“Maybe Alejandro knew,” I say. “Maybe he heard or saw something he wasn’t supposed to and was going to expose Cristobal. Hell, maybe he even heard something from Sebastian.”

“Anyone your brother might have mentioned this to is in equal danger,” the prioress says.

“Shit.” Kiki glances at me, brow furrowed. “The letters he wrote. The warnings.”

“Rosalita.” I am already striding toward the door. “We need to find her before Cristobal does.”

Both Kiki and Mother Ines are too kind to state the obvious. That he already has.

CHAPTER 26

Kiki

Everything we learned at the convent swirls inside my skull as we head back to town. The weather holds, so the journey is, at the very least, mercifully shorter.

The man who slit that poor girl’s throat.

The man who killed a young woman and left her dead body in the street like garbage.

The man who killed my brother.

One and the same. How many lives has he stolen? How many families destroyed? And what does the viceroy know? And Sebastian?

How deep does this rot run?

The same question is still running through my mind as I trudge up the front steps to the villa, tugging the dusty gloves from my fingers. The leather will need to be conditioned. Thoroughly. My entire body feels like it needs a good conditioning. I am utterly encrusted with the dirt from the roads. I can feel it caking in my pores. Seeping through my scalp. Casting a thin, thoroughly vile film over my teeth and tongue.

Naturally, this is the state in which I find myself when I skid to a halt in the entry hall.

Ana collides with my back, kicking up a fresh cloud of dust. “Kiki, watch ou—”

“Hello, Eustaquia.”

Standing not six feet from me is Sebastian. To his right is my father, a man I have not seen in days. Not since he chucked the only evidence we had for my brother’s murder into the fire. He meets my gaze but only fleetingly. His skin looks sallow in the twilight, and his frame looks smaller. Like he’s lost weight. Magdalena did say he wasn’t eating.

“Sebastian. Father.”

That is all the greeting either one will get from me. I know I should be kinder to my father. I lost a brother, but he lost a son. And I know better than anyone that sorrow can addle the mind as well as—no, better than—any poison. But I do not have it in me to be so kind. Not yet. Not when my own pain is still so raw. Not when I am on the cusp of finding his killer.

My eyes slide from my father to Sebastian. His own gaze is carefully guarded. Undeniably pleasant. It tells me nothing. It is the perfect mask to wear around his future father-in-law. Sinking my teeth into my tongue—hard—I bite back all the things I want to say to him.