Epilogue
N IGHT HAD FALLEN ON S ANTESA BY THE TIME M ARISOL Vinyet finished her story.
Outside her bedroom at the top of the tower, the only structure on the otherwise uninhabited island, darkness reigned.
There was no moon to obscure the splash of stars that coated the navy sky, but thin clouds drifted lazily past the barred window.
Dawn was minutes away, the sun a glowing line at the horizon, but all was still.
Marisol hadn’t looked up from the hands that she had folded in her white cotton gown.
He hadn’t moved from his place by the desk in front of a small notebook that wasn’t nearly as full as it should be.
He’d been dangerously invested.
Even after she stopped speaking, Marisol Vinyet’s words echoed through the small room, hovering like miasma between them.
He had known that the story she would tell could never match the ones the world told about her, but she had exceeded his expectations.
He understood, now, how one girl could become a legend in just a few months.
She was a magnetic force, a persistent threat, an unrelenting survivor.
Of course she was here because she wanted to be.
They were both here because they wanted to be.
He closed his notebook and leaned forward. “I have one last question.”
“Which is?”
“Are you sorry?” He studied her carefully, every angle of her face, every twitch of her muscles, waiting for her body to answer him before she did. “Are you sorry for any of it?”
Marisol smiled, and it was not a friendly smile.
This smile was like the slow creep of mist across the harbor at sunrise, gorgeously threatening, unnervingly lovely.
She looked less like a girl and more like one of the old gods, waiting for the people who turned away from worshipping them to realize the catastrophic nature of their mistakes.
“I’ve had so much time to sit here and think about it all… and the only thing I’m sorry for is that I’m here and my enemies are not,” she said. “My country is still in chains and so am I. If I could do it again, I would be smarter. Angrier. I would make them sorry.”
Outside, the sun began to rise, painting the sky blood orange.
Birdsong filled the silence between them, followed by the sleepy sound of the change of guard.
He would be expected to return to Coventry, to write the article or book that he’d claimed to be interested in, and to leave Marisol to her fate at the end of a noose.
She had told her story on her own terms, and now it no longer belonged to her but to him.
He could make her immortal at the stroke of a pen.
But she had spent enough of her life being told who she was.
“Before you go,” Marisol said, rising from the bed. “Let me get you some more tea. I’d hate for you to fall asleep on your travels.”
“I’m not sure I could sleep after all of that, but thank you.”
She crossed to the door, knocking until a guard appeared to tend to her request. While they waited, she watched the sun rise steadily through the window and he watched her as if she would disappear if he took his eyes off her. It had happened twice before, after all.
Something shattered in the hallway.
The sky was now robin’s-egg blue around the climbing sun. From here, Soltura Harbor was in view, a distant strip of white sand and green hills, multicolored boats dipping by the brown docks. Beyond it, Coventry was waking to screams, the same screams that were erupting from the tower beneath them.
In Domingo, King Alvaro Castellan was enacting his plan, cleared by his small council in exchange for power of their own and scheduled for the morning of Marisol Vinyet’s execution.
Every witch with a Crown Coven mark was being drained of their magic—a painful process, if the sound of it was any indication.
They would be at the Castellans’ mercy, subject to trials at their leisure.
They would have to do anything King Alvaro asked if they wanted the hope of getting their magic back.
They had proven their loyalty to Domingo, and, in so doing, had become subjects of the Castellans once more.
Just not in the way they’d been promised.
As the screams began to die down, he released his hold on the magic that had gotten him this far.
The illusion rippled and faded as he approached her, his reflection in the windowpane returning to the face he knew well: his square jaw, his brown eyes, his sharp cheekbones.
His hair, usually cut close, had grown out into a short Afro, and he was dressed in military black because he knew how to fight in these clothes.
In the reflection, he saw Marisol smile. “Hello, Bas.”
“Ready to go?” he asked.
She turned around, and it took every ounce of training to keep his breath from catching at the way her eyes sparkled when she caught the light.
There were still lies and pain between them, but there was this, too: this irresistible pull to her side and the knowledge that he was exactly where he was meant to be.
She was stubborn and dishonest and manipulative and hot-tempered, but she was also loyal and generous and loving and brave.
And she was his. At least, he hoped that she still wanted to be.
Her gaze had softened in the time it took him to finish his assessment. “After all of this, let’s talk. Really talk.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I’d like that.”
A guard stepped into the room. Bas pinned them to the wall, smashing their head against the stones until they were crimson with blood.
Marisol ran ahead, because there was nothing in this room that she owned or even wanted to keep.
He heard pained grunts and loud curses as he followed her down, killing the men that she’d left alive.
These witches were welks now, but they could still raise the alarm when they awoke.
Bas was used to making the ruthless choice.
Wasn’t that how they had all gotten here?
They fought their way to the beach. Marisol had kept any sword or knife she found particularly useful, and she was a tornado of blades that left nothing standing in her wake.
Bas wanted to watch her fierce beauty, but there would be plenty of time for that later.
He efficiently slit throat after throat, until there was nothing between them and the boat but sand and low tide.
Marisol wiped her weapons clean on a nearby guard’s body and then stole his sheath and holster. Bas turned away so she could clip it to her thighs, putting his own knives away with blood still smeared onto them. As long as they were still sharp, he wasn’t particular.
“What’s happened since I’ve been away?” she asked. She walked toward the boat in her blood-soaked dress, looking like a phantom and moving like a queen. “Where’s Noelia? Where’s Teo?”
“They’re waiting for us,” Bas answered, untying the boat from the dock.
They would have to sail around Coventry and enter from somewhere other than Soltura Harbor, but he had rations and supplies in his bag and contacts on the shore who would smuggle them in.
“Teo has to return to Domingo soon, before his father gets suspicious, but the three of us have come up with a plan that will hopefully give Coventry back to the people it was stolen from.”
Marisol tilted her head, a smile crossing her face. “You freed me from jail to join a revolution?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Not at all.” She bounced with the boat as they moved out onto the waves. “No more lies, right?”
“No more lies. The only way we’re going to win is if we all work together.”
She was looking at the water instead of him, her eyebrows drawn together.
He wondered if she was thinking of the last time they’d met, when he’d been powerless to resist her despite his feelings for and loyalty to Teo.
Or perhaps she was thinking of Gaspar Ruiz and how he’d left her for dead even after she’d become his ward and his weapon.
Her story had been equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating, and he knew, despite her present calm, that a river of wrath ran through her blood.
He just hoped she was finally directing it in the right ways.
She met his gaze at last, seemingly coming to a resolution. “I’m ready. I just have one request.”
“Which is?”
Her eyes brightened at the echo of her previous words.
In those eyes, he could see a precarious future: bodies dropped and blood shed, empires fallen and power stolen.
He could see the potential for creation and destruction that she held inside of her, like the incarnation of a change of fate.
The boat was filled by her presence, and for a moment he wondered if he was traveling with the greatest thing to ever happen to Coventry or the worst.
In that moment, he decided it was worth the risk. Change was never easy, and Coventry needed to change. It was a country on its last breaths, and the only way to save it was to start anew.
Then, her face shifted in small ripples.
Her chin extended, her curls thinned, and her eyes lightened from black to umber.
Full lips and a thick nose. Neat eyebrows and small ears.
It was a face that he hadn’t seen in months, and, though it was not as purposefully stunning as the one she’d crafted, it was perfect. Because it was real .
As if she could read his mind, Cataleya Donant grinned. “Call me Leya.”