked march in my ears.
“No one is coming,” Ygnacio whispered.
Enter, cut the amulet, leave. It would be that easy. I had poured the sleep powder into her bath salts tonight; if she was anything like Senora Encarnación, she would be so deeply asleep that I could sneeze in her presence and not wake her.
The idea of sneezing sent a sharp vibration of fear down my spine. I rubbed my nose preemptively. Protectively.
I set my hand on the handle again.
For Arnulfo.
I opened the door.
The room was silent but for steady breathing from the bed.
There was no light, not even moonlight from outside—the ever-present fog made sure of that.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness since leaving the servants’ quarters, but even still, I could barely make out the shape of the bed.
I had mapped which floorboards squeaked, which would moan beneath my feet… and I could not see any of them.
I let habit guide me. If I were coming into this room to prepare it in the evening, I would walk straight to the bed and begin turning down the covers and sheets. Confident steps wouldn’t squeak, I told myself.
It was a lie.
The floorboards gave one mournful, arthritic complaint—long and high-pitched and ragged enough to rip cloth.
I froze.
Either Octaviana was already awake and watching me, waiting for me to commit an incriminating act, or she was so deeply asleep that she somehow did not wake at the sound.
I could not go back. I would not get a chance like this again. Sara might already be awake again downstairs, wondering where I was. If I returned now, I could still get caught, and it would still all be for nothing.
Another step forward. Another.
Octaviana was curled in a fetal position on her right side. Her hair was tucked into a silken cap. The linens were white, her nightgown was white, and though her skin was pale, her limbs appeared dark against the fabric of the sheets and pillows.
Her right arm was curled under her pillow. Her left rested by her face, held in a loose fist.
The amulet was a slim piece of twine around her bony wrist.
Her breathing was heavy. Rhythmic.
For now.
It could falter and lift into light sleep, or even waking, at any moment. Especially now that I was standing next to her bed. I had certainly woken because of the sensation of someone standing next to the bed—even if my eyes, when they shot open, discovered an empty room.
I crouched to her eye level, beside the bed. I passed the scissors to my right hand. They were clammy and slippery as I groped for purchase. I was gripping the scissors so hard the metal hurt where it pressed into the skin of my fingers.
I allowed the sharp nose of the scissors to lead my way toward the amulet.
Octaviana’s breathing shifted.
I went still. Ducking beneath the bed would be too sudden; the movement might wake her.
I watched her face. This was the closest I had ever been to her; as my eyes adjusted further, I could see the light patches of age discoloration on her skin, the ones she covered with cosmetics.
The ones that made her look so much like Senora Encarnación.
The crow’s-feet that settled at the corners of her eyes, even in sleep.
This close, she seemed so tired. So human.
She was Octaviana del Valle, and she would order Arnulfo to be shot on sight.
I did not hesitate as I reached forward and took the amulet between the pointed ends of the scissors, careful to keep the metal away from her skin as much as I could. It brushed her flesh anyway.
She shifted; inhaled deeply through her nose.
I snipped.
The twine of the amulet went loose.
Octaviana stirred, murmuring in her sleep.
She could remain asleep. She could wake. Logically, I knew it could be either. But instinct fired in my gut, flaring as bright as a lamp:
Get down.
I dropped to the floor and half rolled, half writhed beneath the bed.
I waited there, a thin veil of dust settling around me.
The bottom of the bed pressed against my nose; I turned my head to the side, a loose lock of my hair catching and ripping against a splinter that had worked loose from the ancient floorboards.
The mattress creaked. Feet hit the ground where I had knelt only seconds before.
My body went rigid. There was no bed skirt to conceal me from view; if Octaviana were to turn, to crouch and look beneath the bed…
We would be eye to eye.
The floor creaked as her weight shifted. She stepped forward.
She padded toward the bathroom. Didn’t even touch the lamp as she went in.
My heart was throbbing so hard in my ears I barely heard the trickles and rushes of the water closet.
I would slip out and dash to the door. Damn the creaks, damn the click of the tongue of the door, damn everything, I had to get out of here.
I shifted my weight.
The door of the water closet creaked as if it had swung open. Footsteps.
From the door to the bathroom, Octaviana could see me beneath the bed if she were looking.
I had waited too long. I was trapped.