“Gross.”
“But your mom, man. She loved him even before he started speaking. She loved him even more when he walked up to her and introduced himself. I knew I couldn’t leave. If I left, Carmen would have come with me, and I just couldn’t do that to her.”
“Do you think you made the right choice?”
She looks at my face for a long time. “I don’t regret staying. I regret a lot of things, but staying, being part of your lives, I never regretted that. I want you to know that we could have left. The thought was there. You weren’t the only one who felt like the magic was too much.”
“I wish she’d told me. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so weak.”
She grabs my face in her palms. “Never, ever could you be weak. We all think about leaving, Alejandra. We all get scared and want to turn away, but it isn’t always strength that makes you stay. Strength is also making the decision to change your destiny.”
“But look at what I did! My powers are gone.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She stands and dusts off her white dress. She holds out her hands for me to take.
“What do you mean I’m wrong?” I ask.
“The Deos act through us. Only my own blood can free me, and here you are. You were born a bruja, Alejandra.” She looks at the big sky. “Your powers are at the Tree of Souls, but your body is still a conduit. Your body is made to hold your personal brand of magic. It’ll always be yours. That’s why the Devourer constantly needs to feed to accumulate power. With every bit she consumes, it takes a toll on her physical body because the power is stolen. What happens when you don’t feed a fire?”
“It burns out,” Rishi says.
“What do I do in the meantime?” I ask.
Aunt Rosaria grips my hands tighter. I jump with the shock of power. “You’re going to borrow some of mine.”
36
She ate the stars and swallowed the earth.
She is the girl with all the power.
—Witchsong #5, Book of Cantos
Aunt Ro’s power floods my body. It’s familiar but foreign all at once, like listening to my grandparents speak in the Old Tongue and understanding what they say even if I can’t pronounce the words myself.
Every time I look at her, I’m filled with more wonder. She’s alive. I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay. I’m not sure if this will work, but Aunt Ro says to trust her, and I do. The first step is breaking her free. I pull the borrowed magic and rip the chains from the ground. I think of Agosto and the Meadowkin. I whisper a prayer to El Guardia for their safety. The chains break apart and melt into the ground. I hiss as the recoil hits me harder, and my hands glow as black marks burn farther along my skin.
The labyrinth shudders around us. For a long time, I wanted nothing more than to be ordinary. As we run through the changing paths of this maze, I realize I was never ordinary to begin with. We are built a certain way, and the only thing I regret is that it took me so long to see that. The Devour tried to take that from me when she took my family. I’m going to get it back.
“Has the Devourer seen you here?” I ask. “I mean, the Deos put both of you here.”
“The Devourer was put here by her crimes in her realm, your human realm,” Aunt Ro says. “I have a different path. When Xara discovered she could make herself stronger by feeding off the Tree, she thought she could become so great, no Deo could imprison her here. She recruits vulnerable creatures in other realms and uses them to bring others she feeds off here.”
Nova. An unblessed brujo. A marked brujo. A boy who wanted more, to never be powerless. A boy who didn’t want to die.
“So if she has enough power, she can break out of Los Lagos?”
“I believe so,” Aunt Ro says. “Power is addictive. She needs it to survive, just as much as she needs it to destroy. The only way for her to break free from her punishment, to rule with unlimited strength, is to become a god herself.”
“Is that even possible?”
“By definition of immortality, yes. With the right amount of powers, she could. Our family is among the oldest lines of brujas in the world. She’d get pretty damn close.”
No, I think. She won’t.
We stop at a fork in the labyrinth.
“Remember what I said,” Aunt Ro tells me. “Don’t stand in one place for too long. If you get taken by the vines, stab the thickest part closest to the ground. Even plants have feelings, after all.
“Get to the tree, Alejandra,” she tells me.
“Keep Rishi safe,” I tell her.
Rishi kisses my cheek, and then they’re gone. A hedge separates us. I run. With Aunt Ro’s magic, my strength is renewed. I skid on the ground as a wall appears in front of me. The labyrinth blocks my way, creating a perfect square around me.
“Alejandra,” he says.
The ground swims beneath me as I look at his face.
He hasn’t aged a day. It’s like looking into a mirror when he smiles—same teeth, same smile, same shape of our eyes. His are gray like Lula’s. His hair is combed back. I can smell the gel he used every morning, the spice in the aftershave he used after making his face silky smooth and trimming his mustache. I remember the way his mustache tickled my skin when he’d kiss me good night.
“It’s all right,” my father says.
“It is not all right.”
He looks around him. “I can take you to the others. I know how to get us back home.”
I find myself breathing hard. I can’t stop my heart from racing in my chest. Can’t stop the questions from racing through my head. Why did you leave?
“You’re not real,” I whisper.
I can feel the shadows surround us.
Look twice. Look twice. Look twice.
“Listen to me, Alejandra,” he says.
It sounds just like him, I think. It even has the scars on his hands. The laugh lines around his eyes. It looks just like him.
“Listen to me, nena,” my father says. “I had to leave. Leaving was the only way your power would become as great as it is now. From the moment Rose was born, I knew my children would have a bigger destiny than I ever did. Me? I thought I’d change the world. But I couldn’t. I was never good enough for you, for your mother. You made me feel…inadequate. I couldn’t look at you without remembering my own failure. I tried to make the world better for you, and I couldn’t.”
“Stop it.” I shut my eyes and stumble back.
“I left because I could never love you,” he says. His body becomes straighter. The smile fades. “No one can.”
A shudder passes over me. I’ve wanted to believe this for so long—that there is something inside of me that is so wretched, no one can love me. But that can’t be true. My whole family, living and dead, protected me from the Devourer. Rishi followed me into a black hole. I touch the moon pendant between my clavicles. I feel a weight lifting off my chest, a truth I didn’t want to see in my own heart.
“My father loved me.”