Vada Rivera is fifteen when she dies for the first time.
It doesn’t feel any different from sleeping—blackness, velvet and complete, on the cusp of something other.
Then he comes.
The column of a spine. The marrow of a skull. Black eyes that glitter like gems in a fleshless face. He opens his mouth. Calls, Vada.
She has never felt more alive. Though she does not understand Death, she knows him. Energy thrums, feathers her skin, feels like the cradle of a homecoming. She wants to stay in this blackness, this elsewhere, never return.
But return, she does.
Everything halts. The light arrives, the blood pounds. The world falls back into place, has the brutality of a bludgeoning. Far worse than the gallows could ever be.
Death held her.
Now, he’s gone.
Mama just stands on the curb, stares, does not speak.
Vada looks at her ruined shirt, watches the blood crawl back into each wound. It is something out of a superhero film, but a deep sense of wrongness has filled her chest. Though she is back where things are supposed to make sense, it does not feel like she belongs.
Possibly, she has never belonged.
She expects Mama to fall apart. Instead, she comes closer, says, “Well, mija? Do you see? We are creatures of kings. Death fears us, and he will not keep us.”
Vada knows of normal girls. Their lives, their dreams—how flowers grow from their bodies when they die until they are forgotten. Now, she stands on this curb and sees the shadows in the daylight, understands that she is one of them—an unknown variable.
This is how a story begins.
Vada does not go to school after that.
She is taught from home and hidden away from the world. Not that Mama does much of the schooling part, but she gets away with it in Texas, where she can dictate a curriculum.
Vada does not long for mathematics or science, does not desire English papers or gym shorts, does not care for making friends. No, what she wants is simple: the art of Mama’s tacos, how she knows the amount of sofrito to use without a tablespoon, or the way around their mother tongue—to learn more about the pictures of Mama barefoot and barelimbed in Puerto Rico.
But those words are never given. Vada’s Spanish is broken, her understanding of her family limited, her culture curled around her shoulders like a ghost. Mama likes her less when she asks such questions, so one by one, she leaves them behind.
As she does, Mama grows closer to the liquor, worshiping the bottles like books in a library. Every day she wonders what story Mama will tell, in what new way she will make her liver fail, only to sit up, eyes dark with the return.
It does not take Vada long to realize just how much Mama wants Death. She speaks of him more than she speaks of Vada’s father. Calls to him intimately, knows him, as Vada does. The same way she understands a night sky: the blackness may go on forever, but she still sees the stars.
A year goes, and they become better at this dance. Another, and she learns how best to love a mother who is a carcass decorated in warm flesh. She, too, hungers—for that face in the dark, that voice in the elsewhere.
Because deep down, she knows—she will never go to Puerto Rico, never fit in with the neighborhood kids who take one look and say, You are not normal.
She will always be the girl with a funereal heart.
The girl who cannot die.
Desperately she wants to scream, Who are we? What are we?
But she does not say those things.
She holds onto another year.
Then she turns eighteen.
She learns that it is not much different from seventeen.
She is sprawled out on the couch with takeout, watching Gilmore Girls. Not for the first time, she wonders what it would be like to know her mother, to know herself.
She goes and stands on their porch, looks out at the street, feels the dark gather and press around her. It is New Year’s Eve. Teens run across the street, on bikes and skateboards and heavy feet.
Vada just stares.
Some stare back.
Most are familiar, will say, as they often do, Ay, that’s just the Riveras.
Quieter comes the rest.
Locas.
Brujas.
They understand that Vada and Mama are different, but they do not see the truth.
When Vada was sixteen, she hung out with the boy next door, Oscar. She was curious, and so, she kissed him. Once. The feel of his lips was a brief, sunken moment. Like the sun and moon colliding. Warm where she was cold. Alive as she would never be. She couldn’t bring herself to pretend she enjoyed it, or him, so he told the other boys after That girl doesn’t have a heart.
He was wrong, of course. Vada does have a heart.
It just doesn’t throb.
It whispers.
The night of the kiss, she came home and fell into Mama’s arms. Together, they listened to their cavernous chests. Now she stands here, raises her hands skyward, wonders when Death will finally accept her.
He does not.
And does not.
Still does not.
She goes back inside.
Two hours pass, and Mama comes home.
The door bursts open just as Vada finishes the lo mein.
She carefully considers the woman who stands in the doorway. Her face is narrow, chin pointed. Eyes lighter than Vada’s, but they have the same brown skin, full lips, and wild curly hair.
Mama mutters something she cannot hear, before rushing into the dining room, arms draped in shopping bags.
She leaves the door gaping. Vada stumbles off the couch to close it, keep out the biting wind. Then she trails after her, wary. Mama is bustling around the kitchen with a lighter in her hand and … number candles?
Mama whips off the lid to a birthday cake, tugs on one of many unruly curls on Vada’s head. Their gazes lock. In Mama’s, there is complete lucidity.
Vada knows what this means.
When Mama gets like this, it means stories. More about where they come from. Or her father. Or Death.
She’s getting that on her birthday.
This never happens. Nor does birthday cake. It is this that makes the tears well up, spill down her cheeks. It even has her name on it. Happy Birthday Vada spelled out in crisp blue icing. Then Mama sticks in the number one, the number eight—lights them with a shaky hand.
She pulls Vada into her arms. They feel like bone trappings, but she does not mind. This is Mama. No matter that, most days, they don’t feel human at all. At least they are not human together.
“My baby,” Mama coos.
“Thank you, Mama.” Her throat feels swollen. “It’s beautiful.”
“Eat your cake,” she says. “Then we’ll go watch fireworks.”
Vada eats two slices. Then Mama is tugging her out the door, and she can’t stop the childish hope that wells. That maybe this time will be different. Mama will tell her the whole truth, not odds and ends of it.
They can stop living in this void.
In the car, she says, “How did you meet him?”
“¿Qué?”
“Death. How did you meet him?”
The silence stretches for so long that she is sure Mama won’t answer. But then: “I was dying. Cancer.”
“You had…?”
“Long time ago. Before you were born.”
“Why did he leave?”
Perhaps it is her tone, so eager, that disrupts the spell. But she can’t help it—she wants to know. So badly.
Mama’s expression shutters. “He left. What else do you want?”
She turns up the radio.
Vada could push further, but it’s pointless. She knows what Mama will say. The time for truth is not now.
But she is so tired of lies.
They do not speak again.
The park is colored in moonshine and people waiting for the show. Some sit at park tables while others are spread out on the grass.
There is one wooden park table that sits empty near a willow coppice, which Vada promptly claims. Mostly, they are separated from everyone else—except for a young couple that sits two yards away, playing with their toddler.
Vada watches it with the destitution of someone who is stranded on an island. It is full of life and color. Enough to keep her going.
Yet, it is nothing she wants.
Always, she longs for elsewhere.
Because elsewhere felt like her own heartbeat. Her flesh and blood coming to life. Missing pieces falling into place. She doesn’t know what’s behind that veil of blackness, in elsewhere. Nor does she know why Death is so determined to keep her away.
But no matter how she tries, this place and these people, so alive, will never feel like home. There will always be this wrongness crawling inside her bloodstream, telling her the truth.
Vada says, “We don’t belong here.”
Mama’s gaze is a lightning strike. “No, we don’t.”
Fireworks break across the inky sky like flowers, their petals weeping. There is marigold, then rose—an iris, perhaps an orchid.
It is midnight.
It is a brand-new year.
Mama smiles big and wide. Their hands reach for one other as if electrified, moving on pure instinct, and Vada falls into a daydream. Imagines them fighting like mothers and daughters do, making up in a fit of tears—the kind of relationship she sees on a show like Gilmore Girls. But she knows that path would be as empty as the one she’s on now. A half-life. Because something is missing. Always missing.
She cannot figure out if it was stolen or simply lost.
It is at this particular moment that a bird falls into her lap.
Vada can only stare as its little blue body twitches violently, going utterly still.
Another comes down.
Another.
Then, it’s so many that Vada loses count. One pelts her leg while another hits her arm. All around her—birds. Dead and terrible from the sky.
Vada recovers from her shock as the screaming starts. The toddler is wailing, his parents rushing away from the scene. Everyone else scatters and runs, shielding their heads.
She stumbles away from the table, but Mama is still staring at the sky, expressionless.
“Mama!” she exclaims, tugging on her hand. “We have to move!”
Mama rises at a languid pace. Vada pulls her through the park, passes a man who is frantically gathering his camera equipment.
As she brushes by him, he clutches his chest, wheezing violently. Face-first, he falls to the grass, stiff.
Dead.
Mama stops walking, yanking her hand from Vada’s. Her eyes are wide. She spares no glance for the people around them who are running and screaming, nor does she seem particularly bothered by the birds, still falling. She is just staring at the dead man.
She is not afraid.
She looks … happy.
“He’s calling us, Vada.”
“What?”
Mama turns to her abruptly, hands landing roughly on her shoulders. “He’s calling us. Do you see? All this pain ends now.”
She grabs Vada’s hand and leads her back to the parking lot. When they arrive at the car, the birds have stopped falling, but their bodies litter the ground. An ambulance has arrived.
Mama pushes Vada toward the passenger seat. “Siéntate.”
“No,” Vada snaps. “What do you mean, he’s calling us? Tell me what’s going on.”
“Tell you?” Her voice hardens, taking on a mocking lilt. “You’re not one of those gringas on TV. You don’t speak to me like that. I am your mother. I don’t tell you anything.”
“What if more people die?”
Mama’s face softens. “Trust me. Please.”
Vada’s shoulders sag as they settle in the car. She turns and watches the park disappear as they hit the road. She trembles, unable to get the birds and the man out of her mind. If Mama is right and Death is calling them, why now, after all this time?
Something doesn’t feel right, but she can’t figure out what. Instincts are but inklings of the truth, not born in words.
As they drive over the bridge, Mama slams down on the gas pedal.
Vada’s body jerks forward. They begin to accelerate. The yellow lines on the asphalt come faster and faster, turning into a luminous blur.
“Mama?” Her knuckles grip the steering wheel as she stares at the road. Vada begins to shake. “Mama?”
“I’m doing this for you, understand?” Mama’s voice is ragged, but there is no fear, only longing. Vada feels her stomach drop, her limbs becoming phantasmal.
“I’m doing this for us. He left us here. But he’s calling us back. I swear, we’re going back…”
She jerks the wheel sharply to the right.
They go off the bridge.
Vada has died before, is familiar with how everything happens in quick succession, how before one can even process it, the gallows arrive. But as the car is submerged in water, something feels different.
Something is off.
The glass begins to crack, expands like crystal veins.
It shatters.
There is only elsewhere.
Vada is greeted with dim light when she regains consciousness. The world is gold and green, and the shapes of trees come into focus, cocooning her.
She is in a clearing. In the woods. Beside a rotting well.
She is not alone.
Mama stands a foot away, staring ahead. “We’re finally here.”
“How are we … are we…” Vada struggles to form the words. “Are we dead?”
“Sí.” Mama’s eyes are full of pure joy as she jerks Vada up by the arm, pulls her into a tight embrace. “Are you happy?”
“No,” Vada snaps, pulling away. “You killed us. You drove us off a bridge.”
“To bring us home. Don’t you feel it? Right now?”
Vada wants to deny it, but she can’t. Home is a grave she’s been clawing at for years. She knows the feel of its absence, has gotten so used to the gaping hole left behind.
This is different.
That hole has been filled.
Her heart knocks around her chest with the force of an earthquake. Each beat vibrates to the tips of her fingers, hot and loud.
She chokes on the first tears. So many emotions rage through her that she feels overly full. Glutted on sensation. She sinks to her knees.
“Home,” Vada whispers. “We’re home?”
“Yes.” Mama smiles, tears falling down her cheeks. “We’re home. It is time for you to claim your place. Your father is waiting.”
Vada’s father.
The word does something to her. All these years, the questions that were never answered. This pain that never made any sense. Now it wells up, this great wave. She shouldn’t hope, but she hopes anyway, like every time she begged after a story—even one that was near rotten the moment it was told.
She wants to know, is scared to know.
Regardless of how she feels, this is not a choice.
“My father knows Death?”
“Mija,” Mama says. “Your father is Death.”
Mama guides her through the trees, hand gentle. The energy is different between them, all the tension now reduced to vapor.
They move forward to a path in the trees. Vada feels like she is floating on a cloud, but Mama is determined and quick on her feet, her entire body spirited. It is unnerving.
When they reach the end of the wood, they come to stand above a city.
It is unlike any Vada has ever seen. Of course, she only knows Dallas, but this one is special. The streets below are glazed in color, neon signs beaming and disintegrating into the air like smoke—wisps of light dance in the misty air. At the center is a dark skyscraper towering high against a black sky.
What is peculiar about this sky are the large cracks slabbed in the middle. It looks like obsidian glass, this world encased in a box.
Mama pushes ahead, down the path. It is weaved with tree roots, transitioning into pavement once they reach the bottom.
Vada keeps close.
Through the streets, the people are fleshless, their faces skeletal, their hands bone. It is quiet as a grave because no one speaks. There is a system here as they weave around one another. Vendors in the streets wait stock-still, watch people browse but do not give a sales pitch.
This is mourning.
Vada knows because it is what she has felt her entire life.
She feels close to these people—though they are fleshless, and she is not. Like them, she is wrapped in Death. The putrid impressions are contagious, consuming Vada’s heart. She is awake.
Mama is the same. She bounces through all of it, coming alive. She looks as young as she is, eyes light, like all the weight has gone. This place is a tomb, but somehow, it is where they belong.
Twenty minutes pass, and Vada understands—they are going to the skyscraper.
When they reach the glassy doors, her mouth loosens. Two bouncers stand at the entrance.
They are not like the people in the streets. They are larger and lupine, with monstrous faces made of ivory. Their glittering black eyes bring her to a stop, but Mama marches right up to them, hands on her hips. Something changes in their expressions when they see her, understand her. They exchange a glance.
Then, they wave her inside.
Mama smiles.
They know her. She knows them. She turns and waits.
Vada wants to follow, yet she is still so afraid. She thinks about her body, lying in that lake right now, cold and lifeless.
She won’t return this time.
But that isn’t what scares her.
What scares her is that she feels more alive than she’s ever been, and it’s only because she’s dead.
“Come, Vada,” Mama says. “It’s time for the truth.”
She expects something gaudier than an office space, but that is where they end up. It is small and sleek. A steel table in the center of the room seats three. Two skeletal wolves and one skeletal boy playing a game of cards.
These cards are made not of paper but glass. Enameled with gold, painted in strange symbols.
The boy is not much older than Vada, if older at all. His black eyes flicker away from the game, settle on her. He sets his cards facedown with a quiet clink.
“Out. Both of you.”
The command is authoritative. The wolves obey and exit the room. The boy smiles. He rises from the table. Though he speaks to Mama, he stares at Vada. “She’s beautiful.”
Mama is frozen. “Where’s Avel?”
“I never understood his fascination with you…” He trails off. “A mortal. He never wanted my mother, but he wanted a mortal.”
He says mortal with disgust as if they are something dirty on the bottom of his shoe. Whoever he is, he is not who Mama hoped to see. It is clear in her posture, all that hope long gone, in its place reservation. She is hiding what she really feels.
She is afraid.
“What is that tale of star-crossed lovers in your world?” The boy snaps his bone fingers, trying to think of it. “Romeo and Juliet. Here in Undar, we have one that is much the same. What happens when a god of death and a girl of flesh fall in love?” He spreads his arms wide as if he is conducting a performance. “It breaks the world.”
“It was you,” Mama says. “Calling us.”
“Yes.”
“MATIAS!” a voice thunders.
A tall skeletal man stands in the doorway. He is broader, but he is hunched over, clutching his chest. He looks ill. But he comes closer anyway, his face full of anger. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Avel,” Mama gasps. She rushes to him, buries her head in his chest. He is frozen. But eventually, he moves, and his hands find their place at Mama’s sides. But his face. His face. It is that face she saw in the dark.
Death.
Her father.
What happens when a god of death and a girl of flesh fall in love?
This is him.
It hits her all at once that he is not human, which means that she is not human. At least, not entirely.
His eyes soften as he takes her in, but they harden when they land on Matias. “How did you bring them here?”
“Our world is crumbling,” Matias says, rolling up his sleeves. “None of it can be fixed until the abomination is gone.”
“You will not touch them,” Avel states as if it’s a simple matter. “Get out.”
Matias smiles.
Too late, Vada realizes when the two wolves return. They pin Avel down, and Mama stumbles to them, screaming, “Don’t touch him! Don’t—”
A flash of silver, a gush of red.
Matias stands above her with that same wicked smile, his fingers no longer fingers but sharpened glassy blades.
She crumples to the floor in a dark expanding pool.
Avel weeps. Vada screams.
And when she does, the room tumbles, rumbles, quakes.
She screams and screams and screams until she is hollowed out and cold. It is not enough. If she could scream a deathless scream, she would.
But it cuts off, and the quaking immediately stops.
Avel and Matias are staring at her. So are the wolves. As though she has grown three heads.
But she only has eyes for Mama. Tears fall down her cheeks as she sinks to her knees, cradles her limp body. They’ve died, sure, but what is it to die here? What’s after?
Is there an after when they’re already in the after?
It feels impossible that Mama could ever be gone. No matter how dark and twisted they were, she is the only home Vada has known.
And without it, what is she?
It all happens quickly.
Avel rises, shoves the wolves back, crushing their skulls. They crumble like sand before he turns to face Matias.
“How many years have you fretted over this mortal?” Matias demands. “It would have come to this eventually. No matter how many times you kept her away.”
“And you thought to kill me for it?”
“You know very well we cannot be killed. We must rebuild. This world needs a new king.”
They clash. Vada flinches, watching the violent struggle, still holding Mama in her arms—the blood has gone cold. Avel shoves Matias so hard he flies, hitting the opposite wall.
Avel bounds to Matias in a few quick strides. Like the wolves, he will crush him.
“Stop,” Vada chokes out.
Avel goes still. Both of their skulled faces turn in her direction. “Stop,” she repeats.
They are both parts of the truth, and the truth is what she needs.
Avel risked everything to hide it. Matias killed to bring it forth. Mama died to ensure it was received. It would be safer for Vada to go on denying everything she is—but she can’t.
Not anymore.
“What happens,” she whispers, “when a god of death and a girl of flesh fall in love?”
Avel hesitates. With his hands around his dead son’s neck, staring at his half-dead daughter, he no longer looks strong, only lost.
But the hesitation passes.
Then comes the story.
It began as it always did.
But when I came, she did not beg for her life. Instead, she said, let me tell you a tale, and I learned to love what fades.
It was a bruise, something I did not understand. I wanted to pull away, but there was something hooking about this pain. I thought, is this what it is to be human? Though I cannot see it, have never known it, though it is like trying to see through murky water, I want it.
What an ache it was. A glinting apple. Hurt that I wanted to consume my entire body. I wanted every bone to break, then break again. As long as I could feel it wholly, no longer a whisper.
I needed more. I needed her.
So, she came.
So, we were happy.
A god of death, a girl of flesh.
It brings a thing of love, a thing of horror.
When our child was born, she wailed until the sky broke. As the light vanished and the warmth was ripped away from her bare skin, it was at once forgotten the name of this domain. It became something different. Limbo. And perhaps that is because the child herself was Limbo.
The hands that held her were no longer hands, but cages and the voice that crooned a cradlesong was no longer a voice but a shadow.
Such is the wound of things that are stolen.
That’s the story, really, this matter of stolen things. Because the child grew up and all was taken. Her power, though bestowed by a god, was sooner abandoned than seen.
What was left was a boneyard, a catacomb, a memory. This was the way of it.
But it is not what they will tell you.
“Instead, they will say she broke the world,” Avel finishes. “And that is also true.”
It all falls into place.
She was born of love so ruinous it broke the world.
A god of death, a girl of flesh.
A child of horror.
Abomination, Matias called her.
But she never belonged anywhere else, has never been at home with the living, has spent every day trying to get closer to the unseen.
The shadows called, and she did not know what to call them in turn, had no name other than Death. But she always knew it was here.
She cannot go back.
What would she go back to when Death is the only thing she understands?
Now that Mama, the only one who felt real, won’t be there?
“I was selfish to take her away.” Avel looks at Mama in her arms. “She was never the same.”
“You kept us away.”
“Yes,” he said. “To protect you.”
“To protect me?” Vada wonders. “Or Undar?”
He looks at her, then really looks at her. “Both.”
“She used to say we were creatures of kings. That we’d shape the world. I used to think it was a metaphor.”
“Kings are broken. They do not live, and live we all should. You will eclipse me.”
Mama stirs.
It shocks Vada to the core as she lifts her head.
Though the shape of her elegant cheeks remains, the flesh is gone. In its place, bone. The shine of her skull makes it all too real. There is no undoing. Mama is dead.
Yet, she is not gone.
Here, the dead remain.
“Racquel,” he says. “I am so sorry.”
Vada gazes up at him, tries to make sense of his face, to find herself in his features. She wants to ask him so many questions, to know him.
But she broke the world.
“Avel,” Mama says. “You cannot send us back.”
“Then she must claim the blood.”
At these words, Matias struggles against Avel’s grip but loses and slumps, demoralized. “She is a scar. You do not know what it will do. It could destroy us for good.”
“She has the gift,” Avel disagrees. “Stronger, unpredictable, because she is flesh. But she can deal in matters of death. I thought it was right to keep her away, but perhaps that is what held us in the dark. She is firstborn. It is rightfully hers.”
“Blood?” she echoes. “What blood?”
“The power of a king cannot be taken. It must be given—and accepted. It is an agreement between you and me.”
“You do not have to claim it,” Matias insists. “You can renounce it.”
“Is that why you brought me here?” she demands, getting to her feet. “Because you want it for yourself?”
“To be king is not to rule. It is to mend. If the blood is mine, I will send you and your mother home—and this world can be restored.”
Vada could leave this all behind, go back to being normal. But she’s here now. She can’t turn away.
Avel suddenly weakens, his palms leaving Matias and hitting the ground. He coughs violently, clutching his chest.
“Avel.” Mama rushes to him, and once again, it is disconcerting to watch the way of her skeletal face. “You’re not well. What’s wrong?”
“It’s her,” Matias accuses, nodding at Vada. But he doesn’t look as angry now, just exhausted. For the first time, Vada notices that his bone arms are scarred.
Avel stops coughing, but he looks weary as he struggles to his feet. “Is it true? Is it me?”
“It is complicated, mija.”
Mija. The word stuns. It is the first time he has called her that.
Matias bristles. “Nothing changes, does it?”
“What do you mean?” demands Vada.
“Just what I said.”
“Was I really such a threat? Was it really so hard for you?”
“You think it’s been easy. Being here. With him.” His voice is dangerously cool. “You’re just a girl. You don’t know anything.”
“Because I’ve been kept in the dark!” she exclaims. “So why don’t you tell me, Matias?”
He blinks—startled—opens his mouth with a hesitation that makes her realize he is not often asked to speak. Has he lived like a ghost, the way she has? Suddenly, he looks no more than the boy he is.
She would have thought him just that if he hadn’t killed Mama moments ago.
Yet even monsters have stories, and perhaps it isn’t really the monster that’s terrifying.
But how much of herself she can see in a monster.
A world is dead. It is also dying.
It has a god who should be bound to duty. Instead, he is bound to love. It does not matter that his firstborn, the heir, is Destroyer. He retreats further into his skyscraper and allows her to live as she should not.
But there is another child.
A spare.
The spare used to laugh. He remembers, barely, when he knew happiness. Back when he was not so tired and broken, and love had not stolen God’s sense. Now, sense is long gone, and the cracks in the world grow ever larger. The spare tries to pick up every broken piece, but there are too many, and they slip from his fingers.
He tries to hold up the sky.
It is so damn heavy.
The spare wishes he could grab the heir by her shoulders and scream. Look at the mess you’ve left me.
Because while she sits under God’s protection, the dead begin to fall through the cracks. He sees how the damage weighs, an execution blade waiting to descend. He must act, for what is he, if he sits by and does nothing?
Yet, what can he do? Three months is the age difference between them. So small, yet enough to dictate him secondborn. Unless she renounces her claim, the power can never be his.
This gives him an idea.
A terrible idea.
But an idea need not be good as long as it is forceful. This one settles in his mind with the leisure of a beast, and he can think of nothing else.
One night, while he sits across from God in the dining room, he finishes his meal promptly. And like most nights, God does not waste words on him.
For the first time, he does not mind.
He dons his jacket and sneaks into the house.
The house sits at the center point of Undar and Earth atop a hill, sharp and imposing. But it is not quite Undar, and it is not quite Earth. It is an in-between, untouched by death—and it is sacred. Where the memories of everyone who has ever lived are preserved forever.
It is how the dead continue to exist in Undar, everlasting, never dying.
Yet it is also dangerous to enter the house because one could gaze upon a life that isn’t theirs and lose themselves—wander the halls for so long their bones will wear to dust.
But the spare is special in a way that no one sees. To be so discarded and forgotten means that when he enters the house, he weaves through it with ease. The house is far bigger than it appears on the outside and goes on for miles.
The walls and vaulted ceilings are coated in crystals of different colors and shapes.
The spare cannot bring the heir to Undar without the power of a king. But there is something else he can do. Something abominable, but it could save the world.
He studies every crystal.
He learns that a violet crystal belongs to a person who is still living, and when that person dies, it will vibrate—turn a blinding white—then settle into the crimson shade of the dead.
When he looks closer, he is able to discern the difference in the grooves, see the exact person who exists in it. Their life laid out like a deck of cards.
He must find the crystal that belongs to the heir.
It takes him weeks to find it, and when he does, he sees Vada Rivera to her core. That’s her name—Vada.
Today she turns eighteen.
The spare feels hate roll through him with the force of a boulder.
Because the heir is so fleshy, so completely ordinary, so much less than everything he is. What has she done, other than sitting on this couch, watching television? While he has been here, trying to fix the world she broke.
He cannot reap the dead, but if he destroys her crystal, she will be erased.
Entirely.
But when he tries, nothing happens.
Every time he attacks, Undar quakes so hard even the house trembles. Awful wounds crawl up his arms, and a pained gasp escapes him.
God has placed excessive protection on the heir, which means even here, the spare can do nothing. For a moment, he feels helpless.
Until he notices the other crystal beside hers—so close it nearly merges.
It is her mother.
Strangely, her mother vibrates white three times in quick succession. She tries to die, often. She loves God, with her entire being. She wants to go to him.
The spare picks up both crystals and is submerged in a vision: fireworks. The heir stares at her mother, and her mother watches the sky. Through the crystal, he can feel the other organisms that are present. Each has their own distinct feeling that he tracks across the room.
It leads him toward a group of crystals in the corner. He must create such a spectacle that it cannot be ignored by even God.
The spare claws at one crystal, then another—they go dark and vanish.
These crystals, these lives, these memories, belonged to birds.
He destroys them until he sees it dawn on the mother’s face—all this death falling on their heads.
He destroys them, even as Undar continues to quake, even as screams erupt outside of the house. Is the world finally ending? Nobody but him knows what is happening. Each crystal annihilated is a sin—and they all leave their mark on him. In the end, he will save more lives than he took.
At least, this is what he tells himself.
The heir’s crystal vibrates in his hand.
It is no longer violet.
It is bright red.
Matias’s bone lips have flattened into a thin line. “The world is still crumbling. Because you won’t face the truth. You do not belong there.”
“You’re right,” Vada says, her voice shaking. “I don’t belong there.”
“It doesn’t matter whether she belongs there or not,” Avel says, angry. “You have ruined yourself, Matias. The house is sacred, and you went in there to destroy. There will be consequences for this. Severe consequences.”
“I’m not saying his actions were right. But you would let this world fall just to shelter me—and that’s not right, either.”
Matias looks surprised, Avel goes silent.
“I have never lived,” she went on. “I have endured. The moment I was born, it sealed our fate. It cannot be undone.”
Mama and Death, star-crossed and doomed from the beginning. Their love was so fierce it culminated into ruin, held off by Matias all these years. Denial was a prison of their own making, had them all suspended in purgatory, averting destruction.
But let it come.
Let it come.
To wait is not to live.
“No more hiding,” she says. “I will claim the blood.”
“Kings, mija,” Mama chants.
It is no longer a choice. It is what happens when fates are forged.
Matias’s grandeur fades in an instant. She expects him to rage. Instead, he laughs. He no longer looks at Vada like she is a shadow.
Now, he knows she is as formidable as the moon.
Death, flesh, horror—she is all.
The god of death holds out his wrist to the child of horror, says, “Drink.”
The child drinks.
This is how a story ends, and another begins.
This is the child who broke the sky. She was born of love and death. But she can be more, will claim every stolen star and face the world from which she was taken.
This is how she comes home.
This is how she becomes king.