“We’ve already shed too much blood, you and I.” Coronado took a bold step toward her. “We were young and foolish. Just like the young lovers you’ve summoned here today.” His eyes settled on me in an overly familiar way, which made my heart beat heavy in my chest.
I looked up at Dane, his face shrouded in fear.
“I took Alonso away from you,” Coronado said with a flash of arrogance. “You took Marie away from me. We’ve had our vengeance. We can end this right now. Let the lovebirds fly away. Live in peace.”
“There will be no peace as long as I’m bound to you.” Katia’s fingers trembled with rage.
Coronado’s eyes flickered to Dane. A moment of recognition passed between them, but Dane quickly looked away. I could tell he was trying to stay strong, but I could feel his emotions—fear, sympathy, and an overwhelming sense of guilt.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Katia said, that rictus smile spreading across her face. “I want nothing more than to watch you die.” Raising her hands to the sky, she summoned a vicious wind, which swiftly swooped down through her hands to encircle Coronado in a tight cylinder, holding him in place. “When the binding is complete, your body will wither and rot off your bones. You may have found a way into the sacred circle, but you have no vessel.”
The Arcanum pressed forward from the stalks, but Coronado help up his hand, commanding them to stay back.
As Katia closed her eyes and began chanting, Coronado signaled to one of his soldiers, who pushed a hunched figure through the perimeter of corn, into the sacred circle.
It was a woman. She looked almost feral, tucked away against the stalks. But I recognized the graceful movement of her long slender fingers as she traced symbols in the air. “Mom,” I whispered as I sank down beside her, brushing her limp hair back from her face.
She looked up at me like a child, blinking slowly a few times, before focusing in on me. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know you were the vessel until it was too late.” She looked dehydrated and ravaged by exhaustion. She tried to smile, but her lips only cracked. Still, she had a wild look in her eyes. She was very much alive.
“I’m here,” I said, grasping her frail hands. My eyes stung from trying to hold back the tears. “Where have you been?”
“Coronado came for me in New York City, took me back to Spain. It didn’t take long for both of us to realize I wasn’t Katia’s vessel,” she said as she showed me the cuts on her wrist. “But you and your brother were already here, inside Quivira. She fooled us all.”
I thought of her studio on the day she disappeared, filled with crows—her scent all around me when we met Coronado at the perimeter. I couldn’t believe I didn’t piece it together.
“I can heal you,” I whispered as I cradled her arm in my hands. The cuts looked like they might be infected.
“No.” She pulled her hand back. “I don’t want to heal. This is how I can protect you. This is my destiny. Together, we can end this.”
Suddenly, my entire body tensed as I looked out over the corn. There was a darkness building, spreading out over the field like a storm cloud. It’s the same feeling I experienced when Katia summoned the Dark Spirit before the battle in 1861. The corn was hungry.
I looked back at Katia, who was swaying to the music of her own whispering, and a deep ache settled in my heart. As distorted and twisted as she’d become, I understood her. I felt her rage and despair and hopes and fears in every word she uttered.
“What’s happening?” Dane asked from behind me.
The dark energy pulsed over the field, screaming out for blood.
“She’s going forward with the ritual.” I gave him a bittersweet smile.
My mother’s eyes darted between Dane and me. She dug her nails into my arm. “You’re already blood bound?”
Sensing the tension, Dane said, “I’ll give you a moment,” before walking to the far end of the circle.
“It was my choice,” I said to my mother. An uncontrollable heat rushed to the surface of my skin just thinking about our private ceremony under Heartbreak Tree last night.
Her body went rigid. “You only think it was your choice.”
The first wave roared through the corn, taking down one of the soldiers and ripping his legs clean off his body.
“What are you talking about?” I searched the field, wondering how many of them were hiding in the stalks and why Coronado wasn’t signaling for them to run . . . or charge?
“He’s not what you think.” My mother’s eyes filled with tears.
Teresa said the same thing to me at the Mendoza lodge.
“Dane isn’t like his father,” I assured her over the horrifying wet screams of the Arcanum as the corn picked them off one by one. “You yourself told me we’re not responsible for the sins of our ancestors.”
“I was wrong,” she said as if she were swallowing thick chunks of glass.
“What are you saying?”
“Spencer chose to have a child with Teresa so he could have a son who was of Mendoza and Coronado blood—a cornwalker.”