4
T HE R OJANEA MANOR THAT G ASPAR R UIZ HAD RENTED for the Coronet made Kindred Orphanage look like a series of shacks stitched together. In fact, it made Seaward Palace look quaint, and there had been a time when Caya believed she would never see a more extravagant building.
The carriage took her to the edge of the city, where there were fewer houses and more acres.
Lord Ruiz’s two-story house had white walls and peach terra-cotta tiles.
The front door was protected by four marble arches and a tiled patio, while each side boasted large half-moon windows with pearl-pale curtains swaying in the night breeze.
Two columnar chimneys topped the roof, which was divided into three segments, as though the manor had individual wings.
A maid appeared to take Caya’s bag and lead her through a massive entrance hall, past a living room with a dark fireplace, and into the dining room.
Walls gilded with real gold framed a mosaic of tiles on the ceiling.
A long oak table took up most of the room, surrounded by elegantly carved wooden chairs.
Two places had been set, and more servants streamed from the door across the room to begin laying out their meal.
Caya saw roasted hen and a sauce of cooked apples and almonds, mutton stew with onions and hazelnuts and fresh-caught sole grilled to perfection, spiced chickpeas and creamy rice and verjuice flavorings. Her stomach sobbed. It had been years since she’d eaten so well.
Dinner at Kindred had been a thunderous event, a rotating cast of children crowded at three long tables in a cramped room for laughable portion sizes.
Matrons with strained smiles would eat small meals—made even smaller during the lean years—so that the kids could have more, but there was never enough.
Food, beds, money, parents: never ever enough, until Caya had learned too well the many ways in which a person could starve.
Now she sat eating across from Lord Ruiz, who was nursing a jeweled goblet that could keep the orphanage operating for half a year. It was as surreal as it was depressing.
“This has been lovely,” Caya said only once she’d cleared half her plate. If he threw her out, at least she wouldn’t go home hungry. “But why am I here, my lord?”
“The adoption makes you a lady yourself, so there’s no need for titled formalities. You can just call me Ruiz.”
“All right, Ruiz…” She couldn’t temper her impatience. “Why am I here?”
“That fire in you, for one.” Ruiz had eaten at a more measured pace, but that goblet was never far from his hand.
Caya lifted hers in invitation for him to continue, though she wondered what he was about to say that he needed to be a little inebriated to get out.
“What do you know about the origins of magic?”
This was no history lesson, and yet Caya sat up straighter as she began to speak, body tensed in anticipation of the rap of a stick across her knuckles if she got something wrong.
Disease was an unfortunate fact of city life, but everyone knew about the Scourge, a plague so devastating that they had to name it, a plague that had ravaged the continent for decades without origin, from country to country, empire to empire.
First, there had been one or two cases, blister-like sores bursting from people’s bodies as if a rot inside of them needed to get out.
Next, whole families were wiped out in a matter of weeks.
Children. Servants. Then, the wealthy began to find pustules on their silken skin, and finally the monarchies had to do something about it.
City gates were closed, and homes were marked for quarantine.
Everyone rediscovered religion and returned to raging against the spirits when the deaths continued.
Those who recovered were forever changed.
They became the first witches.
“Very good,” Ruiz said warmly. “But it’s all nonsense.”
Caya blinked. She wasn’t naive enough to believe that being printed in every history text made something true; after all, those same texts claimed that Domingo had discovered Esquivel, their island colony to the east, when the truth was that they’d slaughtered everyone who lived there, burned down all the churches, and moved in. But… nonsense ?
“Witches didn’t appear as an ‘only the strongest survive’ side effect of the Scourge, Miss Donant.
They were created accidentally.” Ruiz glanced toward the windows, which overlooked the grounds, framed by sheer curtains that kissed the floor.
Cypress and laurel trees stood beyond like verdant guardians.
“Before the witches, there were folk healers. They could commune with spirits and direct their quintessence into the plants they grew, imbuing them with curative properties. Their potions and salves interacted with the Scourge, turning those survivors into the first witches.”
Potions and salves—that was no magic Caya had ever heard of. Magic manipulated, tricked, harmed. It enabled the privileged few born with power at their fingertips. It didn’t help. It didn’t heal. It wasn’t something nurtured or learned; it was concentrated inequality.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Why am I here? You were looking for me, specifically, and you haven’t told me why.”
“The healers are gone, and the witches first born of the Scourge are dying out. Their magic weakens with every new generation.”
Slow dread filled her as he spoke. He sounded like a welk, bitter toward the witch regime and hopeful to see it toppled. But he couldn’t be a rebel. It was ridiculous. He wasn’t even Coventrian.
“Don’t you see?” His voice grew in vehemence with every word. “We have an opportunity to take Coventry back if we—”
“There is no ‘we.’ Not yet,” Caya pointed out. “Besides, witches have taken too much from me. I have nothing else to give.”
“Which means you have nothing left to lose. Therein lies your potential, Miss Donant. You are free in ways that I can never be.”
Caya laughed, an ugly sound to match her ugly thoughts.
Having nothing didn’t feel like freedom.
Being the only one who cared if she was alive had made her resilient, but it was also unspeakably lonely.
She wished she were driven by the sentiment that she owed it to the people who had once loved her to keep living, but that was not what got her out of bed each morning.
It was an infinite river of anger and spite.
She could not die while her enemies lived. They did not deserve the peace they had taken from her. Her blackened heart beat for justice.
But she also knew when she was being manipulated.
“Why does a wealthy Domingan lord care about Coventry? These witches came from your side of the peninsula.” Before them, long before the rise of the Houses, magic had been a gift shared among the Coventrian populace.
Their witches—for all she hated the word now—had been good , even if only by comparison, and their royal family had used whichever power they developed, generation after generation, to help the kingdom.
In contrast, the witches from Domingo used their power to amass more of it.
“It’s been years since you exiled them, and even now all they do is whittle us into your shape.
Your country might hate magic, might hate the witches, but Domingo has never hated anything enough to help us. Why now? Why you?”
“Because they killed my family,” Ruiz whispered.
He pushed back his chair and crossed to the window, standing in the dying sunlight with his hands clasped behind him.
“When witches first appeared, it seemed like a gift. The Domingan king gave them positions in the military, building an army the likes of which the world had never seen. But what the crown saw as benevolence, the witches saw as subjugation. They were exiled because they attempted to overthrow the Castellan royal family. Though they were defeated, my family was among the many casualties of that revolt.”
Caya’s stomach dropped as she finally understood.
She had heard stories of a failed rebellion in Domingo, long before the witches slaughtered the Seawards.
She had known that Domingo hated witches, had exiled them after their defiance, but she hadn’t considered much beyond that.
She’d only thought of how their actions had affected Coventry, had affected her .
No wonder Gaspar Ruiz had searched for her. Losing your entire family to witches was not something one moved on from. She would know that better than anyone.
“Exile is too kind a fate for these witches,” Ruiz finished, turning to face her again. Shadows hardened his expression into something monstrous. “I want them to know how it feels to be powerless.”
His eyes were lit with a fire that illuminated the vilest parts of her.
The parts of her that were tired of choking back her hatred, of keeping her head down and biting her tongue until it bled.
The parts of her that wanted to look the Magisters who had slaughtered her family in the eye and make sure they knew that she was the cause of their suffering.
Hope bloomed like a weed in the cracks of her heart, but she kept her expression blank. “How would you manage that?”
“As I said, their magic is weakening. The Magisters were forced to develop coven marks—and eventually the Coronet—to bolster their Houses’ strength by numbers.
Every witch who bears the same coven mark adds their magic to a collective that the coven can draw from, which makes the Trident more powerful than any unmarked witch would be alone.
Those marks are permanently tattooed with ink made from spirits-blessed plants, each unique to its House.
It’s taken many years and significant crown funding, but I’ve managed to replicate one potion with the same effect.
” Ruiz pointed at the curtains, and they shifted from sheer to ink black between one breath and the next.
“Now the power of House Cambio is mine to wield.”
Caya stared at the curtains. She blinked once, twice, but they remained as black as a moonless night.
She crossed the room to touch them, marveling at how thick they felt under her fingers.
Sheer curtains were light, airy. He had not only changed their color but also their composition.
The power of transformation was in the hands of a Domingan nobleman who hated witches as much as she did.
A Domingan nobleman with significant crown funding .
This was no disorganized group of frustrated welks.
This was a movement. A war.
She let the curtains slip back through her fingers as understanding settled over her. “You need the other two spirits-blessed plants so you can make more potions.”
“Making the potions is only the first step. The Domingan king, Alvaro, wants results , not experiments. Once I engineer a potion that can copy the magic, I can create a counterpotion to neutralize it. With those, we could destroy all magic. We could re-create the world that was taken from us—or build an entirely new one.”
Caya said nothing, her mind whirling.
“The Coronet is the only time that Domingans are allowed to visit the Houses. Since I’m a descendant of the nobility, I’d be a recognizable figure in their downfall.
Even if I wore a new face, I don’t have the time to maintain a cover here and develop the potions we need in my workroom in the Palacio Real.
But you…” Ruiz stepped toward her as slowly as one would approach a panicked animal.
“You are young and court trained, battle hardened and resourceful. You can take on a new identity. You can find the remaining plants. When I learned of your history with the Seawards, I knew that you were the final piece that we needed. Will you help me?”
Caya dragged her eyes away before his fervor overwhelmed her. Her fingers traced the dolphin pendant she’d slipped up her sleeve after she’d washed up. It was supposed to ground her, and it did—reminding her that she had her own reasons for coming here. Her own wants. Her own losses.
“There was a boy I trusted once,” said Caya. “A servant who I thought was my best friend. He betrayed me, and he helped the witches take over Coventry. If you want my help, I want him dead.”
“First a house, and now a body?” Ruiz lazily waved a hand through the air, returning his curtains to their original color. “I see you haven’t lost your expensive tastes.”
“The problem,” Caya continued, “is that he’s not a Seaward servant anymore. I saw him in the city center with Prince Tomás, which might be a… problem, if you’re working with the royals.”
“Ah. Sebastjan Arroyo.” Ruiz’s tone gave nothing away, but Caya clasped her hands together, squeezing tightly to keep her expression blank. To keep him from seeing how Bas’s very name made her furious, especially in the mouth of a Domingan nobleman. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”
“We were very young.”
Ruiz stroked his beard when it became clear she would give no further detail.
“Sebastjan Arroyo is the prince’s closest companion.
Everything he has was given to him by the Castellans.
He has no family, no other friends.” Her nails bit into the skin of her palms. She had no backup plan if he denied her this, so she couldn’t let him see how badly she wanted it.
“However, I’ve heard whispers that the court is concerned by how much influence this Coventrian boy has over Tomás. ”
They didn’t have to worry, Caya wanted to say, because it was clear that Bas would never do anything to help anyone but himself.
Instead, she let Ruiz mull over the best way to give her what she wanted in exchange for her support.
She knew what she would do, but it was up to Ruiz how much he wanted to factor into it.
He had read her correctly. She wanted revenge, and a transfer of power would be a delicious way to get it.
This made far more sense to her than the Criterion’s inconsequential rebellions.
But she was not an easy mark, and she had her own idea of justice.
“Yes, Miss Donant,” Ruiz drawled, “I think we can help each other.”
Caya’s answering grin was just as slow. “Where do we start?”