The boy from that night at the villa seemed determined to irritate Malina.

"Teach me," he prompted her for the ninth time that day- not that she was counting. "There has to be a way to learn."

The afternoon light was beginning to wane. The sun was descending beneath the walls of Muros, sky orange and red and a curious sort of pink. Malina made her way through the streets, the boy at her heels. People were closing up shop for the night, heading home until morning.

"You speak Tondan, don't you?"

"I'm speaking Tondan now, aren't I?"

She scoffed. "Then you'll understand me when I say to shut up and stop asking me to teach you. You're not the right kind of person. You have the most terrible accent, by the way."

"But-"

"And for the love of the gods, stop following me! If you ruin this job for me, I swear I'll drown you."

He didn't reply. Malina huffed.

"Can you even understand me?" she asked, turning on her heel to observe him.

The boy blinked, amber eyes nearly the same shade as the sunset. "Speak slower."

She let out a magnificent groan and began to walk away again.

"What kind of job do you have?" he called after her. When she didn't respond, he called out for her again. "Girl! Head of fire! Answer me!"

"My name is not girl," she hissed back. "Nor is it head of fire. Gods. How did you even find your way into this city in the first place without a work permit? Vesennans aren't allowed to live here."

"I am not a Vesennan," the boy told her fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that Malina's steps faltered. "I am from Altan."

Malina tried to call to memory her knowledge of the Vesennan continent. It took her back to her days with uncle Paolo in the rundown temple she grew up in. He would point at a map with all the names obscured and ask her to name the country, the city, the river, the sea. She'd been good at it once, but she was rusty now. Besides, thinking of her uncle always brought up unwanted feels of guilt, and so more often than not she chose to forego thinking of him at all.

"Right. The land above the Red Wastes. I know of it." She glanced back at him warily. "That explains those braids." She pointed at the strands of his hair that he had so deftly woven together, envious of how the strands shone. She could never achieve such luster with her own hair. "Take them out before someone thinks you're a savage."

He glared. "I am not a savage."

"Try telling everyone else that," she muttered, gesturing at the passersby. They snickered and laughed behind their hands at the boy's odd clothing and long hair. "The least you could do would be to cut that mop off."

"Altanese men do not cut their hair-"

"You're not a man. You're a boy. Be reasonable and leave me alone."

The boy caught up to her before she could turn away again, putting a pale hand near her shoulder. Malina jerked away before he could touch her.

"Listen," he said, bending to look her in the eye. "I need your help."

His tone caught her off guard. "What could you possibly need my help with?" He'd pinned her down with no effort last night. In her mind, that made him nearly invincible.

He leaned in, beads in his braided hair clicking together with his movement. "Revenge."

Malina blinked. Rolled her eyes, though he'd only be able to see the one not covered up with an eyepatch. Walked on.

"Please." He was at her side in an instant, keeping stride with the help of his long legs. "I know your secret, so you should know mine. My name is Khenbish Yul. I am a bastard."

Malina kept walking. She could spot the Perez residence up ahead, the lights from within spilling out onto the cobblestone. Horse-drawn kalesa- carriages- were pulled up close to the entrance, a sign that the guests had already begun to arrive. Her guts twinged. She was late.

"Are you listening to me, girl?"

She grit out, "My name is not girl. I won't tell you again."

"So you are listening." His tone glistened with pride. "Good. As I was saying... I am a bastard. My father is a very important man." The pride seemed to dull. "He killed my mother. I would like to see him dead, too."

Malina took a long look at Khenbish Yul. He didn't look motherless, but then again, neither did she. She felt a sudden surge of pity for the Altanese boy which she quickly tamped down; she never got anywhere by pitying people.

"If you're a bastard," she began, "why do you have a surname?"

Yul's smile was bitter. "We Altanese use our father's names before our own. If we don't have a father, we use our mother's names."

"So your mother's name is Khenbish."

"No. Now that she is gone, I am called Khenbish. It means son of no one."

Malina stopped by the Perez residence, mouth agape as she regarded Yul. He was at once melancholy and vengeful- a terrible combination on anyone else, she was sure- and yet, on him, it tugged at a part of her that was forlorn and abandoned. Orphaned.

Alone.

She was about to speak again when someone called her name.

"Señorita Malina!"

Malina jumped. That sharp voice never failed to startle her. "Señora Guidote. I..."

"Save it." The woman's gaze was stony. She was a mestiza like Malina, and old enough to be her grandmother. She herded Malina into the doorway, closing her away from Yul. "I expected you to be on time today. I put my faith in you. You are lucky, child, that I have a soft place in my heart for mestizas like you. Get in there and get to work before I cast you out with no pay!"

Malina's neck twisted to look at Yul one last time. He stood there, tall and elegant, the slope of his amber eyes regal.

"I will wait for you," he told her. "I will be right here."

That was the last she saw of him before Señora Guidote shut the door.

*

Her insides are cold, but warmth presses on her chest, pressure building underneath her skin. Her lungs burn beneath her ribcage. Her heart beats a small, erratic rhythm.

The pressure grows. The warmth on her skin spreads all over, and it feels like her chest is collapsing in, pricking into her lungs, her heart, splintering her bones. She would have screamed if she could even breathe. Her hands don't want to clench into fists. Her toes won't curl. Her body won't tense. She lies there, letting herself break.

The pressure moves, giving her a brief reprieve from the pain. Something soft meets her lips with a blinding precision, and air flows into her dead lungs. Her heart begins to thud. Thud. Thud. Thudthudthudthudthudthud-

Quick compressions on her broken chest. Swift breaths of air into her lungs. Again and again.

When she's sure she can't take it any longer, her body convulses of its own accord. She vomits water onto the ground beside her, retching until she can breathe again. She lies back, trembling, the humid air tasting so good in her mouth.

Everything aches. Her limbs. Her back. Her chest, most of all. Even her lips haven't escaped the pain. Something soft had met them repeatedly earlier- but what?

A pale face looms above her own. She squints at it.

"Yul," she croaks. "Yul..."

Her vision glazes over, and the face disappears.

*

She knows the warmth first. The softness at her back. The soothing comfort that surrounds her body.

She knows the biting rings around her wrists next. The plush blankets that cover her body are but a pretense; they are many, and they are strong. She couldn't rock them off if she tried. Her body doesn't want to listen, settling for lethargy instead of movement.

"Who is Yul?" a quiet voice asks.

Her heart moves too sluggishly to skip a beat at the sudden question. In the thick slew of sludge in her mind, the only reply she can choke out is, "No one."

The voice is silent for a while. In the quiet, there's something scratching incessantly.

Malina dares to open her eyes. She stares up at a ceiling cast with flickering shadows. Nothing will come back to her. Where was she before now? Who had she been with?

"Where am I?" she inquires.

"Currently," the voice says coolly, "you are within the Citadel. I would've kept you down in the cells, but..." It pauses. "You could've gotten dreadfully sick, and you'd be of no use to me then."

Her stomach forces itself into knots. The Citadel. She's in the Citadel. Home of the Sentinels of Migos. The biting rings around her wrists are starting to make sense, the placating weight of the blankets above her body even more so.

The scratching continues. "Who are you?" asks the voice.

She doesn't answer. Her guts are writhing in her abdomen. She's sure that if she opens her mouth, all her innards will spew out instead of words.

"Who are you?" the voice prompts.

She closes her eyes again, scrunching them shut. Maybe this is just a bad dream. Maybe if she tries hard enough, she'll wake with her uncle at her side, ready to advise her on what to do next.

The scratching pauses. Footsteps replace it until they stop abruptly by her side.

Wake up, she tells herself. Gods, wake up!

She opens her eyes, but it's not her uncle that stands beside her.

Dark eyebrows. A pointed, pale jaw. Eyes like blue fire- the same eyes she saw at the hospice.

She draws on what little strength she has to pull what she's sure are the manacles against her wrists open. All she succeeds in doing is splitting her own skin, warm blood trickling into her cupped palms.

It all comes rushing back to her.

She nearly screams.

He was quiet before, this boy made of ice, but he's quieter now. "It would be easier if you would speak to me. I'd imagine that you aren't too comfortable."

She jumped to get away from him, but gods, she didn't think he'd follow her in!

He reaches down for something. A key winks in one of his gloved hands.

"If you answer my questions, I could be persuaded to let you out of those shackles. And before you even think about it..." He leans in. "There's no one in this room but you and me. You can't do what you did to Alejandro Lopez to anyone else."

Malina chews at the inside of her cheek, nerves alight and humming with anxiety. One look at his glowing eyes makes the world sway.

"You're going to kill me," she whispers. "Aren't you."

He stares at her for a beat. Then he shakes his head. "No."

"Why?"

"I could've let you die in the Dividir, you know," he informs her. "But I didn't. Besides, I don't execute people unless I've been ordered to." For the first time since he's spoken to her, his voice isn't as icy, as indifferent, as it was before. It seems to be retreating inside of his throat; he's swallowing it down along with his words like he's ashamed of them. "His Majesty is meeting with the king of Leisenstracht. He doesn't know about you. He has the final say in all pending executions."

"I'm a pending execution?"

He shakes his head again. "Like I said, he doesn't know about you. Nobody knows about you, really, except for me and my substitute. And speaking of my substitute, maybe you know him. Blond hair. Brown eyes. Freckles. Too kind for his own good, sometimes."

The mention of blond hair calls to mind the night she first saved Darl from a pursuing group of Sentinels. Her lips remember the substitute's name before her mind does.

"Eden Tudor."

The young Head Sentinel inclines his head. "Do you know what you did to him?"

"I didn't kill him."

"No. Should I thank you for that?"

"If you're so inclined-"

"I'm not. You rendered him unconscious for hours. The strings of him were so full of vitality before. Now they're all frayed away. You didn't kill him, but he could've died. That's why..." He pauses, seeming to struggle with himself. "That's why I don't understand why I saved you tonight. I don't know why I bothered."

Malina remembers why she jumped: to get away. She didn't expect to be wrenched down by the current. The Dividir looked so placid on its surface, but underneath, the water was a maelstrom. Now that she's thinking on it, she does recall him being yanked in with her, and the cold, cutting water that separated them once they both went under.

Quietly, she says, "I don't know why you did either."

A full minute passes before the boy finally withdraws, face drawn into a careful, expressionless mask.

"You remind me of someone," he admits. "I don't know who, exactly. I know that I've seen your face somewhere before."

Malina turns her head away, her nose close to the pillow. It smells curiously of pine needles.

"I've never seen you before," she mumbles.

"And I'm sure we've never met," he replies.

"Cut the pretense," rasps Malina. "What are you going to do? Imprison me to await sentencing when the king arrives? Gut me when he orders you to? Take revenge on me for harming your beloved substitute?"

"Beloved?"

"Answer me."

She hears him walk away, taking a seat somewhere across the room. He's quiet for some time.

Then, with a small sigh: "I'm not going to do anything to you."

Malina's head whips over. The little movement makes her dizzy. She sees the room before her in twos, then threes, then fours. A roaring hearth here. A sturdy desk and chair there, upon which the Head Sentinel sits, straight-backed and still. Nothing hangs on the walls. Everything is clean. Utilitarian. Strictly and completely formal.

"What?"

"I brought you here because I wanted to know why you did it."

"Why I did... what?"

One of his black eyebrows twitches. "Why you helped that boy- not once, but three times now. Why you felt it was necessary to fray my substitute in the process. Why you think you, of all people, should be queen."

Her guts twist into even tighter knots. "I don't want to be queen."

"Then who was it that stole Juan Cortez's strings away? Another girl in this city who can miraculously touch the weave just as you do?" He darts a brief glance at her, the look of his glowing cobalt eyes just as startling as it was the first time she saw them. "I didn't get to this position by being ignorant. Tell me the truth. I can see if you lie. I want you to know that."

"But I don't want to be queen," she insists.

The boy narrows his eyes. "Was it you. That's all I want to know."

"Why would I tell you that?"

"Because I could throw you down into the bowels of this place and force you to rot away." The lack of conviction, of inflection, of simple emotion in his words doesn't make his threat any less terrifying. "All I'm asking you to do is answer my questions. We can worry ourselves over the particulars later."

Malina stares at him. Now that she's looking at him- really looking at him- she can see all the details she didn't notice earlier. Everything about his face is angular, from his sharp cheekbones to the point of his chin. Even his eyebrows are arched, the ends of them tilting upwards towards his temples. His nose is perfectly patrician. Not a freckle marks his skin. His eyes are such a vivid blue, even beneath the glow, that they almost hurt to look at.

The thing that takes her aback the most, however, is what he reminds her of. Blazing brass eyes. Incense. An eagle clamped in the jaw of a much larger animal.

She hears lola Diwa's voice in her ears. Beware the wolf.

"Unshackle me."

"No. I told you that if you answered my questions, I might be willing to-"

"I don't care what you're willing or unwilling to do!" Malina exclaims, voice breaking. "Let me out of these things, or I won't tell you anything!"

He just stares at her for a long moment. Malina stares back, never wavering, gritting her teeth until her jaw aches.

The boy stands, brandishing that same key. He strides towards her on his long legs, hesitating only momentarily before taking her by the shoulder and hoisting her into a sitting position.

"I should've let you drown," he says, ever so softly.

Malina trembles at the weight of his hand on her shoulder, of the feeling of human contact. She can count the times someone has ever touched her, including her own uncle, on two hands. This boy must have the same affliction; she looks over her shoulder to watch him push the key into the lock of her manacles, but he's quite frozen, his hand tightening over her collarbone.

The sight of him touching her, even the thought of it, makes her breathless. She edges her shoulder from him until his hand drops away. As if remembering himself, he unlocks her shackles, taking them and the key with him as he withdraws. Perhaps as an afterthought, he tosses her a handkerchief, folded into a tidy square. When it lands in her lap, she takes it, pressing it to the smarting cuts on her wrists.

She catches lines of black embroidery. Curious, she angles the handkerchief toward the light. In the corner, it reads VJHC, with the C in red.

He settles into his chair again, watching her. "I didn't think you'd get hurt."

Sarcastically, she murmurs, "It was no fault of yours." But to her surprise, his face softens at her words. She huffs, head still swimming, and asks, "Don't you have something to do? Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

He points at her. "You're in my bed."

The scent of those pine needles lingers in her nose. What would an Edeiran boy, probably born and bred in Migos, be doing smelling like pine needles?

"Oh, my apologies. I'll just climb out of it."

"Don't," he says all too quickly. "You might still get pneumonia."

She almost scoffs. Does he have no concept of sarcasm? Then again, now that he's mentioned it... she realizes that she's shaking all over. She tugs the blankets closer to her body, but stops short.

"My clothes."

"They were waterlogged," he informs her. "I couldn't leave you in them."

"So you undressed me."

"I didn't molest you, if that's what you're thinking." For the first time, there's something almost indignant in his tone. "I assure you, I have no interest in the female form." His voice deadens. "That, among other things, was taken from me a long time ago."

"But these are women's clothes," Malina remarks. That much is evident from the frills and lace. "Women's underclothes."

"They were for a friend. She doesn't need them now."

How kind of you, she wants to say, but she fears he'll just take her words for truth again.

"Friends don't gift friends underthings. Lovers do."

He grips the armrests of his chair, knuckles turning white. "I'm sure you can see that I'm in no position to have any sort of physical relationship with anyone. It would be-"

"Disastrous." Malina bows her head. "Yes. I know."

"Do you."

"Better than anyone."

He releases the armrests, an understanding passing between them. "Will you answer my questions now?"

"It depends on what you ask. I could always not tell you."

He doesn't address it. His first question: "Why did you help that Tondan boy? What were you hoping to gain?"

"Gain?" Malina gives him a quizzical look. "He's Tondan. I'm Tondan. I couldn't let him be killed for a petty crime like theft. He only wanted to help his sister." She glances away, her eyes burning. "And now he's dead."

"You speak this language well for a Tondan."

"And yet, for a Tondan," she tells him, masking her grief, "learning Edeiran is a necessity. You assimilate or you are tossed aside. Blancos have no time for you otherwise."

"But you're a mestiza."

"I'm surprised it took you this long to mention it. Would you have allowed me in this room with you if I weren't?"

He's silent. She fixes him with a fierce glare, only to hear him murmur, "Yes. I would have."

She gapes. "Well," she sputters, recovering, "most people wouldn't."

His second question comes as abruptly as his first one. "Did you intend to kill my substitute?"

"If I wanted him dead, he would have been. I just wanted Darl to get away." She recalls the look of Eden Tudor, the warmth of his brown eyes. He reached toward her, worried for her for some benign reason. The guilt washes over her again, just as it did that night. "I didn't want to hurt him. He didn't deserve it."

"Then what of Juan Cortez?" he presses. "You condemned an innocent man to die."

"He wasn't innocent!" Malina swings her legs over the side of the bed, and though the room spins, she stares the Head Sentinel in his damned glowing eyes until she swears she'll keel over. "I saw him kill his Tondan aid and throw his body into the sea! Does that sound innocent to you?" Malina's rage dies in her as soon as she finishes speaking. Gods, she's just admitted to the worst crime on her list: having Juan Cortez sneak into the palace in search of a king to kill. She presses her lips together, digging her fingers into the sheets beneath her.

Mercifully, the boy doesn't ask her of it. Instead he inquires, "And I suppose the nurse at the hospice that you killed was off on a rampage, killing Tondans left and right?"

Malina looks away. "No. But she was cruel. Crueler than you know. She would've let me die. My life... it meant nothing to her."

"So you killed her."

"I didn't want to," she whispers.

"Did you not want His Majesty dead, either?"

Malina looks up. The Head Sentinel lists his head, observing her with his unblinking gaze.

"Oh, you thought I would forget about it." He taps the side of his head. "I'm not the type of person to forget things so easily."

She turns up her nose in a stubborn show of refusing to answer him. What would it do for her to tell the truth to the second most powerful man in the country? No- he's not a man. He's a boy.

A boy that could ruin her.

Besides, she's only told one person her story. Her motives. Her destiny. And as stupid as it sounds to her own ears, it hadn't sounded stupid to Yul. He was entranced by her tale, determined to make something of her. He told her they would do it together. He promised that they would take the world by storm.

Like a fool, Malina believed him.

"Is it because you think that you're the only person in this world capable of running a country?" he asks her. "Is it because you can control anyone and anything that you decided you wanted the Edeiran throne? To what end?"

She stares at her bare feet. "You would never understand."

"King Miguel has done everything for this country," he says. "What could you do for it?"

"Maybe nothing," Malina confesses.

She sees his shadow on the floor move when he stands, sees his shiny black shoes when he stops in front of her.

"Then answer one more question for me."

Malina tilts her head up. She didn't think he'd be so close. He's close enough that, if she wanted to, she could count each and every one of his thick, dark eyelashes, or pinpoint exactly where the flecks of gray in his irises start and the seemingly endless expanse of cobalt begins. She sees the shadow of stubble on his face, kept closely shaved. She watches him watch her, watches him stare at her right eye, uncovered and more brilliantly silver than the polished buttons on his coat.

"Are there others like you out there?" He leans in closer still. "Others that are... disconnected? Others that touch the weave as you do?"

Malina plants her feet on the floor, standing. Even at her full height, she doesn't even begin to be eye level with this boy. And though she stands, bringing them close enough to feel each other's breath on their skin, he does not move away. Does not draw back. Does not allow air to close between them, not for a second.

"There is no one in this world like me," she tells him. "No one at all."

There's a grave set to his jaw. He acknowledges her admission like one might acknowledge the death of someone close to them. He nods once, reserved, and turns away to stand by the fire.

Malina allows herself to exhale, putting a hand over her heart- the same hand that still clutches this boy's handkerchief. The same handkerchief stained with her blood.

Again, she levels a curious gaze at it. He'd given it to her without hardly a thought. Her, a mestiza, lower than him because of the indio blood in her veins. While Clara and the nurses at the hospice, as well as the Sentinel that let her in, looked at her blood like it was something disgusting they might scrape off their boot, this boy carelessly tossed her a possession of his, something embroidered with his own initials.

That curious gaze goes to the boy. The Head Sentinel.

She could've drowned. She could've fallen ill.

She puts that hand over her lips, puffy and swollen as they are. She distinctly remembers the feeling of pressure upon them. Of air being forced into her lungs.

She doesn't dare believe it, not for a second.

"You are to stay in this room until I figure out what to do with you," he informs her. "The door will be locked, though no one comes by this wing as it is. The windows will be locked as well, though if you manage to pry them open, it's a long way down with barely anything to hold onto. We can be friends, or we can be enemies. You choose what you prefer."

"I could be dead," she mutters, attention floating to the windows.

"You could be," he agrees. "Though I'd strongly advise against that." He folds his hands behind his back. "Sleep. I won't disturb you."

"That's it? Sleep?"

"I would advocate getting to know each other, but I'm afraid I'm not one for conversation."

She blinks. Maybe he does know a thing or two about sarcasm, after all.

"Alright..." she says uncertainly, making her way back to bed, pulling the pine-scented blankets over her, glad for their warmth.

The boy takes his place at his desk, holding a fountain pen in his pale left hand. The scratching from earlier starts up again; she knows now that it was his pen against parchment.

She turns over in bed. She can't stay here, a sitting duck until the king returns. This boy will surely inform him, and after that, it won't matter that the Head Sentinel saved her life not once, but twice tonight. It won't matter that she has an ability that could bring the world to its knees. It won't matter who she is. To whom, exactly, the blood in her veins belongs to. None of it will matter anymore, and she will be dead.

She will find a way to leave this place. She makes this promise to herself.

But, like the lonely child she is, her thoughts drift to her uncle.

Uncle Paolo, she pleads, though no one can hear her. Where are you?

*

A/N: Just wanted to say that I'm so, so proud of this chapter. I feel like Val and Malina have so much... I don't know, chemistry this time around. Believe me, I've written more than a few iterations of their first conversation, and none of them have ever stacked up to anything close to this chapter. I hope everyone likes this chapter as much as I do! <3