Page 68 of The Familiar

“Hold on,” said Santángel, and then they were galloping through the gardens.

She thought they might just keep riding, past the hedges, past the gates, past Madrid.

But then Santángel wheeled his horse around. “You must stop them or they will only grow larger and stronger. They’ll enter the palace.”

“I don’t know how!” she cried.

“You do. You know you do. What do shadows need to thrive?”

Light. The very light she’d been running toward like a fool.

Santángel’s horse thundered toward the stage, and in the flames of the overturned torches, Luzia saw the shadow queen and her dragon, the demon that had been John Dee. They were larger now, taller than men, looming over the guards that tried to skewer them.

Luzia didn’t want to speak the words. She knew what would come next.

“You must,” said Santángel.

She didn’t bother to shape the phrase in her mind or to try to disguise it. She drew in a long breath, and she let the words sing free. “En lo eskuro, es todo uno.”

The fires collapsed into ash as if doused by a great wave, the lanterns, every glowing window of the palace. There was only black night.

The words echoed in Luzia’s ears. In the darkness, all is one.

CHAPTER 32

For a moment, everything was still, as if the world had been snuffed out like a flame. Then Luzia heard people calling to each other, shouting for help. The shine of candles appeared in the great house’s windows. Guards began to light torches.

Luzia slid down off the horse, happy to have her feet on the ground once more. Her dress was wet from the grass and she knew she was bleeding. Her heart still sounded too loud in her chest and she kept her hand on the horse’s flank, steadying herself, waiting for something to leap out at her from the flickering shadows.

“The magic is undone,” said Santángel.

Sitting on his great black horse, he looked like some kind of wicked spirit, risen from the depths of hell. Perhaps all the stories were wrong and only the devil could best his demons. Except she was the one who had driven them out.

“They said I would face Satan himself,” she said. “This can’t have been part of the trial?”

“No. This was someone seizing an opportunity.”

“You there!” shouted a guard walking toward them, a torch held aloft. “Return to the palace. The hopefuls are to be confined to their quarters.”

“You must go,” said Santángel.

“Stay,” she whispered, terrified, and ashamed of that terror.

“I can’t go with you now. I need to learn what I can before anyone has had a chance to shape a convincing lie. If someone attempts to harm you, use the wall of thorns. They can defend you as easily as they did a wooden Christ.”

“It might kill someone.”

“Good. I will come to you.”

“Swear it.”

He looked down at her, his eyes glinting like coins. “This promise I can keep.”

Luzia nodded and he nudged the horse’s sides with his heels.

The guards had cleared a path to the doors near the eastern terrace. Smoke still rose over remnants of the stage, and the platform where the holy men had been seated had collapsed completely, parts of it smashed to kindling. A horse lay on its side, its big body unmoving, its belly split by deep, bloody furrows that might have been claw marks. On the terrace, a man dressed in the cream livery of La Casilla sat, legs splayed out in front of him, eyes stunned and glassy. He’d lost one of his shoes and his left sleeve had been torn almost completely off. There was a smear of blood across his forehead. From somewhere on the grounds she could hear shouting.

The guard tugged hard on her arm to keep her moving and she felt the words of the refrán tickling the roof of her mouth, but she forced herself to tamp down her fear. Someone was going to be blamed for the disaster of this night, and she had no desire to earn more attention for herself. She let him drag her inside and up the stairs. She was cold now that some of her panic had receded, and her mind was trying to make sense of what she’d seen. Her hands remembered the texture of the shadow on her fingers, how wrong it had felt, the misery and revulsion that had poured through her.