He sat up in her bed. His shirt was on the floor and a cluster of vine flowers were on her pillow.
“Danaë?” he called out to someone who was not there.
* * *
The Knight of Lavant stood over Danaë’s figure curled up in the bed. Her hands were clutched against her chest. Even after the accident, after she set the other apartments on fire, her light was still glowing.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Santiago,” he said. “We have a way to fix these kinds of things.”
“How long will she be in there?” Angela Santiago asked.
“A few years. Our organization is here for the sole purpose of protecting the human population.”
“And you’re sure she can’t get out?”
“No charms or incantations. No blood sacrifice. No true love’s kiss. Nothing could set her free except a willing exchange, and I doubt anyone would ever risk such a thing. Moving on, we’ve taken care of the survivors and we’ll find a place for you.”
“Where?” she asked sharply.
“Bay Ridge.”
When she peered up, her mother held a bit of foxglove in her fingertips. Danaë felt the effects of her mother’s medicines, the ones that kept Danaë’s powers at bay. The last time she had stopped taking them, she’d burned their neighbor’s house down and they’d had to flee.
“Please don’t,” Danaë cried. “Mamá!”
“You’re doing the right thing,” the Knight said. “We’ll come get you when we find a cure.”
“There is no cure,” she heard her mother say. But the next thing she knew, she was awake in a gray stone room, petrified in time.
* * *
Danaë climbed down the tower using her own rope of hair. She trembled the whole way down, shrouded in Fabían’s jacket. The strain on her temples was enough that she wanted to pass out, but she focused on the climb down, moving one hand and then the other. When her feet touched the ground, she was amazed at the feel of the grass tickling her ankles. The cold air against her legs and face. A creature hissed at her from the pond, but then sank beneath its murky surface.
She searched his pockets and found a knife. With shaky fingers she cut and cut and kept on cutting until her hair was free and around her shoulders. She yanked on the other end and the rope pooled at her feet. She wrapped it around her torso. She’d have to hide it…or burn it. But she couldn’t leave it behind. A bruja never gave away parts of herself, lest they be used to bewitch her. Her mother had taught her that once.
Danaë thought of Fabían.
He’d be waking soon, and she didn’t want—couldn’t hear him cry for her. She knew the ache of that first loneliness. The jolt of realization that there was no way out.
She tried to run, but her muscles were out of practice, and before she could get far enough, she heard his voice.
“Dani! Danaë!”
Nothing could set her free except a willing exchange.
“I’ll come back for you.” She spoke the promise into the air.
If the noise had been terrible up above, it was worse as she took the labyrinthine roads out of Central Park and found a subway. Everything was different. She was different. Changed from the inside. Would her mother recognize her?
She boarded the train to Bay Ridge, muttering her own charm. The tips of her fingers lit up as she said, “I’ll come back for you.”
But first, she was overdue for a family reunion.
Dear Omar—
Solitary kills niggas, but it ain’t gon kill me. That’s facts.
After everything I been through so far, I know it ain’t for me. They got me in here, but can’t no kinda block hold me. I’m too big for that shit. Like, you know how shit just sometimes leaves you alone? Or, like, passes you by? I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like bad shit just be missing me, bro. I’m not about to snitch or nothin, but one time the homie Victor and I—Victor’s half-and-half, like half-black, half-Mexican but he ain’t been jumped into no cholo gangs—we was headin back from school early on some bullshit. And I remember what day it was too, because Miss Frazey, who was always on our ass about something or something else, she took me to the side and she was like “you’re gonna have to make a choice between your future and your friends” and you know how much it can mess you up to hear that when you’re twelve? On the set. All I know is this gang-banging, you feel me? But Victor and I are leaving school and we on our way to the Lakewood Mall when I see some Pirus literally headin right toward us. Now, they used to go to the other school around the way, and we used to play football against them until their set started showing up to the games carrying hammers and the schools were like “we ain’t tryna see no dead kids on this football field,” but these Pirus are headin straight for us. Like, we’re about to get caught slippin, and it’s just me and Victor and these four brolic-ass Bloods headin our way. So I figure, they bout to get the drop on us. And, like, if you’re gonna get stomped out, you can’t just go down like no bitch becuz people talk and it’s gonna get around and maybe it’s gonna turn into a thing where they give you the whoop-dee-whoop and now you gotta kill one of them and then they gotta kill one of you and it’s just a lotta cryin mamas and a lotta wakes and, on the dead homie, I’m tired of that shit, you feel me? Like, this gang-banging shit ages you, bro. Anyway, they’re bout to get the drop on us, and, you gotta understand, I got the rag out, yo. I’m Cripped up, all Crenshaw everything. I can’t tuck nothin. And I left my hammer at Mac’s place becuz we sometimes hang there after school and chill in his studio while a bunch of them make music and all that. But, get this, just when I think I’m bout to get the whoop-dee-whoop, they walk right past us. I’m talkin, right past us, bro. They don’t even see us. Like we ain’t even there. Victor notices it too, and at first we were like okay what if they’re just waitin till we alone, you know? But, nah, we catch up to the homies at the Mall and it’s on and crackin again. And at first, I ain’t know what happen and I ain’t even tell the other homies, but now I know what that was. I’m special. I’m Protected, yo. Like, I been shot at but never shot, you feel me? 16 years here and damn near everything’s tried to kill me. but I ain’t die yet. It’s weird to say at 16, but sometimes it feel like forever yo.
But that’s how I know, fam. I’m special. Like, that happen and so many other things. Like this.
I still don’t know how this started or how exactly your letter got to me here. I swear, one second I’m takin my shit, then there’s this piece of paper lyin in the dookie water and I’m so sick from bein in solitary without hearin or seein or talkin to nobody that I’m like “is this for real?” and I get the letter out right before I flush, and I look at it and it’s all in these letters I ain’t never seen before, like backwards cursive. And I don’t know how you write like that, all the letters connected. Least, I think they’re letters.