The Familiar

by Leigh Bardugo

Her aunt was above her, hands around her throat, choking her slowly, and then her aunt was beneath her, sinking to the bottom of the river. She had no eyes, no lips. The fish had eaten them. Hualit’s lipless mouth opened. “I’ll pray that our suffering will be swallowed by the sea.”

There had been one of these rooms in every De Paredes house for more than four hundred years. It was called the scorpion’s den.

BRO FUCK

Then Luzia had entered his life, a character in a play who was meant to have a few lines and depart. Instead she had overtaken his story. The plot he knew so well had suddenly confused him, the shape of his narrative bending around her into something new.

“Can my luck not be enough for you?” he asked. “Your luck brought me Luzia Cotado. If the king will not use her as the instrument she was meant to be, I will.” There was the truth that had choked him in the scorpion’s den. He had doomed her before they had ever met.

“Guillén Barcelo Villalbas de Canales y Santángel.”

She rested her head on Santángel’s chest. “Do you know any real magic? Grand magic? The kind in stories?” He took her hand, pressed his lips to her knuckles, then he rested their clasped palms against his heart. “Only this,” he said as morning drew near. “Only this.”

KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME

When Quiteria had met Valentina at La Casilla, she had sensed that beneath the sour expression and the meager jewels was a woman waiting for a chance to live. From the first kiss, she was proven right. Valentina had a glutton’s heart and had spent too many years surviving on scraps. Quiteria was shocked to discover that, after years of infamy and seeking every kind of pleasure, she had finally found a lover who could keep pace with her.

LETS FUCKING GO LESBIANS

Valentina clutched the sachet of rosemary at her sleeve. For protection. I’m here, she wanted to shout. 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.

It had taken years and strange circumstances but she understood now that she and Luzia were lonely in a way that only the overlooked could be.

She was sorry she had made her scullion perform milagritos. She was sorry she’d struck her and called her stupid. Mostly she was sorry that when midnight came and the fires burned, Luzia would be gone, and the world would be lonelier still.

There was no great ceremony. The time for sermons was over. All that remained was the fire.

He could hear the crackle of the flames, feel the smoke already burning his eyes. He turned his head and saw Luzia naked on the pyre, her chin held high. She met his eyes and he had the strange sensation that he was lifting up off the pyre. As the smoke filled his lungs, he could swear he smelled orange blossoms.

Luzia trained her eyes on Donadei, on his smug face, and on the fat green emerald at the center of his golden cross, the cross he put his hand to whenever he sought great magic. The only gem that hadn’t been altered by her refrán in the third trial, that hadn’t become a scarab or a spider or any other crawling thing. When he’d appeared in the audience chamber to denounce her, when she’d seen that emerald just as large and perfect as it had been on the lake, she’d heard Santángel’s voice in her head. A kind of stone, a talisman. They were rare and used for concentrating a sage’s abilities. These spells were of such great power they would crack the stone with a single attempt.

Valentina never did bear a child, but she had many daughters, who came from all over Spain to the house on Calle de Dos Santos, seeking sanctuary.

So he told his patron he was feeling poorly, that he was certain his abilities would return. Don Víctor had assured him that he knew a wise man who could restore his talents, who could give him strength and power beyond all he’d imagined. They’d have to travel far to see him, but at the end of their journey, beyond the gates of a southern city, they would strike a bargain.

He died that way, alone in his bed, afraid to leave, afraid to stay, afraid to whisper anything but “tomorrow.”

“If you are the last thing I see,” he whispered, “it will all have been worth it.” Perhaps he would have said more, but as the first rays of sun shone through the window, he burned away to ash. Luzia had known her love would destroy him.

She breathed in, breathed out, watched the ash gust away from her across the bed, and then his pale body was stretched out beside her once more, made whole as a broken glass had once been made whole. “Perfect,” she whispered as he returned to her in the soft light of dawn.

OH THANK FUCK

They did not age. They did not change. They traveled the world a thousand times over. They may be traveling still.

Every night she shuts the windows tight to guard against drafts, and every morning he dies and is reborn beside her. She reminds his heart to beat again, as she did so long ago. He kisses her fingers, and combs her hair, and he treasures her, as only a man who has lost his luck and found it once more ever can.

I’m crying in the train rn wtf