Lush jasmine vines had grown up one side of Ignacio’s childhood home. Whenever they lay on the rooftop, she would breathe in greedily while the flowers were in bloom. One day, she had found a vial of perfume under her pillow that smelled exactly like them. The note on the paper dove lying beside itsaid:Scents carry memories. Now you can think of our roof time chats as often as you’d like.
“Don’t change the subject, Ignacio,” she snapped. “Why did you desert the Blackbirds?” She pointed at him. “You owe me the truth for covering for you.”
Ignacio lifted his hands in surrender as if her finger were a weapon.
“Okay.” He took a calming breath. “After you…after…When I left for the Blackbirds, I poured myself into my training. I moved up in the cadet rankings rather quickly. Quick enough that by the end of the first term, my troop was called into action to assist in a small battle across enemy lines. Keara ordered us to infiltrate a pueblo. She said known leaders of the Dos Palos infantry were hiding there. We did as we were told. We destroyed the town.”
He gulped. His thumb ran over his mother’s ring. It once fit so perfectly on Esmeralda’s own finger.
“There were no infantry leaders in that pueblo. The only weapons the people living there carried were the ones they used for hunting. And I just…I stood there in shock as families screamed and begged for help. I did nothing.” His eyes grew distant as if seeing it all replay in his mind. “The others celebrated our overtaking, but I threw up. I was keeled over in the back of some building when I spotted Keara and her closest soldiers sneaking up the hillside behind the town. I followed them. It went against our orders, which were to stand guard, but I didn’t care. I had to know why we had just massacred these people.”
Esmeralda felt like she might be sick herself listening to thisstory.
“Keara and her soldiers trampled through a field of purple flowers. Then they started laughing and cheering and patting each other on the back. I couldn’t get a clear view, but I could hear them splashing through water. I saw them fill satchel after satchel with whatever was inside the stream. That’s when I realized, the war was not about border control and safety. It was about finding whatever was in that water. It was about stealing from the land and people of Dos Palos. They killed for whatever they stuffed into those bags.Ilet people get killed for it.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
He blinked at her as if that thought had never occurred to him. He was forever wondering and worrying over how he could’ve done better. How he could be perfect. His bastard father was to blame.
Knowing how thick Ignacio’s skull was, she said again, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“But I didn’t do anything to stop it. And when I tried to figure out what was in those satchels, it was too late. Keara had already fled with them in her armored car.”
He scowled at the floor. His jaw muscle flexed and unflexed. Pain, true pain, flittered over his handsome face.
The urge to wrap her arms around him and use her warmth to soothe him was so overwhelming it hurt. But she didn’t dare move. The fear of him rejecting her touch was stronger than the ache inside her chest.
“Whenever I shut my eyes, I see the fallen families. Their anguished faces. The babes in their arms going still. I hear their cries for mercy. They haunt my dreams. And I deserve it. I can’t take back what happened that day, but I aim to stop more dayslike that from happening. I deserted the Blackbirds and my father. I joined the Defiant.”
She’d heard of the underground collective that printed unfavorable stories about the king and his men from Gabriel’s beau, Javier. He planned on joining up with them once his term with Carnival Fantástico was over. It was one of the reasons Gabriel adored him so much. Javi wanted to help people. He wanted to end the war as well. Rumors swirled that the queen herself was funding the resistance on account of her disdain for the man she was forced to marry and the laws he had enforced.
“Two nights ago, I snuck into my father’s home. I was trying to find hard evidence of his transgressions. Something the Defiant could use to expose what is happening in Dos Palos. We believe that if we can get the truth out to soldiers, to citizens, to lawmakers who really care, we can make a difference. If we can show that my father and King Amadeo fabricated this entire war for their own personal gain, people will revolt. We can force them to end their reigns of greed and terror.”
She sighed. “The truth doesn’t matter, Ignacio. People are going to believe what they want to believe. More like, they’ll believe what the king and his cronies want them to believe. Cathedrals are sprouting up in King Amadeo’s honor everywhere. And with the upper class growing wealthier because of the spoils of war, nothing will change. Us regular people will never have enough power to change the tides.”
“We have to try anyway. When I was in my father’s office, I found crumpled flyers for the carnival. It wasn’t the flyers that caught my attention. There were notes written to my father onthe back. Notes asking him to visit. Telling him that he and the author of the notes needed to have a chat. Whoever wrote those notes knows his secrets. I came to the carnival to investigate. And also, to find out who had access to that special ink.”
“Well, you already know it wasn’t me. The cards I use for fortune telling show up inside my cabinet every day.”
“From whom?” he asked.
Her irritation spiked. “I don’t know!”
“You don’t find that odd? Someone enters your wagon without your consent?” Now his voice was rising to match hers.
“It’s nothing new to me, Ignacio. I lived in your father’s home from the age of ten to nearly eighteen. People were always in and out of my room.Youcame in yourself, leaving little things when I wasn’t around.”
He winced. “I am sorry for it.”
That stung.
He must have caught on because he shook his head. “I’m sorry that I never thought about what an invasion of privacy that was. I should have asked first.”
“No,” she said simply. “I never minded with you.Youwere my home, not some stuffy room under the stairwell.”
His lips parted, and he blinked at her.
The air grew thick between them as if she’d stepped into the butterfly exhibit. Only, the little creatures flapping around Ignacio and Esmeralda now were all their past pains. And they weren’t nearly as pretty.
