The Shadow Cats

10

WE are nearly to the castle when something rustles through the underbrush ahead. I hear footsteps, and I’m about to yank Zito into a hollow of ferns when I also hear the creak of armor. The Perditos don’t wear armor.

“Lupita?” I whisper.

Figures barrel down the deer path—four of my guards, Lupita, Nurse Ximena, and to my absolute shock, my little sister. Elisa’s hair is full of dirt and leaves, her cheeks are flushed, and the hem of her gown is thick with mud, but she plows forward, her face set stubbornly. She holds a knife in her hand. A kitchen knife, I note with no small amount of amusement. What she thinks she’ll do with it, I’ve no idea. When she sees me, her features melt into relief.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, and it comes out sharper than I intend.

It stops her cold. “I . . . well . . . I heard you leave last night. But then you didn’t come back, and Zito was gone too. . . . And the cat screamed, so I fetched the guards, and then we found Lupita, and . . .” Something in my face makes her pause, and her own features harden in response. “I was worried for Zito. I know you can take care of yourself.”

Lupita weaves through the guards toward me, then wraps my legs in a great hug, squeezing tight. I pat her head absently. “But why are you here? Why not send Khelia’s guards?” How could she risk herself like this? She’s the farthest thing from a warrior I’ve ever known. Of all the stupid . . . My anger dissolves. No, my sister has never been stupid.

“You left in secret,” she whispers, fully cowed. “So, I knew you had a plan. You always have a plan. And I knew you would be so irritated with me if I spoiled it by telling everyone.”

I stare at her, dismayed, because she is exactly right. “Elisa, I’m s—”

Zito places a silencing hand on my shoulder, probably thinking I’m about to scold her as usual. “Thank you for coming, Highness,” he says. “And for bringing aid. It was quick thinking and brave.”

Elisa gasps, as if seeing him for the first time. “Oh, my God,” she says.

If she is just now noticing the blood dripping from his ruined eyes and the burn marks on his cheeks, then her only thought when undertaking this ridiculous rescue was for me. She truly thought she was rescuing me.

“We need to get Zito to the castle,” I say, and my voice is gentler with her than it has been in a long time. “I’m worried about infection.”

“Of course,” she says. And my weak, lazy, selfish sister clamps the silly kitchen knife between her teeth, hitches up her sleeves, and lodges herself under Zito’s other arm. “Big rock just ahead, Zito,” she says. “You’ll have to step high.”

A guard takes my spot beneath Zito’s other arm, and I follow behind, aided by Lupita. As we shuffle back to the castle in the least royal, most awkward procession of my life, I stare at my sister’s back. By not involving Khelia’s or Isodel’s soldiers, she has salvaged my plan.

Espiritu is dead. The blight on the land will fade soon enough. And no one will be able to deny that it was the crown princess and her people who made it happen.