Carolina wiped her mamá’s tears. She felt bad for making her mother uneasy and she understood the dread. She felt it whenever her papá, hermanos, and tíos left, too. But why should she have to be the one to stay back? Because she was born a woman?
Mamá rarely looked this tired. She was usually ready to battle Carolina into submission. Or simply pretend she didn’t notice when Carolina was up to something. Like the time Mamá caught her sneaking a gopher snake into the house to nurse it back to health after a rooster kicked the poor creature. Mamá had held in a smile and turned away when Carolina scampered by. This felt different. There was no fighting or turning a blind eye. Mamá was asking her to listen for a change.
The baby kicked again, hard, and Mamá winced.
“I will do as you wish,” Carolina said, rubbing Mamá’s belly.
“Thank you, mijita.”
An object on the side table caught Carolina’s attention.
“What is that?” she asked.
Mamá’s eyelids were already beginning to droop. “Hmm?”
Carolina reached over and plucked up the familiar dagger. The hilt was curved and had a single emerald stone forged into the tip.
“I found it in your papá’s things. I cleaned it up for him. It’s rather pretty, no?”
The blade gleamed in the candlelight. “Pretty indeed.”
“I believe it’s a lover’s blade,” Mamá said. “Usually, they come in pairs. The blades are given to a bride and groom for luck. Very rare to find one so intricate. Rarer still to find the set.”
This had been the dagger inside Vidal’s empty grave. Carolinahad wondered where Papá put it when he took it from her. She squinted. Where had she seen a dagger like this before? She stilled.
“May I…” Carolina stopped. Her mamá’s eyes had shut, and she was fast asleep.
Carolina silently eased off the bed. “I’m just going to borrow this blade,” she whispered. “I hope you don’t mind.”
As soon as she shut the door to her parents’ room, Carolina raced toward the last place she had seen a similar dagger. She took the steps leading to her abuelo’s room in twos. Her chest was heaving, battling against the corset she’d been forced to wear.
She burst through the door to Abuelo’s room and thrust open the armoire. Shoving aside her abuelo’s things, Carolina reached deep into the recesses of the dresser and found the cloth bundle. Heart thundering, she placed the gleaming blade in her hands on her abuelo’s bed, then unfurled the bundle.
A gasp escaped her. They were nearly identical. One blade was slightly larger. One had a ruby in the hilt while the other had an emerald. But aside from that, they were the same. The metal they were made from was so silver it almost appeared white, and star lilies had been etched into the spines of both blades. They were beautiful on their own, but together they seemed almost magical.
“Holy hells,” she whispered. These must’ve been Vidal’s and Alma’s. Their lover’s blades.
Carolina placed them on the bed beside each other and stared at them in the low light. Was this the tool Alma used to call upon the god of death? Lalo said the weapon used to appeal to Tecuani, to help create the first sediento, would be the only tool to break the curse.
There, lying on cotton sheets, might be the very thing that had brought destruction and death to Del Oro.
“Did you know what these were, Abuelito?” she wondered aloud.
Her brow furrowed.
The Fuenteses were nothing if not honorable. They were pillars of their small community. Beacons of integrity and pride. Her grandfather and father would not hold on to these blades knowing they could potentially destroy the monsters they were hell-bent on protecting the valley from. Would they?
She rushed toward Abuelito’s armoire. Surely there had to be something else hidden inside. A clue about what he knew. About why he had the blade in his closet rather than in the storeroom with many of their other family heirlooms.
Her fingers traced over the wood lining the walls of the dresser. She pressed on the right and left, but nothing gave way like the hidden compartments where they stuffed their training weapons often did. Carolina placed her palm on the rear panel. She shoved. Her eyes widened when she felt it spring ever so slightly and open a small crack.
His clothing blocked the panel from opening fully. Frantically, Carolina pulled out his shirts and jackets in handfuls and threw them behind her.
When everything was clear, she stuck her fingers into the crack and pried the panel open the rest of the way. A stack of papers and canvases tumbled out. Shakily, Carolina plucked the tattered canvas first. She turned it around and clamped her hand over her mouth.
The young woman in the painting had Carolina’s same round eyes, her same full lips and stubborn chin. Even their hairwas a similar shade of black. If Carolina didn’t know for certain it wasn’t, she might have believed she was gazing at a portrait of herself. But it was what was lying on the woman’s lap that had Carolina’s focus. The ruby-embellished lover’s blade.
“Alma,” Carolina whispered.
