“He will,” says Valentino, wiping his cheeks. “My father is many things. But most of all, he is proud. He will not let his family name be extinguished.”

Next Rosario turns to Aldo, who lies gasping on the floor, blood pooling beneath his legs. “You stupid, stupid boy,” he says.

Aldo sneers at him. “You would not be saying that if our plan had succeeded.”

Rosario shakes his head in disbelief. “Do you have any idea how happy Red and I would have been to learn we have a brother? All you had to do was come to me, tell me who you were. You could have been a prince of the empire. I would have shared everything with you.”

“It’s my birthright,” Aldo gasps out. “I was born for it. I deserve—”

“No,” Rosario says. “One of the most important things I learned from my stepmother is that no one deserves to rule. Anyone who believes otherwise will make a truly terrible monarch. You made your choices. So be it.”

“That’s not . . .” Aldo pleads, transfigured into a small child, heartbroken and lost.

But Rosario has already turned his back.

“Conde Juan-Carlos, are you well enough to take these pieces of trash to the prison tower?” Rosario says, indicating Aldo and his mother.

“With pleasure, Your Highness,” he says, retrieving Father Nicandro’s cane. “May my brother accompany me? I seem to have misplaced a kneecap and could use a little help.”

“Of course. You,” Rosario says, indicating Itzal. “Fetch Doctor Enzo and all his staff. We have lots of wounded. And you—it’s Pedrón, right?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” Pedrón’s right arm hangs limp from his shoulder; I can’t tell if it’s out of its socket or broken or worse.

“Inform the monastery that their head priest has fallen.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Rosario crouches beside Father Nicandro’s broken body. He reaches down and brushes his eyelids closed. “Rest well, old friend. You will lie in state, with my true family.”

He looks up at me. “Red?”

He is my brother, but he is also my liege. I snap to attention, the way I’ve been taught. “Your Highness?”

“I need you to . . . please just stay by my side while we clean up this mess.”

26

Now

THE next few days are a blur. Rosario reinstates me to the Guard, but instead of training, we are tasked with cleaning up. In the ballroom, we find two of the Basajuan boys. The Arturos insist on carrying their bodies out to the desert and burying them in the sand. “From sand we come, to sand we return,” they intone.

Only eleven first-year recruits remain.

Next, we retrieve the remaining barrels of dream syrup and destroy them. Pedrón’s right arm was badly injured, and he is forced to carry it in a sling. Doctor Enzo says his upper arm was broken in three places, that it might take a year of care to rehabilitate. Still, Pedrón does the work of ten men, lifting and dragging and tossing with his left arm.