The Young Gods (The Young Gods #1) [NEW DRAFT]

•capítulo doce // chapter twelve•

"And your father's brother?"

Malina shakes her head. "I don't think he'd like me very much. You know how Edeirans can be to mestizos sometimes."

Darl nods knowingly. "So... that's quite a nifty power you have. You have the Sight, right?"

"A variation of it," she admits.

"I've never met anyone who can touch the weave."

She smiles at him. "Me either."

"You're like the Head Sentinel. He has the Sight too."

Malina raises an eyebrow. "Really?" Uncle Paolo didn't tell her that. What had he said about the Head Sentinel, anyway? That he was a boy, young and inexperienced, and barely eighteen?

She recalls the boy at the hospice last night. The boy that touched her.

I felt nothing.

That must've been the Head Sentinel. How had he known she would be there? A shiver courses over her at the memory of those glowing blue eyes lighting up the night. So that's how it is to be touched by someone disconnected. Someone frayed, like me.

"What do you know about the Head Sentinel?" she asks.

Darl threads his fingers together behind his neck. "Not much. I've heard he's from a noble House. People say he's the king's nephew. His aunt was queen a few years ago, before she passed."

"I see." Her heart bumps against her ribcage. She's never met anyone like her before, not once in her life. The only people she's ever been able to touch without fear of pain are her uncle and lola Diwa, and they're a different breed of person entirely, handpicked by the gods to carry out their divine bidding. No one she's met has had the Sight, and now, suddenly, a boy with the Sight has touched her.

She's not sure that it's all coincidence.

"I have to be straight with you," Darl says. "I came to ask you another favour."

Another carriage rolls by. Malina fiddles with the strap of her eyepatch.

"What do you need from me, Darl?"

"There's going to be a party at the palace tonight. Everyone that's important will be there."

"And?"

"Alejandro Lopez will be there too," he mumbles. "He's a merchant prince's son. He lives in the Cruce district. He was my master."

Malina's lips part. "Darl..." she begins.

"I know it's not fair of me to ask you to... to do anything to him, really, but he was always beating me if I didn't do a good enough job. Aizel just wanted to get us out of there, you know? She didn't think about the consequences. You should've seen the look on her face when he took that axe to her wrist. It was-" He shakes his head back and forth. "Malina, it was horrible. He seemed so satisfied with himself afterwards. He's a monster."

"I'm not going to kill someone for you, Darl." She can still feel Clara's threads in her hands, the morbid finality of pulling them apart. Thanks to Clara, she doesn't even bare a scar. Thanks to Clara, she's alive. Clara probably had friends. Family. A lover, even. And Malina ended it all in a bid for her own life. So what she means to say, really, isn't I'm not going to kill someone for you. It's I'm not going to kill someone for you again.