The skin around Cristobal’s eyes tightens ever so subtly, but it’s there. His tell.

“He found out about you, didn’t he? He could—he would—expose you for the devil you are. And so you had to kill him.”

Fury flashes across Cristobal’s face like lightning across a storm-ridden sky. There and gone in a flash. There it is. A crack in the armor. Good. I want him off-balance. He is more likely to make a mistake I can use to my advantage that way.

“But,” I continue because, at this point, I cannot stop myself, “how? How did he know?”

The smile that crawls across Cristobal’s lips is laced with venom. “Why don’t you ask your betrothed?”

The words crack through me like a musket ball. His grip on me loosens just enough for me to angle toward him. To look him in the eye. “Sebastian?”

He swallows thickly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to me.”

Cristobal paces around the altar, the heels of his boots clicking loudly against the cracked stone floor. “Our Sebastian learned a thing or two about loyalty on the night of the viceroy’s ball.”

Sebastian shakes his head, the movement too fast, too jerky. “I didn’t mean to. I was drunk. I saw the girl, her body. There was so much blood. So much.”

“Didn’t mean to what?” My voice cracks halfway through the question.

When Sebastian fails to answer me, Cristobal does it for him. “It was an accident, of course, divulging what he knew about me. About my arrangement with the viceroy. But, you see, as with any accident, it had to be cleaned up.”

“It was you.” Of course. The picture crystallizes before me. The viceroy’s astronomical rise from the second son of a minor noble house to the most powerful seat in New Spain. Cristobal put him there. And in exchange, the viceroy provided him with access. Hunting grounds. The protection that came with the title of Viceroy of Peru without any of the scrutiny.

“I made Sebastian’s family.” Cristobal looks past me, the cold steel of his gaze fixated on Sebastian. “And I can just as easily unmake them.”

“You were scared.” My own gaze is on Cristobal, but my words are for Sebastian. “You saw something you shouldn’t have. You tried to forget, tried to drink it away, but you couldn’t. You couldn’t carry it alone. You had to tell someone.”

And the person with whom he shared his burden was my brother. My Alejandro. Always ready with a kind word and a ready ear. Always there to listen when you needed it the most.