Next to him is a pale woman in a vivid red gown. The woman they called the Eyes. Her face has been destroyed by an angry streak of white paint.
I touch it, so carefully that I hold my breath. I’m suddenly desperate to know what she looked like.
“So they had a papá,” Ale says. “It’s so strange. Why would a watercrea have children?”
I look at the woman’s slender hand on Theo’s shoulder. Something about her grip seems possessive.
“And what really happened to her?” I mutter.
Ale shifts. He gives me an uneasy look.
“Put that back,” I say. “Go search his underwear drawer.”
Ale turns purple. “I’m not doing that.”
“There’s no better hiding spot,” I say, pushing him.
I make my way over to the armoire and rifle through perfectly pressed white clothes. I reach all the way inside, running my hands along the back panel, then crouch down and grope behind the shoes to search the deepest corners.
I touch something that is decidedly not a shoe. It feels rectangular and leather.
I pull it out. It’s a small red book.
A journal.
I peek around the armoire door to glance at Ale. He’s searching the dresser. He’s become very occupied with the colognes.
I flip open the journal. One corner of it looks rather burned.
It’s like someone else tried to destroy this. And someone else saved it. My hands start to shake with excitement.
On the first page, there’s a date at the top—five years ago, assuming Iris keeps dates the same way Occhia does—and below it, writing in a narrow script:
He got his first omen today. It appeared on his face in the middle of dinner. They begged him not to go to the tower, and they begged me not to send him. But it wasn’t their decision to make.
They think I’ve betrayed them. They don’t realize that I loved their father more than they ever could. I waited a thousand years to find someone worthy enough to help me raise my heirs. But now I’ll just have to raise them alone. Nothing is more important than keeping the city in balance.
My mind is reading the words in the voice of Occhia’s watercrea, even though I know they’re not the same person. It feels wrong to imagine the watercrea talking about love. I glance over my shoulder, suddenly convinced I’m going to see her standing there, watching me with her dark, empty eyes.
I flip forward, passing through time, and stop at an entry from three years ago.
She snuck out again. The guards found her in the gardens, holding hands and giggling with some random maid. They dragged her back kicking and screaming, and now the whole city knows my own daughter doesn’t listen to me.
She brought this punishment upon herself. I don’t know how to make her understand. My heirs aren’t like other people. They can’t be.
She’s so much like him. She’s all feeling and no restraint, like an exposed heart.
I don’t think she’ll be able to do this.
“What’s that?” Ale says over my shoulder.
I jump out of my skin, nearly dropping the journal.
“It’s very lewd,” I say. “I’ll spare your delicate eyes.”
Ale gives the red cover a sideways look. Nothing else in this cathedral is red. Not even the wine. The exception, of course, the blood in the underground well, but otherwise it’s like the color has been wiped out of existence.
I stand up. “Let’s go to the study. You’re right. There will probably be more promising things there.”
I need to buy myself time to read the rest of this journal. I need to read it all as soon as possible. I can’t fully explain why. I just know that I do.
“Are you going to bring that?” Ale says.
“I… yes,” I say.
“You want to read a boy’s lewd diary?” he says.
I don’t know why he feels the need to emphasize it that way. I don’t want to read anyone’s lewd diary. I don’t depend on other people for my entertainment.
“Yes,” I say, and march out the door.
In the parlor, I turn toward the study. But then my eyes fall on the dining room. The doors to the balcony are sitting half-open.
The banner depicting our faces is still hanging out there, telling everyone how dangerous we are. This is a chance for me to give the people of Iris my own message.
I run back to Verene’s bedroom and scoop up some of her paints. I rush to the balcony, crawl out to untie the banner, and drag it back into the dining room. For a moment, I just admire the painting of me. I really would hang it in my parlor.
“I think it might be too late to take it down,” Ale says. “Everybody in Iris has already seen what we look like.”
I turn the banner over.
“But they haven’t seen this,” I say.
I paint eight circles in a ring. I color one in and label it as Iris. Underneath the picture, I paint the words:
Why is the Heart lying to us?
I step back and admire my handiwork.
“Help me hang it back up,” I say.
Ale’s face is uneasy.
“Do you really want everyone in Iris to know about the other cities?” he says.
I want Verene’s perfect life to be demolished. If her city doesn’t trust her, everything will fall apart.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll hang it myself.”
He doesn’t try to stop me. I make sure to bring the journal with me as I work, because he keeps eyeing it. I tie the banner to the railing and unfurl it into the night air. The square below is empty, but in a nearby street, I can see the lanterns of Verene’s mob. They start to move in our direction.
The city is small. Once somebody sees what I’ve drawn, word will spread fast.
“All right.” I turn back to lead Ale out of the dining room. “Now we can go to the study—”
We’re almost at the doorway when a woman steps in front of us. She’s small and bony, but she has deep, intense eyes. She’s looking at me like she knows everything that I’ve ever done wrong in my entire life.
I was wondering where the housekeeper had gone.
“Hello,” I say.
I move forward like I fully expect her to get out of my way.
She pulls out a knife. I pause.
“I don’t want to fight an old woman,” I say, very reasonably.
“Well,” she says, “you’re going to.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I’m not just a servant, you know,” she says. “Their papa has been gone for years, and the way their maman treated them—there’s no one else. There’s only me.”
I assess her. “So you know about their magic?”
“I know that they go into the underground well every day and come out bleeding,” she says. “And I fix them up. I don’t ask questions, because they saved this city, and that’s all I need to know. And you’re not going to ruin that.”
So she doesn’t know enough to be useful to me. I suppose I am going to fight an old woman, after all.
That’s fine. I don’t know her. I don’t care about her.
I stuff the journal down my front for safekeeping and inch closer. Closer. The housekeeper doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“Emanuela,” Ale says.