The Familiar

by Leigh Bardugo

One was not supposed to mourn the dead; it was said to deny the miracle of resurrection. But the death of a queen was different. The city was meant to grieve her passing, and her funeral procession was a spectacle rivaled only by her stepson Carlos’s death earlier that year. Luzia’s first cries as she entered the world were mixed with the weeping of every madrileño for their lost queen. “It confused you,” Blanca told her. “You thought they were crying for you, and it has given you too much ambition.”

Better to live in fear than in grinding discontent. Better to dare this new path than continue her slow, grim march down the road that had been chosen for her. At least the scenery would be different.

There is a fine line between a saint and a witch, and I wonder if you are prepared to walk it.”

Luzia could taste the pomegranate in her mouth, the flavor of her own ambition, her appetite for more. She eyed the golden curtains of the stage and knew she would prove Santángel right. She was done going hungry.

“But let it be my ambition and not my fear that seals my fate.”

Then the door was closed and she was pressed against it, his mouth on hers, his body a dark cloud descending. She had lived too long without rain.

She thought of poor Lorenzo Botas, sitting by the fishmonger’s stall, sliding off to sleep, carried home in his son’s arms. Who would carry her? The refranes could heal her. She could put her body back together as she had restored her tongue, but the question twisted and wriggled inside her: Who will carry me? The answer had to be no one, as it had been for so long.

I’m sorry. I only wanted a little warmth. I didn’t know what kind of fire I would start.

There are different kinds of suffering, Valentina thought. The kind that takes you by surprise and the kind you live with so long, you stop noticing it.