Page 61 of Castle of the Cursed
His whole frame begins to shake, and his mouth falls open. I cover my face with my hands to keep from screaming.
“Estela,” says Felipe, speaking in a deadened tone unlike his lively voice. “If you want answers, come to the woods at midnight.”
CHAPTER 15
MY FINGERS ARE PRUNES BY the time I stop shivering.
I’ve been soaking in a hot bath since Felipe left. I barely managed to drag myself up the stairs and into the tub from how violently I was trembling.
That wasn’t Felipe telling me to meet him in the forest—it was the black smoke.
It seemed to possess him, and after delivering its message, Felipe’s eyes went back to their usual amber. Then he booked it out of here as quickly as the driver who first dropped me off at la Sombra’s gate.
It was Felipe, though, and not the black smoke, who kissed me against my will.
I thought he and I were friends with adjacent obsessions, but it turns out he wanted something from me this whole time. He’s been trying to seduce me because he thinks I’m his path to becoming a Brálaga. I was so desperate for a friend, I overlooked the red flags—his fixation on the castle, Beatríz’s warning, my own gut instinct.
Still, I really thought Felipe and I were friends. I can’t believe he would forcefully kiss me like that…
Then again, didn’t I just do the same thing to Sebastián?
I guess you don’t need to be a monster to do monstrous things.
I open Mom’s denim suitcase because I’m officially out of clean clothing. I pull on a pair of charcoal leggings and a knitted gray sweater that’s not my style, but it makes me feel warm and cozy and like my parents are close.
Nightfall is an hour or two away, and since I don’t want Sebastián to remind me I’m malnourished, I head to the kitchen for dinner. As I’m climbing down the stairs, I see the grapes and crackers on the center landing, and I remember Felipe’s basket.
I dart up the other leg of stairs, and I don’t slow until I reach the moon temple. There, I find the basket and lift the lid. Alongside the bread, crackers, and spreads is a Ziploc bag with a small red book.
I collect all the food off the floor and bring everything with me to the kitchen. Then I sit on a stool at the large center island, as if I were in the attic of Libroscuro. I rest the book on the stone countertop in the dying daylight, poised to read it, which feels more daunting without Felipe here to translate.
The title page reads: Hijos de la noche. Children of the night. Or, since hijo is the masculine version of child, it could mean Sons of the night.
When I open it, I know why Felipe wanted to share this tome with me—it has pictures. They seem to have been drawn in pencil, but they are as detailed as photographs.
I flip through the pages until I get to the section on Vampiros. In the first set of illustrations, they look more like large bats and have nothing in common with Sebastián. I flip ahead to the next part, where the vampires look like winged demons with humanlike faces and fangs. I turn the pages faster, until at last I arrive at some lines of text, and I read:
Los vampiros están en guerra perpetua por el trono.
All I understand is vampiros and guerra, which means war. So the vampires are at war… perpetua, is that perpetually? For the trono—thunder?
No, that’s trueno. Trono is… throne! The vampires are at perpetual war for the throne.
I read on: El rey dirige el ejército y el príncipe gobierna desde el castillo en la sombra de su padre.
After rereading the line a few times, I work out that it says: The king leads the army, and the prince governs from the castle in his father’s shadow.
I turn the page to see a construction that eclipses la Sombra and spans the entire spread. The castle seems to have been built inside a massive mountain, but the rocky walls are so intricately carved they look like papier-mâché.
Across the next spread of pages are grids of comic-like boxes with drawings of the goings-on at the vampire castle. There’s no text, but the depictions are so detailed that the subtext is clear to make out.
The figures are drawn as black silhouettes, but the king and the prince stand out by the crowns hovering over their heads. There’s a third crowned figure, but they are slain in the first box by shadowy beings when the prince is still a tiny speck of ink. I suspect it was the queen, his mom.
The king goes to war, leaving a thick ring of guards around the prince to protect him. Battle after battle make the king more and more bloodthirsty; meanwhile, the prince’s training at the castle seems exhaustive and unending. Until one day, the king takes his son to the field of battle because they are facing an old enemy—the beings who killed his mother.
The prince is ruthless, tearing through the ranks like Death itself. It is here that he gains his name and reputation, and a solitary line of text hovers over his crown: el Príncipe de Hierro.
The Iron Prince.
