“That’s not what I—” he says.
“Would you rather be back in your room with your new wife?” I say. “I’m so very sorry about that. My efforts to stop us both from getting murdered took you away from her.”
The look he gives me is wary. “Emanuela—”
“How did you two get on, by the way?” I say.
“Valentina and me? We just—”
“The conversations must have been scintillating,” I say. “Every conversation with you is so scintillating.”
“I—she—” He’s stammering hopelessly.
“Oh, and just how terrible was it?” I say.
“How terrible was what?” he says.
“Bedding her,” I say.
The look he gives me is pure horror, and I find myself relishing it.
“We didn’t—” he says. “Her betrothed went to the tower last week. She was— We were both—”
“You would have had to bed her eventually,” I say. “And cried the whole time, no doubt. What a nightmare.”
He flushes. “Why do you care? It’s not like either of us wanted… that.”
“I don’t care,” I assure him.
“Then why are we talking about it? We have more important—”
“Nobody wants that with you,” I say. “Nobody wants you at all. Do you even realize how pathetic your life is without me? What did you even do while I was in the tower? Hide in your room like a child? What would you have done with the rest of your miserable days?”
He’s not looking at me anymore.
“Well?” I demand.
He doesn’t answer me. But he doesn’t need to.
I didn’t belong in the watercrea’s tower. I know it. He knows it. Everybody should know it.
I get to my feet. I’m weak and shaking, but I keep myself upright through sheer force of will.
“I’m not sorry,” I say.
I’m not sorry about any of it.
Then I march off into the dark.
I make it around the next corner before my legs give out. I collapse, biting back my scream of frustration, and urge my body to crawl, but it won’t. I’m too hungry. I’m too thirsty. I’ve lost too much blood.
Ale creeps around the corner, lantern in hand. Without a word, he sits down across from me.
I crawl away.
“Emanuela—” he says.
When I’ve escaped the light of his lantern, I stop, curling up on my side. Maybe, in this exact moment, I’m not capable of sprinting off. But I’m trying to make a point.
The watercrea got what she deserved. It wasn’t like I killed her for no reason. It wasn’t like she was a person the way the rest of us are. She didn’t have family or friends. She didn’t have anyone. She just had a tower and magic and prisoners, and now all those prisoners are free. I’m free.
I’m not going to think about the sound she made when she hit the ground. I’m not going to think about the way her blood seeped out of her broken body like she was an ordinary person.
But now that I’m lying here in the dark, it’s all I can remember.
I curl tighter into myself. I have to stop shivering, or Ale is going to notice.
The watercrea wasn’t an ordinary person. She was just a thing holding our city captive—a thing that tried to kill me and my best friend. But she failed.
She’s gone. She can’t touch me anymore. And that’s what matters.
When I was very small, I was sick. I had fits—bad ones. I would seize up out of nowhere and black out and, apparently, thrash around and hurt myself. Paola carried me up and down the stairs to head off a fall. Ale surrounded me with pillows whenever we played on the floor. They found my sickness terrifying, but I mostly found it aggravating. I’d be in the middle of doing something important, like making an exhaustive list of Chiara Bianchi’s worst qualities to read out at her next party, when I’d feel funny and warm. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor with ink everywhere and my mamma standing over me, crying noisily.
I hated losing time. I hated that, no matter how much I pressed them, nobody ever properly described what my fits looked like. It was my body, and I wanted to know what it was doing without me.
When the fits got so bad I became bedridden, it didn’t strike me as anything more than another bothersome obstacle. I was used to feeling terrible and exhausted, so I assumed that I would just carry on my business from bed until it subsided again. One afternoon, I was sitting under my covers with an array of dolls in my lap. They were a gift from the House of De Lucia, known for their intricate porcelain sculpting. I was prying off the dolls’ beautiful heads and swapping them. It was a very involved ritual, so at first, I didn’t notice the commotion in the hall. Then my door opened to reveal one of the doctors who was always rotating in and out of my room. He was one of my least favorites. His beard was distractingly ugly.
“I believe you, Signor Ragno,” he was saying. “But you know how quickly they spread.”
My papá ran into the room after the doctor, and I sat up straighter. My papá was very busy. I usually didn’t see him until the evening.
“She doesn’t have any,” my papá was saying.
“I believe you,” the doctor said again, pulling on a pair of black gloves. “But it could happen at any moment—”
My papá dove in front of my bed.
“Of course you believe me,” he said. “Because it’s the truth, and there’s nothing more to be done. She’s engaged to the heir of the House of Morandi, you know.”
“I know,” the doctor said.
“What shall I tell them, then?” my papá said. “That you’re questioning the loyalty of both our houses to the city?”
I had no idea what was going on, but I held my
