There was a room dug into the earth beneath the home of Víctor de Paredes. It was not quite wide enough to sit in and not quite tall enough

to stand in. Its walls were smooth stone and it could only be reached through an iron hatch that latched on the outside. There had been one of

these rooms in every De Paredes house for more than four hundred years. It was called the scorpion’s den.

Víctor’s men had found Santángel on the forest floor where the king’s soldiers had left him for dead, the arrows still lodged in his chest. First he

had endured the agony of the shafts being pulled from his body and then he had been thrown into his den to heal.

It should have been nothing. He’d endured far worse. He had lived with the futility of his own situation a very long time. He was no different from other men, caught up in the movement of a world that did not care for him, at the whim of a God who did not heed him.

But this time his helplessness drove him mad. He shouted his rage. He pounded on the walls of his cell. He swore bloody revenge. It didn’t matter. No one came. No one brought food or water. They knew he wouldn’t die.

He would wither and shrink to nothing, a living corpse, but he would go on.

Santángel had lived only one life, and it had been both long and remarkably boring. His early years of travel and debauchery, of scholarship and pleasure seeking, seemed like a dream someone else once had and then tried to relate to him. He had forgotten fear, forgotten rage. What had remained was a kind of scholarly curiosity about the world and its workings, a dim hope that one day, in one of his many books, he would discover the secret of the bad bargain he had struck with Tello de Paredes and he would find a way to undo it.

There were no surprises. Everyone reminded him of someone he’d met before; every moment was one he’d already lived. He had thought this

unrelenting march of sameness would continue until he found a way to break free or he found the courage to die.

Then Luzia had entered his life, a character in a play who was meant to

have a few lines and depart. Instead she had overtaken his story. The plot he knew so well had suddenly confused him, the shape of his narrative bending around her into something new. But a tragedy could not become a comedy.

In the end, she had been trapped by his curse, just as he was. The plot’s shape returned and his tragedy became hers.

He remembered the pain of the arrows piercing his lung, his side. If she wasn’t conscious to heal herself, it would be that easy for her to die. If she’d escaped the woods, could she have made it to Madrid? Was she hiding somewhere or captured? Sometimes he let himself believe that the king had changed his mind, that Luzia was safe in the Alcázar or placed in a convent or even back at Calle de Dos Santos. Sometimes he imagined she was in the house above him. Víctor would enjoy that.

If she was alive, then there was hope, wasn’t there? Or was this

helplessness some punishment for his selfish youth, his murderous past? If she was in hiding, she would need a way out of Spain. Santángel could get her money. He could even find a way to provide her with documents for

safe travel. But how could he predict the way his own influence might ruin any attempt to free her? If her escape was a danger to his master, he would never succeed. He rehearsed arguments for how to persuade Víctor to help her. He would beg for her life as he had never begged for his.

And if his master didn’t agree? There was a way to sever his luck from Víctor de Paredes. All he had to do was ride away. He could travel through the night, find a fine horizon to serve as his last sight of the world. He would burn away to ash and his death would break the tether that bound him to this family. Víctor’s good fortune would burn to nothing with him. Luzia would have her chance.

He must have been unconscious when Víctor sent Celso to retrieve him from the basement because he had no memory of being transported. He

woke in the dining room, to the scent of braised meat and spiced wine. He had no appetite, despite the days of starvation, but he forced himself to eat. If he was to think, if he was to strategize, he needed his strength back.

Víctor watched him and when Santángel pushed away his plate, he said, “Did you enjoy your meal?”

“Did you enjoy your tantrum?” He didn’t want to spar with Víctor, didn’t want to play these games, but all must seem to be as it had been.

“I hope you had time to think. Free from distraction.” Santángel said nothing.

“Do you not wish to know where the scullion is?” “You will tell me when it suits you.”

“I see your equanimity has returned. I hardly recognized the lovesick fool I found bleeding on the ground in the woods.” Víctor tapped his fingers on

the arms of his chair. “Your place is with me, Santángel. And your attempt to help Luzia Cotado evade capture did not please Vázquez.”

“But my luck kept you from any real danger, didn’t it?” Víctor acknowledged this with a nod.

“Your little friend is making trouble.”

His relief must have shown because Víctor smiled.

“Yes, Guillén, she lives. She is in Toledo. A prisoner of the Inquisition.”

It took five centuries of patience to keep Santángel in his chair. He wanted to leap up and choke the smug smile from Víctor’s face. He wanted to steal a horse and ride through the night to her.

“Why the Inquisition?” he managed, pleased at the steadiness of his voice.

“She was denounced.” “By you?”

“No. I said I was taken in by her illusions but that I knew nothing of heresy or plots against the king.”

And he had been believed. He would always be believed. As long as Santángel lived.

Santángel knew he should keep silent, give nothing more away, but the

madness of the scorpion’s den was still with him, clawing at his good sense. “Has she faced torture?”

Víctor shrugged and Santángel thought, I will see you suffer. If it takes a thousand years, I will carve that sneer from your mouth.

“That is the business of the tribunal,” Víctor said. “But she attempted an escape last night, with the heretic Teoda Halcón. The child’s father died in the attempt, but Teoda is free.”

“And Luzia?”

“Back in her cell. She has confessed to everything and she will face sentencing on the Feast of All Saints.”

Barely a week away. That left him little time to act.

“The tribunal claims she had help from the guards,” Víctor continued. “But my sources say she slipped through the locks of her cell and left the streets outside the Inquisition district in ruins. She is more powerful than I understood and more reckless.”

“You still hope to secure her gifts as your own.” Of course he did. Víctor saw and wanted, wanted and claimed. He didn’t know what it was to be denied.

“She’s willful, but she can be broken, as anyone can be in time. She will have her final audience with the tribunal in three days’ time. She will be told of her sentence.”

“So she is to die?” Only those slated for death were given their sentences before an auto de fe.

Víctor nodded. “But it is not too late.”

“No?” How easy he sounded, how bemused.

“I can use my influence and yours to save her from the pyre.”

“There are limits to both. Or you never would have begun this farce to acquire a title.”

“But I have been gifted my title. You are speaking to a duke, Santángel.” “I’ll make sure to sit a little straighter.” Santángel studied him. “You

offered your services to the king.”

“I didn’t have to. The king came to me. The day after the puppet show.”

When Santángel’s loyalties had altered, when he had given in to his need for Luzia. When he had let himself begin to love her and turn his mind to freeing them both. But while he was free to give his loyalty and even his

useless heart to Luzia, his luck belonged to Víctor. The stars had aligned to grant Víctor opportunity even as Santángel had sought to steal it from him. He had felt the world shift but he hadn’t understood its direction.

“I have cultivated connections to Philip and the Supreme Council,” said the new duke. “I can convince them our scullion was a mere pawn in Pérez’s intrigues. That he and the Ordoños contrived to use her for their own ends. She has already confessed that her milagritos were mere

illusions.”

Santángel saw clearly enough the picture Víctor would paint for the tribunal: a dim-witted girl deluded into believing she had great power, dressed up and made to perform for her betters, manipulated by striving hidalgos desperate for money and social success. She had already

confessed. She would repent, face public punishment at the auto de fe, and be placed in Víctor de Paredes’s hands. There would be no need for

mysterious bargains to bind her. Those who had been tried and reconciled for heresy by the Inquisition received no second chances. If she fled or if Víctor chose to claim she had slid back into irreligious practices, she would be imprisoned and put to death without trial.

“But I don’t know what reckless thing she may do next,” Víctor continued. “If she’s not careful she’ll end up in trouble not even I can get her out of.”

“You would leash us both to you?”

“Why not? What might I accomplish with a milagrera and a familiar in my home? And won’t that be a kind of happiness? An eternity together?”

“She will never agree to it. She has seen what you are.”

Víctor laughed. “Guillén, do you think she values her own life any less than you do? Her choices are the pyre or …” He gestured to the

comfortable room, the coals blazing, the full cups of wine, the heavy stone walls and furs. A life of plenty.

“What is it you want from me, Víctor?”

“Do you love her? I didn’t think you had the capacity for it.” “What do you want?” he repeated.

“You will come with me to Toledo. We will attend her sentencing before the tribunal, and should she be seized by visions of martyrdom or heroic

ideas of dying a free woman, you will be there to convince her that a life beneath this roof, a life with you is preferable.”

Santángel doubted such an argument would sway Luzia. “Sentencings are not open to the public. Prisoners of the Inquisition are not allowed visitors.”

Víctor waved away this protest. “I am not the public. Besides, Lucrecia de León has attended parties with the warden. Ovidio Halcón was allowed correspondence with his business partners to arrange for seizure of his estate. All is permissible where there is money and will.”

“She will be a vulnerability to you, Víctor. Forever. People will always wonder if you have a heretic in your household and if that heresy stains you as well.”

“You underestimate your own gifts. Besides, Pérez cannot evade the king forever. Once he is in Philip’s grasp, the scullion will be of no interest to him. We will make sure she goes to mass as regularly as she pisses and she will be a testimony to the victory of the one true Church. I’ll drag her to

Rome to take communion if I have to.” He leaned back in his chair. “But

perhaps I’ve mistaken your feelings for her. Would you rather her dead than that she belonged to me?”

I would keep her from being buried alive in a future of servitude. But he couldn’t save her without Víctor. Every scheme he had would twist to further the De Paredes fortunes. Every move he made would draw the cords tighter around Luzia. He had thought he might buy his own freedom with hers, but now they would both be captives. She would hate him and she would be right to. Maybe she would choose the pyre instead.

“Can my luck not be enough for you?” he asked.

“Your luck brought me Luzia Cotado. If the king will not use her as the instrument she was meant to be, I will.”

There was the truth that had choked him in the scorpion’s den. He had doomed her before they had ever met.