24
T HE FINAL EVENT OF THE C ORONET WAS A SHADOW play put on by the reapers of House Muerte at Requiem Theater, the kind of building that someone like Marisol had only ever seen from the outside before she met Gaspar.
However, two weeks stretched between the midsummer festival and the shadow play, and those weeks were exciting only for aspiring coven witches.
Marisol, Bas, and Teo were free to plan their final theft, and they began by going over the length of time it would take to travel from Requiem to House Muerte and back again.
The general consensus was that it would take too long to go unnoticed, and they were considering having Marisol fake an illness when Noelia’s invitation arrived.
“A dinner party at House Muerte?” Teo mused as they browsed the marketplace for the ingredients Noelia had listed in the card.
She wouldn’t have time to go shopping, she’d claimed, and she had thanked them in advance for their help.
“If she weren’t a witch, I would swear that Lady Galvan was working for us. ”
Marisol glanced at Bas. He was busy weighing turnips by hand, so engrossed in his task that his focus had to be manufactured.
They had both managed to avoid being alone with each other since that night, but a fragile truce had formed between them in the meantime.
Regardless of how they felt about each other, they had a job to do.
But he still didn’t know that she had seen him meet with Noelia a year ago.
And she still didn’t know when to play that card.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, stopping between two stalls. The low hum of voices was common in the marketplace, but these were shouts of dissent. “I think the Criterion is having another rally.”
Bas frowned. “You’re not still thinking you can get your things back, are you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with hearing them out,” Teo said, placing his hand between Bas’s shoulder blades and steering him toward the din. “I’ve always been curious about these rebels.”
Bas looked as if he wanted to protest, but Teo’s excitement was infectious.
It was almost funny, to watch a grouch like Bas be felled by Teo’s charm.
His shoulders were tense, his mouth twisted into a scowl, and yet he walked easily in the circle of Teo’s arm without further argument.
Trailing behind them, Marisol was almost able to ignore her own nerves.
After years of avoiding Criterion rallies, she was walking into the heart of one.
Marisol had always pictured chaotic disorganization, welks too young and too old drawn in by an idealistic message and a picture of a world that would never come to pass.
But the plaza they entered was packed with people, some carrying children on their shoulders so that they could see better.
There was a stage with a masked figure on it, and he pontificated into a speaking trumpet to the roar of an enraptured audience.
She looked around but saw no sign of the city guard.
Perhaps they had chosen this area because the marketplace would provide good cover for both the crowds and the noise.
“Every year, the Trident shows off their wealth and power in the Coronet, a wasteful reminder that we work ourselves to tatters while they enjoy luxuries we will never see,” the man ranted.
“The only government that truly serves the people is a government by the people. We have lived under the oppressive yoke of a Seaward monarchy and a Trident oligarchy, and what has it gotten us? Poverty and overcrowding and dwindling opportunities for ourselves and our children!”
“No peace!” the crowd screamed in response.
“We deserve equality! We deserve equity! We deserve an end to witch rule!”
Marisol couldn’t make out what they were screaming this time, except that it was louder than anything that had come before.
She had lost Teo and Bas in the throng, but instead of looking for them she searched for amber curls and hazel eyes.
The masked man on the stage was older than Rodrigo, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t here somewhere, listening or providing a lookout. If she could just talk to him—
She paused. And say what? She was still Lady Marisol Vinyet. He’d sooner spit on her than hear her out.
A pamphlet was shoved into her hands. JOIN THE CRITERION was emblazoned on the front, and a quick look at the contents revealed a list of crimes that the Trident had committed against welks in the last year.
Lost jobs, poor wages, separated families.
Starving parents forced to sell children with magical aptitude to one of the Houses, knowing they would never see them again.
Children abandoned to the orphanages as their parents worked themselves to death in witch homes, replaced as soon as they could no longer hold a broom.
People arrested for protesting, injured for complaining, their houses collapsed atop them to serve as an example to others.
Marisol swallowed as she crumpled the pamphlet in her hand. This was just another thing she had ignored in her fight to survive. It was no wonder Rodrigo had joined the rebels. She should have done the same.
“NO PEACE UNDER WITCH RULE!” someone shouted to her left, reminding her of exactly why she hadn’t.
The Criterion sought to improve the life of welks, which they currently did by stealing from the witch elite, but that was not the goal of this rally.
Rulers were never deposed peacefully. It would be another coup, another bloodbath.
As much as Marisol wanted the witches gone, the chaos of the days after the Seawards were killed still haunted her. Killing Teo, killing Bas—that felt like an ending. Closure from an ongoing nightmare. Killing the Trident felt more like a beginning. Like a war.
She pushed her way toward the edge of the crowd, switching directions when she caught sight of Bas’s neat Afro.
He was in conversation with one of the rebels, holding a pamphlet and frowning.
His eyes found her and widened. By the time she made it to his side, he had already sent the person away before she could get a proper look at them.
Marisol lifted her eyebrows. “What was that about?”
“Nothing.” Bas flicked the pamphlet over his shoulder. “Have you seen Teo?”
“Are you a rebel sympathizer?”
“Aren’t you ?”
Marisol’s eyes narrowed. Yes, the Criterion’s goals were similar to her own, but he knew that wasn’t what she meant. The fact that he was trying to divert her made her even more suspicious. “It just seems like you’re having quite a few clandestine conversations without involving the rest of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bas’s suspicious glare made Marisol want to smile. She had gotten under his skin.
“I just want to know how many secrets you’re keeping,” she said. “And from whom.”
The crowd roared around them, agreeing with whatever the masked man had said.
Bas was searching her face, clearly trying to read the signs of the trap she was prepared to spring, but she made sure to give nothing away.
She hadn’t been the subject of this much of his intense concentration since midsummer night, and it was a heady feeling.
That night, he had torn her into pieces and left her to put her world back together. Today, she felt strong, as if every crack in her had been reinforced with steel.
“I saw you with Noelia,” she continued, “at the regatta last year. But the two of you have spent this entire season pretending not to know each other. Now you’re having furtive conversations with rebels—the same rebels that she’s admitted to sympathizing with?
Are you going to tell me it’s a coincidence? ”
“NO PEACE UNDER WITCH RULE!”
“Are you going to tell me more pretty lies?” Marisol reduced the distance between them to almost nothing. Ever since she’d seen him again for the first time in years, they’d been pulled together like bees to a flower. She wanted to be the first one to sting. “Or should I ask Teo?”
“Leave him out of this,” Bas growled. “Or I’ll ask him a few questions about you .”
Whatever Bas was hiding, it was big enough to risk the plan over.
Marisol filed that away for later, trying to tamp down the delight she felt at seeing him emotional for once.
They were surrounded by people and yet it felt as if they were the only ones in the plaza, so close that she could count his eyelashes.
She felt alive in a way she only did when she was with him—destroying him, the way he had once destroyed her.
“Tell me the truth,” she murmured. “For once in our lives, be honest with me. Trust me. Let me help you.”
Bas’s eyebrows drew together. He looked conflicted, and Marisol bit the inside of her cheek so the pain would keep her focused.
She hadn’t meant to say that much. She hadn’t known how much it still bothered her that she’d never really known him at all.
It should have been another manipulation, but instead, as always, Bas had made her lose control, dredging up feelings that had been buried in a sea of rage.
“I—”
“The Castellan prince has joined us.” The masked man sounded as if he’d found a slug in his drink, so deep was his disgust. “Should we let him know what we think of Domingo forcing their problems upon us?”
“Don’t touch him!”
Marisol’s cry went unheeded as everyone surged to the right, where Teo was presumably standing. She elbowed her way through the crowd, catching sight of his curls just before he was knocked to the ground. Her dagger was in her hand a second later, but she didn’t draw blood. Not yet.
“I said don’t touch him ,” she shouted, throwing herself between the prince and the rebels.
Teo had rolled back onto his feet, so she passed him a dagger.
Welks circled them, their faces cold, their anger stoked by the masked rebel.
Marisol didn’t want to fight her own people, certainly not in defense of a prince she should hate as much as they did.
But she wouldn’t allow Teo to be hurt again. “Just let us leave.”
“What are you doing here?” said a man with a scar that ran from the side of his neck to the collar of his shirt. “Is this what passes for sport in Domingo?”
“We just wanted to understand,” Teo replied. “We wanted to hear your concerns, and—”
“And what? Help? You caused all of this!”
“THE GUARD IS COMING!”
Everything happened in a rush. The masked rebel disappeared from the stage, his speaking trumpet abandoned.
The crowd scattered, everyone running in a different direction.
Pamphlets were thrown, and enough dust was kicked up to make Marisol cough.
By the time her vision cleared and she had lowered her second dagger, the plaza was empty except for the makeshift stage and the trampled leaflets that read JOIN THE CRITERION .
Bas stood a few feet away, lowering his hands from his mouth. “The guard probably is coming,” he said with a shrug. “So we should probably leave, too.”
“You’re brilliant.” Teo laughed, a nervous hiccup of a sound, and hurried forward to throw his arms around Bas. “You scared me to death, but that was very clever.”
“ I scared you to death? Stop running off.”
Bas hugged him back, and, for the first time, Marisol felt annoyed by their closeness rather than left out.
Sometimes, they made her feel as if she didn’t exist, as if her relationships with each of them would never matter as much as their attachment to each other.
It shouldn’t have bothered her as much as it did, especially considering that their love was a key part of her revenge plan.
But she wanted that. And she wanted it with—
No. Careful.
Teo had dropped her dagger on his way to Bas’s side, so she recovered it and placed it back inside its holster. This gave her the opportunity to look away from their display of affection, to get her head on straight.
Bas had never answered her question, but he would be on edge now. Worried about what she would do next. Scared of what she would say and to whom. In his final days, that was what she wanted: emotional turmoil.
“We should finish shopping,” she said once she’d flattened her skirts back over her thighs. “Rally or no rally, Noelia won’t forgive us if we come empty-handed.”